Will development finally take off the old Ham brewery in St. Paul? – Star tribune

Two years after St. Paul has chosen the developer JB Vang to bring housing to the former Ham Brewery site on the east, city leaders are hoping for funding and planning funds will make great progress this year.

The buildings with a red brick on Avenue went, where hundreds of workers once produced millions of barrel beer, were at the center of the decades of hopes and challenges for revival.

Now JB Vang has offered more than 200 affordable apartments, divided between two buildings on Ham’s website. Turning buildings into apartments will cost more than $ 200 million, the developer estimates.

In an update of the Housing and Reconstruction Authority of St. Paul on Wednesday, Jul Atangana, the city director, said the project had received more than $ 2.2 million from the Metropolitan Council and $ 500,000 from Ramsay, and the entrepreneur would Apply for the state funding of this year.

Over the next two years, Atangana said, the project will move through urban zoning and authorization, and JB Vang will work with the city to arrange the rest of the funding.

The city also pursues buildings in the national register of historical places, which could unlock other funding to preserve 19th -century buildings.

Theodore Ham Bruing Co has grown rapidly and remains dominant for decades before the Ham family sells the company, which was eventually purchased from Milwaukee -based Pabst Brewing Co. Detroit’s Stroh Brewing Co. Buy the brewery minnehaha Avenue in the early 80’s.

Until 1989, Strich boiled to 3.5 million barrels a year. This is somewhere around 10 times the greater capacity of today’s brewery at the top. But Strich closed the brewery St. Paul in 1997 and subsequently a developer sold the bigger part of the city’s property.