Historic Post Office Transformed into Mixed-Use Development in St. Paul

When the post ofice in downtown St. Paul, Minn., was recently preserved and repurposed, development owner Exeter Group paid homage to a different aspect of the building when converting the property into a mixed- use development with market-rate apartments, a parking garage, retail space, a self-storage business and a hotel.

The development is named Custom House after the old U.S. Customs Service of ce on the building’s sixth oor that issued visas and passports. The 17-story building was built in phases in 1934, 1939 and 1961. The building functioned as the city’s main post of ce for 79 years, until its last postal operations moved out in 2013. The remaining oors were used as of ce space for various government agencies and the building’s annex was used to sort mail.