From B’s Barbershop to Pino’s Pizzeria and Allegra Printing, the remaining commercial tenants at the Alliance Bank Center in downtown St. Paul were informed late Monday afternoon they should “immediately vacate the premises” as the 16-story building — which offers a major skyway connection — would lose all heating, cooling and electricity on Wednesday.

Shop owners and business proprietors received an otherwise unsigned notice from “Alliance Center LLC” — the limited liability corporation owned by Madison Equities — around 4 p.m. Monday encouraging them to leave.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s office negotiated with Xcel Energy and District Energy on Tuesday to keep electricity flowing another three weeks, giving shopkeepers through the end of the month to pack up their things.

“It’s obviously been a long day for everybody,” said Carter, after walking the skyway Tuesday afternoon to update vendors face-to-face on the rapidly changing situation.

“If the power is shut off, the building’s management company, Madison Equities, plans to walk away, and the bank … will not assume ownership,” reads an interdepartmental memo circulated within City Hall on Monday by the St. Paul Fire Department. “This will result in the building being left vacant with no protection systems in place or maintenance being conducted.”

Despite the company’s well-documented struggles, the announcement still came as a surprise to business owners, some of whom said they were at a loss to understand how a tobacco store, print shop, jewelry store and other longstanding tenants would relocate heavy equipment or supplies in less than two days. Their leases, they noted, were month-to-month, not overnight.

“Madison Equities is in peril — we knew that,” said Pino Lipari Jr., whose family has run Pino’s Pizzeria in the Alliance Bank Center food court for 37 years and had already been looking into moving. “But we had six months left on the lease.”

Small businesses out of business

In addition to office tenants, “you’re putting 14 small businesses out of business,” said Bob Wolf, owner of the Greenwolf Hemp and Organics holistic products store, which has operated out of a skyway storefront for the past five years. “Someone’s got to step up. This is crazy. I saw the look on people’s faces. They’re just heartbroken.”

Tenants said the building’s conditions have deteriorated over the past year, leaving service escalators out of commission from the skyway to the ground floor.

An office worker noted with a laugh on Tuesday that the card reader at the Alliance Bank Center parking ramp no longer works and the gate arm has been left up 24/7, allowing free — albeit unattended — parking for the past three or four weeks. Other than along Wabasha Street, most ground-level entrance doors to the building remain locked at all hours.

Through the foreclosure process, Madison Equities has lost various properties to lenders in recent months even as it attempts to unload the majority of its downtown portfolio. The company, long known as downtown St. Paul’s largest property owner, placed 10 buildings on the market together en masse last April following the January 2024 death of company principal James Crockarell.

Deputy Mayor Jaime Tincher said a team of city employees, including planning staff, meet with lawyers for the company every two weeks, but the property owner has been “cagey” about sharing basic information like tenant lists or sales timelines.

At the time it went up for sale, the Alliance Bank Center’s 300,000 square feet of commercial space was about 44% occupied, according to the sales offering. That number has likely shrunk. Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services still leases two floors within the Alliance Bank Center, as do a handful of small legal or financial services firms.

Previous major tenants have, until recently, included the accounting firm Red Path, which relocated its headquarters months ago to the nearby Securian Financial building. About nine months ago, Alliance Bank also moved its bank branch out of the building that bears its name and into Wells Fargo Place on East Seventh Street.

Madison Equities blames city

Alliance Bank Center, located at 55 E. Fifth St. and once the home of Wells Fargo Bank and its predecessor, carried an estimated market value of $8 million last year. The building, which dates to 1967, was sold to Madison Equities in February 2020 for $4.1 million.

It offers a major skyway connection between Osborn Plaza on Wabasha Street, over Cedar Street and on toward Minnesota Street, raising concerns about the loss of skyway access at a time when downtown residents are increasingly hard-pressed to find accessible entrances.

“In the winter, people in wheelchairs and walkers use this all the time,” said Paul Hartquist, who has run Paul Harquist Jewelers in the building for 35 years, motioning to the skyway from behind his jewelry counter.

The building’s announced closure is the latest setback for downtown St. Paul, coming just three days after Lunds and Byerlys said it would exit Lowertown, leaving downtown without a grocery store.

Tenants of Madison Equities’ residential and commercial properties have long accused the property owner of neglecting maintenance and mismanaging some of downtown’s most iconic properties, several of which are low on or completely devoid of lease-holders.

On Monday, Madison Equities cast blame on the city for not stepping up to pay the private property owner’s utility bills, and issued notice that “landlord Alliance Center, LLC is facing significant hardships due to the deteriorating condition of downtown St. Paul and the flight of tenants away from the Central Train Station that is located across the street from the Alliance Bank Building.”

The notice indicates that Madison Equities had also reached out to its lender, Royal Credit Union, which “has shown no interest in providing any additional funding for the building.”

The mayor on Tuesday shared with reporters a copy of a three-sentence email, dated Jan. 17, from Kelly Hadac and the Hadac Law Office to the city and the credit union: “Attached are utility invoices … The owner of the building cannot pay the invoices. Please advise if RCU or the City of St. Paul are willing to pay the invoices. Thank you.”

As requests for financial assistance go, that one struck him as particularly curt.

“When I talk to my kids, a question has to have a question mark on it,” Carter said. “That’s not a question. It’s a declaration.”

Storeowners hope city will help with relocation

Late Monday night, some storeowners who close shop before 4 p.m. had yet to come across the notice that they’d been ordered out.

“There’s been rumors they’re going to turn off our electricity,” said Bilal Saleem, better known as Mr. B, who has run B’s Barbershop downtown for nearly 20 years and in the Alliance Bank Center for eight of them.

Saleem took news of the Alliance Bank Center closure in stride, noting he had already made arrangements to relocate to the Town Square building at 445 Minnesota St. by April 1. For that to happen, he needs city inspectors to greenlight a wash sink or shampoo station and multiple electrical outlets in his new space.

“They can’t move forward until the inspectors come, and the inspectors are taking their time,” he said.

Saleem, Wolf and Lipari all predicted they will land on their feet, but they hoped the city will at least help businesses fast-track relocation to Town Square, the Securian building and other properties downtown.

Carter and Tincher said Tuesday said they had appointed Jimmy Lloyd, economic development director within the Department of Planning and Economic Development, and Krystle Cruz Williams, director of business engagement on the mayor’s staff, to serve as point of contacts for the tenants.