St. Paul has a chance to protect birds, promote downtown investment

It’s easy to take the Mississippi River for granted when you cross it, as I do, multiple times a day. Sometimes I don’t even bother to look out the window. It’s a shame because the Mississippi is the entire reason why the Twin Cities exist. It’s no small thing to gaze upon one of the world’s greatest waterways. This is probably why, 50 years ago, state lawmakers passed environmental protections along the river corridor through the Twin Cities, and the Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area (MRCCA) was born.

This month, St. Paul is finally coming into compliance with new state mandates, years after other cities have done the same. The long delay has a few causes, but one of them is the tension between attracting investment and environmental regulation, especially around the city’s struggling downtown. To me, that’s not a great excuse. There are some common sense compromises that the City Council should pass.

A balancing act on the river

The MRCCA rules date back to 1976, when then-Gov. Wendell Anderson, out of concern for the environmental quality of the Mississippi, worked with state lawmakers to force cities to enact protections. At the time there were few land use rules and little coordination between the dozens of cities that abut the waterfront. The rules specify a complex set of setbacks, design standards and flood plain management treatments (e.g. native vegetation) for the swath of land along the Mississippi River. 

Related: Downtown Minneapolis is death to birds. So what is anybody doing about it?

After years of delay and a lengthy public hearing last week, St. Paul is preparing to adopt its new city regulations. There are two big changes the city should make: a pioneering bird-safe glass ordinance and loosening height restrictions in the downtown area. Together, these changes offer a needed compromise between environmental protection and urban development for St. Paul

The problem is well-known: Birds are prone to flying into reflective windows, particularly during long migrations. The Mississippi River is one of the continent’s great flyways, where the river valley provides an avian highway for hundreds of species twice a year, around half of all the birds on the continent. This makes any building with reflective windows along the river valley a death trap, and it’s long past time that cities started using bird-safe glass to prevent this obvious problem.

To my eye, bird-safe glass is not a big deal to anyone but a migrating warbler or an obsessive-compulsive architect. I’ve encountered it many times in new construction, including most recently in the new Minneapolis Public Service building. The treatment amounts to tiny dots on windows that barely detract from the liability or aesthetics. They just take a bit of getting used to, but can prevent countless bird deaths over the lifetime of a building. 

“It’s nothing revolutionary,” said Kiki Sonnen, who helps run the St. Paul Bird Alliance (formerly Audubon Club). “It’s just common sense, and it seems to work pretty well.”

Sonnen, who served herself on the St. Paul City Council in the 1980s, has spent years pushing the city to adopt a bird-safe glass regulation. She points to a long list of incidents where the lives of migratory birds could have been saved by small changes to window design.

Developers might not like it, but nobody wants to see a red-eyed vireo corpse on the sidewalk. Many cities have strong bird-safe glass regulations in place, including San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, New York City, Washington, D.C., and a long list of others. Minneapolis mandates bird-safe glass only for skyways — and notably not for football stadiums — but that shouldn’t stop St. Paul from leading the way.

To make matters worse, the city’s initial draft of the MRCCA regulations, passed in 2022 by the Planning Commission, included a strong bird-safe glass ordinance. At some point in the last few years, those rules were stripped out in favor of more study. That’s silly; there’s nothing more to learn here. St. Paul should adopt a bird-safe glass ordinance, paving the way to a less deadly flyway for the entire region. 

Unnecessary uncertainty

The second change is that the City Council should remove the Conditional Use Permit (CUP) provision for downtown building heights. The current proposal would require an additional process for buildings that exceed one-and-a-half stories along the downtown riverfront. That’s jumping through an extra hoop of public process to create development uncertainty for no real reason, and it would further deter investment in downtown St. Paul.

There’s long been an unfortunate tension between environmentalists and urbanists around density. (See also: the Minneapolis 2040 Plan.) It’s regrettable because promoting density and urban development is one of the most environmentally sustainable things we can do as a society. Homes or offices built in walkable, transit-rich places like downtown St. Paul lessen the need for similar land uses on the exurban fringe, where development literally erodes habitat and/or farmland. Walkable density creates significant ancillary benefits for energy efficiency and reducing transportation emissions, meaning that in a low-key way, urban development is a strong ally of environmentalists.

Related: How a plan to prevent bird deaths may change the way Minneapolis regulates its entire skyway system

That’s why it’s a shame to see efforts to put a CUP process in place for tall buildings within a literal downtown. As a former planning commissioner, I know how onerous CUPs can be, and I remember times when well-meaning city staff tried to create bespoke conditions — sometimes of dubious legality —  to attach to new developments. 

Few people are rushing to build new buildings in downtown St. Paul right now, and the last thing the city needs is regulation with no real end-goal in mind. The lack of investment is a crisis that’s affecting property taxes, livability and climate action. 

St. Paul should finally adopt its MRCCA rules, but with a few tweaks to both protect birds and promote downtown investment. There are sensible compromises on the table that would help move the city forward without further damaging the river and the life that relies on it.

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