Former Industrial Sites Helping Satisfy Urban Housing Demand

Ryan Cos. vision for the former Ford site in St. Paul calls for mid-rise buildings and a lot of public and open spaces that will help it blend into the surrounding neighborhood.

ST. PAUL—Ryan Cos. unveiled their concept for the City of St. Paul’s Ford Site Master Plan at a middle school in the Highland Park neighborhood last week. The proposed mixed-use community will replace the neighborhood’s former Ford manufacturing site with a wide variety of housing, including market-rate apartments, condos, rowhomes, seniors’ housing, along with some retail and office space. It will be the culmination of years of effort, cleanup and planning by the city and state, but Ryan officials also wanted to get approval from local residents.

“The sheer scale of this is unique,” Tony Barranco, senior vice president of development at Ryan Cos., tells GlobeSt.com. “There haven’t been many mixed-use communities in St. Paul, and there haven’t been any created in a neighborhood. This is going to be a 10- to 12-year project and we want to make sure it’s woven into the community.”