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On the west side of St. Paul at a former industrial site just beyond the Mississippi River, the first pieces of an ambitious redevelopment plan have come online. The roughly 7-acre mixed-use community of Farwell-on-Water was conceived in 2019 by developer Peter Deanovic of Buhl Investors as a means of activating a dormant area of the city’s waterfront. It includes artists’ studios and flexible workspace in the historic Farwell Ozmun Kirk & Co. warehouse, and a separate building with 63 units of affordable housing. The central component, though, is Esox House, a five-story apartment complex with 221 market-rate rentals and, eventually, retail space that serves as the fulcrum around which present and future activity is oriented.

Esox House (seen at upper right) is adjacent to Harriet Island Regional Park, a popular riverfront green space opposite downtown St. Paul. Photo © Corey Gaffer

The complex is connected to a network of multi-modal paths and features on-site amenities, including dedicated bike storage, geared toward cyclists. Photo © Corey Gaffer

Designed by Minneapolis-based Snow Kreilich Architects, the 248,000-square-foot building opened in June 2024, transforming a blighted lot once dominated by a 19th-century varnish factory vacated a decade ago. When the design team first toured the site in 2020, it was enclosed by a chain-link fence and strewn with old car parts. “It had a very junkyard-y feel to it,” says Snow Kreilich associate principal Mary Springer. “The varnish building was intact, but it was a little bit difficult to understand exactly what we were going to get once we excavated.” Design principal Matthew Kreilich adds that “it was a small building, and there wasn’t a great way to reuse it in any sort of large capacity. We knew from the start that this was going to be new construction.”

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Esox House features a landscaped, pilotis-lifted entry portal (2) and a shared courtyard (1,3) that preserves industrial remnants of the site. Photos © Corey Gaffer

The factory came down, and the conversion from industrial to residential required remediation and capping to address soil contamination, the installation of a new sewage system to handle increased demand, and an underground water detention and treatment system to keep toxins from discharging into the Mississippi. What then went up is an understated structure, oriented like a blocky letter “C.” The neutral-toned Esox House was built using precast concrete, brick, and striated corrugated metal, with a design inspired, in part, by the sandstone bluffs that make up St. Paul’s geology. Street-facing units have terraces punched into the envelope, while those on the opposite side have rusted-metal-like balconies jutting out from the building.

View of the building from Water Street. Photo © Corey Gaffer

This tactful collision of the residential and industrial extends into the 11,000-square-foot courtyard, which Snow Kreilich worked on with frequent collaborator, the local landscape architecture and urban design firm TEN x TEN. Among its many 21st-century amenities (including bocce courts, a standalone sauna, and screened-in yurt), the space incorporates preserved elements from the varnish factory, like its four chimney stacks and sections of perimeter walls. The architects also maintained two giant cottonwood trees that were on the site.

Some of the artists working out of the historic Farwell warehouse contributed decorative and functional pieces to the new building, including custom furniture. These items are distributed throughout various amenity spaces meant to attract young professionals, like game rooms with pinball, ping pong, and shuffleboard; the Vinyl Room, featuring a curated collection of records; and a fourth floor “retreat” with a kitchen, bar island, and outdoor terrace with a fire pit. In an acknowledgment of changes brought by the pandemic, there’s also generous coworking space on the first floor with open, booth, and café-style seating.

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Lounge areas found throughout Esox House double as workspaces for tenant use (4). The double-height lobby (5) and other areas feature custom millwork (6) by Snow Kreilich, works by local artists, and an eclectic decor scheme inspired by the developer's world travels. Photos © Corey Gaffer

A communal spirit exists inside Esox House, with well-attended, residents-only gatherings like art workshops and culinary events. But for Snow Kreilich and the developer, the project was always about sparking community among the other Farwell elements, too, to “support the narrative of this area’s transition,” senior associate Nick Reiter says. Nowhere is that more evident than the shared Farwell Yard courtyard, which begins at Esox House and serves as the new community’s front lawn. The developer has programmed this shared outdoor space, also designed by TEN x TEN, for concerts and other events, intending “that everyone is using the courtyard space as part of their public domain,” Springer says.

“There’s a much larger urban thinking that Pete [Deanovic] has for this area,” Kreilich says. “That really made the project more interesting than a singular building in a singular site.” 

Click site plan to enlarge