Follow Up: Stalled Downtown St. Cloud Office Building

ST. CLOUD - Today in our follow-up series called "Whatever Happened With That?" the WJON news team is looking into the plan to build a four-story office building next to city hall in downtown St. Cloud.

It was a plan that was discussed by the city council several times back in 2015. It also had several residents in the neighborhood expressing their concerns about the plan to close a city street. The council voted 5-2 in November of 2015 to approve the PUD for the Highbanks Crossing Project, including vacating 3rd Street South. The developers, Doug Boser and Brian Schoenborn, at the time, said they hoped to have the project completed by 2018.

But, two years later, the parking lot is still a parking lot and the street is still open to traffic.

In a written statement to WJON news, Schoenborn says

We are still working on the Highbanks project, but first, we need to find tenants. It's not possible to complete a project this large without a number of anchor tenants. Sharing the block with city hall complicates things greatly.

St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis says he's been reassured that the project will still happen.

In the conversation I just had just a few days ago with the developer, they're still moving forward, and they are still excited about it actually happening.

Kleis says the project would still have to come back to the city council if, or when, it moves forward.  He says the developers already own the vacant church to the south of 3rd Street South, so they have a vested interest in moving the project forward.

The project calls for a four-story 60,000 square foot office and retail building to be built right next to city hall at the corner of 5th Avenue and Division Street.

Coming up Tuesday we will take a look at "Whatever Happened With" the plan to create a Regional Airport Authority to run the St. Cloud Regional Airport.