Developer converting abandoned St. Paul high-rise into downtown housing

A part of St. Paul’s skyline that has been sitting empty for years will soon be converted into downtown housing.

A real estate company from Illinois recently purchased the former Ecolab University building and plans to turn the vacant high-rise into 178 housing units by the middle of the next year.

Inland Real Estate Acquisitions cited the property’s ideal downtown location and skyway access as the primary draw.

As 5 INVESTIGATES first reported, the 16-story building was abandoned by a previous developer and nearly condemned by the city last year.

John E. Thomas, a convicted felon from Chicago, had also planned to turn it into luxury apartments.

But Thomas was accused of defaulting on a $12-million loan and not paying numerous local contractors hired to renovate the property.

A Ramsey County judge eventually took the high-rise away from Thomas’ company after city inspectors said the building had no electricity, no heat, and broken windows, which “nearly resulted in the condemnation of the property.”

Thomas’s company bought the high-rise shortly after he was released from federal prison in 2017.

He was convicted of stealing more than $370,000 in taxpayer money from a south Chicago suburb after promising to redevelop the town’s marina. Prosecutors called him a “serial con man.”

During an interview inside his office in downtown Chicago last year, Thomas told 5 INVESTIGATES he was working to secure more funding to “re-acquire” the former Ecolab building and was not planning to walk away from the project.

Once Inland began the process of acquiring the property, Thomas offered a different response.

“I hope the project is (a) success for the next buyer,” Thomas said in an email last summer.

Kaeding Development Group of Bloomington will serve as the new developer on the project, according to a news release.