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GARY: And called the Capital City Partnership. It's a group of about 20 large corporations that have each pledged to spend $25,000 a year for three years to finance a downtown St. Paul promotional and cleanup plan. John Labosky joins us now. Good morning, sir.

JOHN LABOSKY: Good morning, Gary.

GARY: I guess first of all, congratulations on your new job.

JOHN LABOSKY: Well, thank you so much. We just finished the press conference at the Ordway, and it was just outstanding in terms of the community, the neighborhood support, the business leaders that were here.

GARY: Mm-hmm. Now, you got rave reviews for your work with the Minneapolis downtown council. Why make the change?

JOHN LABOSKY: Well, I think, for several reasons. Number 1, I'm personally ready for a different challenge. I'm very proud of what we did at the Minneapolis Downtown Council for seven years, but it's kind of mission accomplished. And I think now it's an opportunity for the Downtown Council to get new leadership to continue its success.

Second, I'm really impressed with Mayor Norm Coleman here, and I'd love the opportunity of forming a public-private partnership with him. Third, we've got over 20 metropolitan-area company CEOs that are pledging their financial resources. But they're willing to serve on the board and be active, and I think that's really important.

And last, I have a real fondness for St. Paul. I've lived here for five years in the past. And I think it's a wonderful city, and it just needs to be revitalized.

GARY: Well, Lord knows there have been plenty of efforts in the past to try to kickstart things here in St. Paul, and most of them haven't succeeded all that well. Do you think this is actually going to be different from those previous efforts?

JOHN LABOSKY: I think this one is very different. There have been a lot of efforts. In fact, Karen Henley from St. Paul Companies blessed me in taking the job with a stack of previous marketing plans that had been developed.

GARY: [LAUGHS]

JOHN LABOSKY: But what's different about this one is that we've got the great leadership at city government. When you couple that with the CEOs and metropolitan area businesses supporting it and a lot of support from the private foundation community, I think that's a partnership that has not been formed before.

GARY: What is your vision for downtown St. Paul?

JOHN LABOSKY: Well, I think that it could be a wonderful European kind of character city that is intimate, that takes advantage of the wonderful public spaces and public buildings, that it has great areas to stroll. And maybe Wabasha becomes like the Champs-Élysées is to Paris, of course on a smaller scale. But a wonderful city that is connected together, that takes advantage of being the state's capital and a government center combined with being a cultural center.

GARY: Do you see it as a retail center anymore, or are St. Paul's days as a retail center over?

JOHN LABOSKY: I think it's very difficult for us to go out right now to attract any new retailers to come into the market, but what we'd like to do is to secondarily work on that. I think our first approach is going to be, how do we drive the market to get more people to come here for entertainment and for cultural kinds of events?

Once we generate the market, then I'm hoping that there will be private businesses like restaurants and retail that will want to come in and take advantage of the market. But I don't think we can build anything ahead of the market.

GARY: Now, you have seen the effects of the mega mall on downtown Minneapolis. Obviously, you've taken a look at how it's affected St. Paul. How has the mega mall affected the two downtown centers?

JOHN LABOSKY: You know, it's really been, on balance, probably more positive. I think it has clearly attracted more people to our metropolitan area than would have otherwise have been here, which is a positive for everyone. I think it has enhanced our Twin Cities area as a convention destination, because many people are choosing to come here versus somewhere else to take advantage of the opportunity to see it.

I think it's brought new retailers, mostly European, to our marketplace, who weren't here before. And it definitely has helped our overall hotel and restaurant business.

The negative side, I think you can't add 2.6 million square feet of retail at one time without making a very soft retail climate, and there's a lot of pressure on specific retailers. But on balance, I think it's been fairly positive. But the biggest positive that we took advantage of in Minneapolis was creating a sense of urgency that we had to improve and make our product better, and I think that that improved everyone.

GARY: Very briefly, before you launch off in the St. Paul endeavor, one last look at Minneapolis. Everything hunky dory in downtown Minneapolis now?

JOHN LABOSKY: I think that Minneapolis is doing very, very well. From the time I started, we had a hole in the ground where the Norwest and Gaviidae were. We reconstructed the Nicollet Mall. We built a Target center in 1990. We built a new convention center in 1990.

We built four new office towers. And now we only have a 4.5% vacancy rate for Class A space, and there's kind of a race among developers to build the next tower. I think in general, things are going well. However, as with any city, you're fighting against trends, and it requires a lot of due diligence and care to keep it that-- to keep it healthy.

GARY: Thank you, John.

JOHN LABOSKY: Thank you, Gary.

GARY: John Labosky, who is the new president of a new organization called the Capital City Partnership in St. Paul. There's not going to be a strike at WCCO Radio in Minneapolis. Negotiators late last night reached agreement on a contract for 48 union employees at WCCO. WCCO General Manager Jim Gustafson refused, though, to give specifics about that contract.

JIM GUSTAFSON: I think that it's probably not appropriate for me to go into the details of the agreement. I think the nature of a negotiation is that both sides