The city of St. Paul is giving Visit St. Paul $80,000 to spend on holiday lighting, an outdoor ice rink and other downtown festiveness this season, as well as hanging baskets during the summer. Right now, Mears Park is poised to get somewhere around $4,000. That's just enough to decorate the boulevard trees around the park with small lights, but not enough to do anything decorative inside the actual park for the holidays, as is customary.
That doesn't sit right with the Friends of Mears Park, an 80-member volunteer group chaired by downtown activist John Mannillo. Buoyed by donations from Ecolab, the Crowne Plaza Hotel, the St. Paul Hotel and others, Rice Park and Kellogg Boulevard from City Hall to Robert Street will still be decorated with plenty of lights, as usual. Theories and explanations abound as to why Mears is going to get the holiday shaft.
City officials say Lowertown businessowners have been stingy with donations. Park boosters say there hasn't been enough coordination between a marketing firm that handles the fundraising for holiday lighting and their own team. Or maybe St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman hates John Mannillo, as well as Christmas?
The brouhaha that is Holiday Lighting-gate has generated all sorts of questions as to why the city appears to be leaving decisions about holiday lighting to the visitor's bureau and W Marketing, a private marketing firm, using taxpayer dollars. Read on for the stated answers.
Meanwhile, the Building Owners and Managers Association, Friends of Mears Park and other are scrambling to see what they can do at this late date to get the lights back on in Mears, with the city's blessing.
Says St. Paul Parks and Recreation Spokesman Brad Meyer: The "city contributes to an overall downtown beautification program with a large portion going towards holiday lighting. Costs are up, and donations are down (especially in Visit Saint Paul's Lowertown efforts), so some lights and a tree in Ecolab had to be cut. If donations come back up (as it sounds like they could in Mears) Visit Saint Paul and W Marketing will gladly work with Friends of Mears to help get the lights back up in Mears. I really do hope they raise enough funds… I personally love walking through the lights in Mears Park after a night of dinner and drinks in Lowertown!"
IT'S ALL ABOUT MATERNITY LEAVE: Sarah Weimar, the "W" behind W Marketing, recently went on maternity leave, so some of the downtown work she does has fallen to marketing manager Stacy DeYoung. DeYoung has been active in downtown circles for years, but she acknowledges she was unaware until this week that the Lowertown Future Fund was willing to match the city's contribution toward holiday lighting in Mears Park up to $10,000. In other words, if the city can pitch in $10,000, then that doubles to become $20,000 overnight.
A Mears Park holiday display can cost between $20,000 to $36,000 to do it up big from November through the Winter Carnival, so both the city contribution and the matching dollars are essential, say Friends of Mears Park organizers. Even a few thousand dollars in private donations won't make up for the loss of $10,000 or so from the city.
Nevertheless, the chair of the St. Paul Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) said he reached out to W Marketing within the past month -- about two or three weeks ago -- to see about arranging a sit-down meeting with property owners and beat the bushes for holiday donations. He says he never heard back from the marketing firm.
Mannillo spoke with W Marketing on Wednesday, Oct. 24, and he and DeYoung exchanged words. DeYoung said he should have contacted the firm earlier in the season, as fundraising at this late date is going to get difficult. He said he made plenty of inquiries into the status of holiday lighting, contacting the city's Parks and Rec department and others repeatedly.
"I don't know what more that I could have done," Mannillo said.
W Marketing has downplayed Holiday Lighting-gate, calling the perimeter lights pretty cool and good enough for the holidays, but DeYoung said they'll nevertheless sit down with BOMA right quick. "We're in talks with them to get a meeting together, although I don't know when exactly that is going to be. That's definitely on the discussion plate right now."
And here's the falling action to our story: Weimar had her little one a little more than a month ago.
RISING COSTS, FEWER DONORS: So why does Visit St. Paul and Weimar Marketing have so much say over who gets holiday lights, anyway? St. Paul Parks and Rec officials say budgets being what they are, a highly reasonable decision was made a few years ago to limit the downtown decoration fund to $80,000 and give the money to Visit St. Paul to manage as it sees fit. Visit St. Paul, in turn, contracts W Marketing to figure out how to allocate the money to Rice Park, Mears Park and Kellogg Boulevard, and the marketing group makes some calls and gets major employers and property owners such as Ecolab to chip in additional dollars.
