For eight months, lawyers at Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services were told they could not get out of their 10-year lease at the Alliance Bank Center in downtown St. Paul without paying a hefty fee to effectively buy themselves free from their contract.

That struck them as unfair, given that escalators in the building no longer work, security has been so lax they’ve hired their own, all the ground-level doors have been locked shut and most other office and food court tenants have already left.

“They didn’t want us to go because we were the only ones paying any substantial rent,” said Candace Miller Lopez, development director with SMRLS, recalling how attorneys for Madison Equities required that the nonprofit otherwise stick to its long-standing lease for two floors of office space.

Then came the March 10 notice from Madison Equities indicating that electricity and all other services in the building would be shut off “in the very near future” because management had not paid its utility bills. “You should immediately vacate the premises as there soon will be no heating/cooling/electricity/security/etc. at this building,” reads the written notice, which indicated “no firm date” for utility disconnection had been confirmed.The St. Paul Fire Department quickly determined that the “very near future” meant utilities would be shut off within two days of that announcement.

“No respect whatsoever,” said Jessie Nicholson, the legal agency’s chief executive officer, who has worked for SMRLS for 40 years. “I thought to myself, how can they expect two full floors of offices to clear out within 48 hours?”

While SMRLS and other commercial tenants have been paying rent to Madison Equities, “Xcel Energy and District Energy, obviously they haven’t been getting paid,” said Nicholson, shaking her head.

An attempt to reach an attorney for Madison Equities was unsuccessful. In the past seven months, Madison Equities officials have not returned calls seeking comment about their properties.

Lights on until April 1

Meanwhile, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s office has negotiated with Xcel Energy and District Energy to keep the lights on until April 1.

That’s now left SMRLS with mere days to relocate 48 to 50 offices and 60 staff members, many of them lawyers, from the building, which has served as its administrative headquarters and major service center for the south metro for the past 20 years.

Until now, the bulk of its work representing low-income clients in civil cases, free of charge, has been handled from downtown St. Paul.

“We’ll all have to go remote,” said Lopez, noting that garbage removal and other day-to-day security and maintenance have already stopped. “You can’t move 60 people in a matter of two weeks. We will find another office, but we have to find one that, as a nonprofit, we can afford, and one where there’s no interruption of services to our clients. It has to be safe and accessible. We closed 11,000 cases last year. It’s no small number.”

She estimated that moving, storage and new lease expenses would total some $500,000 in unanticipated costs.

SMRLS, which maintains 125 employees in eight offices across southern Minnesota, serves 33 counties, including the south metro counties of Dakota, Ramsey, Washington, Scott and Carver.

Emergency assistance

On Wednesday, the St. Paul City Council met as the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority and approved up to $70,000 in emergency assistance from the city’s Business Assistance Fund, to be made available as $5,000 grants for the 14 Alliance Bank Center tenants that were still on site as of March 1.

The hope is to keep some of those commercial tenants downtown. The council waived a handful of guidelines, including restrictions on the grants.

The death of Madison Equities company principal Jim Crockarell last year has left buildings owned by downtown’s largest property holder in precarious situations, with several slipping into foreclosure, and weighed heavily on downtown businesses that — like the city’s tax coffers — were already in need of a boost in the era of remote work.

Carter made note of what he described as Madison Equities’ “implosion” Tuesday during an otherwise unrelated presentation to a committee of state Senate lawmakers considering his request for nearly $400 million to renovate the downtown Xcel Energy Center, as well as the adjoining Roy Wilkins Auditorium and RiverCentre convention halls.

“When we say the word ‘vitality,’ the quickest definition of the word vitality is people, so having people downtown will go a long way for us,” Carter said. The mayor has called city employees who went remote to return to work in person at least three days per week as of April 1.

It’s not just Madison Equities properties that have struggled. A downtown Lunds and Byerlys market permanently closed Thursday, leaving downtown without a grocery store.

Some tenants already left

Some tenants in the Alliance Bank Center left in recent months with what they could carry, leaving behind offices and cubicles. Retail tenants like Jackey’s Watch Bar, a tobacco shop, a barber, a convenience store, a long-standing pizza lunch counter and a CBD store are scrambling to make their own alternative arrangements, with varying degrees of success.

Some have already announced they’ll land at the three-building Town Square complex on Minnesota Street or one of two Securian buildings on Robert Street. After Madison Equities abandoned Alliance Bank Center, a leasing agent for Town Square’s UBS Plaza on Cedar Street left her calling card and a brochure on the counter of the security desk, showcasing available spaces.

Rico Thomas, proprietor of Rico’s on Wabasha ice cream, burritos and breakfast sandwiches near the Alliance Bank Center’s Wabasha Street skyway entrance, said Wednesday that he had yet to find a landing spot, though he was in talks with more than one location.

Laura Jelinek, the metro regional leader for SMRLS, said employees have remained committed to representing their clients — many of whom are disabled or live with small children — despite the disruption. The civil cases run the gamut from orders for protection to benefits termination, housing and unemployment appeals.

”We have a really good group of employees who are really dedicated to access to legal services and representing low-income clients,” she said. “We are not closing intake. We are not saying no to new cases. We are doing all of our casework, and moving boxes at the same time, which is a huge stress on our employees.”

Lopez said the 60 staff members in the office will work remotely, or from the SMRLS smaller satellite offices on University Avenue and Syndicate Street, until they can find a new office location, which in the meantime will be a loss to downtown eateries, parking ramps and meters, and other downtown amenities that benefit from everyday foot traffic.

Still, she said, they’ll eventually land on their feet.

“Our firm has been around for 115 years,” Lopez said. “We’ve existed through a couple of World Wars. Many changes of administration. The Great Depression. You don’t get to be around this long without learning how to navigate turbulence.”