St. Paul City Council weighs rezoning Marshall Avenue corner for 7 townhomes

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
Updated ·1 min read

To accommodate his plans for seven townhomes at 1984 Marshall Ave., developer Stephen Moriarty recently asked the city to rezone the corner parcel for a higher intensity of residential, multi-family development.

“There’s not a lot of townhomes available in St. Paul,” said Moriarty on Wednesday, noting the future rentals could someday be converted to homeownership for sale as starter homes. The site, which would utilize surface parking only, is already ringed by an apartment building adjacent to the west, multi-family housing to the northeast and a church to the south.

His request was opposed by the city’s Planning Commission and the Union Park District Council, which noted that West Marshall Avenue already was rezoned in 2018 following months of careful study to determine block to block density.

The request also gave some members of the St. Paul City Council pause on Wednesday, leading to a decision to delay a vote until May 1.

Moriarty told the council his townhomes would only be two stories. While the corner lot in question currently hosts a single-family home from 1910, the underlying zoning is “RM1,” which already allows up to three stories of residential, multi-family construction.

Moriarty’s request for RM2 zoning would allow up to five stories of construction, which council members noted was several more stories than actually needed for the townhome project to move forward.

“I am very supportive of multi-family housing along Marshall,” said Council President Mitra Jalali, a key architect of the 2018 rezoning study. “(But) I was frankly under the impression they could have just built these townhomes.”

In an email after the hearing, Moriarty explained the RM2 zoning would allow “larger townhomes with larger bedrooms and more living space” without a variance request.

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