It’s no accident that I can only think of two major restaurants that opened in St. Paul since COVID (Forepaugh’s in August 2024 and Herbst on the border of Minneapolis/St. Paul in spring 2023). Downtown St. Paul has always been less lively than downtown Minneapolis, and the loss of state, county, and city workers to remote work has decimated it. Because of that, Lowertown may be hurting even more, and over the weekend, Barrio Lowertown suddenly closed after 15 years in business.
I reached out to Ryan Burnet, Barrio’s owner, to ask if it was a landlord/rent issue (which appears to be the main challenge for Lowertown neighbor Saint Dinette).
“It was a lack of foot traffic/sales situation,” Burnet told me. “We were able to survive for a while despite low sales in the hopes that St. Paul would revive itself, but that day hasn’t come yet and it was untenable.”
Barrio is still open at 50th & France, and also on Nicollet Mall, which has convention business and more regular event business that helps augment the dip due to loss of the five-day-a-week office crowd.
I also wonder what the impact will be of the end of Restaurant Revitalization Fund grant money from the federal government: Many restaurants got money to help them survive during COVID and the uncertainty of staff, hours, and shut downs. That money has run out, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see places that have been running out their leases throw in the towel in the coming months.
“COVID money helped us survive during COVID, but really this was solely about absolutely no commerce down there,” said Burnet. I am an optimist by nature, but would you open a restaurant in Lowertown St. Paul or downtown St. Paul right now? Unless you could figure out a way to only be open for events—I’m not sure.