That arrangement allows St. Paul to limit its liability and expenses. In previous years, squirrels chewed through electrical wiring, and other costs, such as staff overtime, weighed heavily on the city. This way, the city's contribution is capped at $80,000, and Visit St. Paul does the rest. But rising material costs are forcing some tough choices, and W Marketing says Lowertown businesses haven't chipped in as much as property owners elsewhere. So a collective decision was made between the city, Visit St. Paul and W Marketing to only decorate the Mears Park perimeter.
"They (W Marketing) have attempted to raise money in Lowertown for Mears Park, but haven't received any contributions over the last several years," said Meyer, the Parks and Rec spokesman, in an email.
Said W Marketing's DeYoung, in an interview with the Scoop: "Every year, we send out a letter to businesses around Lowertown, downtown St. Paul, anybody that's really affected by the holiday lights. It's a lights-and-flowers letter, to contribute anything they can. Usually, the contributions start at around $250."
Generally, said DeYoung, the letter generates close to zilch in donations. The city's "$80,000 is a great amount of money, but it only goes so far," she said.
Mannillo, who restores historic properties, takes a dim view of the argument that a lack of support from the Lowertown business community should mean a lack of holiday lights. "I certainly don't think that Kellogg (Boulevard) gets one-half of it paid for privately," Mannillo said. He said Friends of Mears Park paid about $4,000 the last time he bid out lights around the perimeter of the park himself. Even if that cost has increased, he figures it's probably only gone up by $500 or so.
"That's a small number considering we're one-third of the downtown," Mannillo said. "Shouldn't the decision on how you spend the money be with the city? They could give it me directly, and let me do it, $10,000 or whatever it is."
Adds Mannillo, "We can't do this every year. I know how much costs have gone up. It's not a lot. I've been contracting myself."
He acknowledges, however, that some Lowertown businesses that benefit from Mears Park events and holiday lighting don't contribute a dime to the park beautification efforts, even though they sit directly alongside it. As chair of the Friends of Mears Park, he's hit up several for cash in the past, but with a handful of property owners, "I stopped trying."
POLITICAL RETRIBUTION, OR COLEMAN HATES CHRISTMAS: Here's a more insidious theory as to why the lights won't go on inside Mears Park this Christmas: politics. One theory holds that St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman's administration is still miffed at Mannillo for his frequent criticisms of City Hall and is using holiday lighting to punish him. Last year, Mannillo ran against the mayor's chosen candidate for the City Council, Chris Tolbert, and lost to Tolbert in a four-way race. Mannillo had promised not to run if he did not receive the official DFL endorsement, but ran anyway after accusing the party of fumbling the endorsement count at the endorsing convention. Mannillo hasn't confirmed or denied his political intentions, but he's on the short-list of possible candidates to run against Coleman for mayor in 2013.
City Hall lobbyists and insiders say the likelihood that Coleman's people would use holiday lighting at Mears Park to get back at Mannillo is pretty low (one lobbyist says "That's bull$--t"), seeing as the mayor has bent over backwards to funnel millions of dollars into Lowertown, and really wants the area to succeed. The mayor's biggest effort has been the St. Paul Saints ballpark, which he lobbied for at the State Capitol with vigor.
A second possible explanation? Chris Coleman hates Christmas, and he wants Christmas to fail everywhere. Lowertown may be just the beginning.
Asked if there's any truth to A) the Coleman-vs-Mannillo theory, or to B) the even more insidious possibility that the mayor simply hates Christmas, mayoral spokesman Joe Campbell responded by email: "No, and mostly."
(Campbell adds later that he was kidding about Coleman hating Christmas, but serious about Coleman caring very much about Lowertown.)
WHERE THE HOLIDAY CASH GOES
Here's how the money breaks down, according to St. Paul Parks and Rec:
The city of St. Paul contributes $80,000 toward the overall downtown program run by Visit Saint Paul. The program includes holiday trees, some flower baskets (in the summer), and the holiday lights. Additional money comes from private donors, such as Ecolab and the St. Paul Hotel. Here is the general overall breakdown for the season:
1. Purchase of Christmas Lights and labor for installation of lights – $94,000
Lights get put up in these locations:
Mears (40 street trees)
Rice Park (66 trees)
Landmark Plaza (49 tress)
Ecolab Plaza (34 trees)
Kellogg Blvd and Park (23 trees)
Wacouta Park (8 trees)
Various other street trees throughout downtown (118)
2. Flower baskets in the summer - $11,500
3. 2 Large holiday trees in Rice Park and Hamm Plaza - $13,000 (Cut, install and repair tree; doesn’t include lights.)
Additional money is raised for Rice Park by Xcel Energy and Wells Fargo WinterSkate and paired with some of the city money.
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