St Paul Sync Issue

General Discussion
1

I am looking for guidance on why a cell that straddles the Mississippi River with St. Paul on the East and Minneapolis on the West side of the river fails to have multiple waypoints appear in Pokemon Go. The cell is just south of the Ford bridge between the 2 cities and all of this property is park land on both sides of the river.

Within Pokemon Go there were originally 2 gyms in the cell on the St Paul side of the Mississippi (Ford Damn Scenic Overlook and Hydro Electric Turbine). The other waypoints in the cell were on the Minneapolis side of the river.

In Summer of 2020 there were problems with Minneapolis cells and new waypoints did not sync into Pokemon Go. Waypoints that were geotagged “Minneapolis” did not sync, however if the geotag was a neighboring municipality (Fort Snelling, Edina, Richfield, or St Paul waypoints would sync as expected. After much frustration and some interaction with the Wayfarer team on 18 JUL 2020 Minneapolis waypoints finally synced and dozens of backlogged approved waypoints across South Minneapolis were made live and for some reason the cell under discussion had 2 bonus gyms for a total of 4 gyms (the 2 original gyms mentioned previously and Anchor Arm and River Wildlife on the Minneapolis side of the cell). Note… there were at least 6 waypoints on the Minneapolis side of the river when the 2 new gyms were created in the cell in addition to the 2 gyms on the St. Paul side of the river. Yes, 4 gyms one cell and none of them sponsored. Those of us who are aware of waypoint density just assumed the new gyms were based upon the 6 “Minneapolis” waypoints and assumed the cell was wonky because sometimes weird things happen.

For 5 years this cell had 4 gyms (JUL 2020-JUL 2025): Ford Dam Scenic Overlook, Hydro Electric Turbine, Anchor Arm, and River Wildlife.

Since 2022, a new park has been built on the St Paul side of the river (Gateway Park) and multiple additional waypoints have been added to Wayfarer since 2022 and these new waypoints have never synced into Pokemon Go, however, it does appear they meet eligibility criteria for spacing to be valid Pokestops.

It feels like St. Paul side of the river continues to have something preventing it from syncing as some of the approved waypoints on the St. Paul side are over 2 years old and never synced in Pokemon Go, these waypoints do appear in Ingress and Wayfarer.

About 6 weeks ago the 2 original gyms disappeared (Ford Dam Scenic Overlook and Hydro Electric Turbine). These 2 gyms were not demoted to stops - they were just gone. Wayfarers in the area assumed the cell came up on a list of inappropriate cell density and the cell was “right sized”, but we couldn’t figure out why the 2 original gyms would go and the 2 gyms that technically never should have existed should stay. The waypoints still appear in Wayfarer database so they cannot be re-submitted without being a duplicate. These waypoints continue to exist, they have not been removed IRL. All land in the area that is not synced is park land in the City of St. Paul. The Parks department would not have requested removal of these waypoints without also asking for removal of other nearby waypoints along the river (including one at the same overlook parking lot where these 2 gyms disappeared).

I fully understand that there should be only 2 gyms in this cell due to the number of waypoints. However, something happened in JUL 2025 to remove the 2 waypoints from the cell, both gyms. There are currently 7 waypoints on the “Minneapolis” side of the river and 0 on the St. Paul side of the river. However, looking at the full cell it appears there are a total of 6 waypoints on the St. Paul side of this cell that do not appear within the Pokemon Go game at this time

Missing waypoints Not synced into Pokemon Go
Ford Dam Scenic Overlook 44.915133,-93.198607 (original gym JUL 2016- removed JUL 2025)
Hydro Electric Turbine. 44.914601,-93.198511 (original gym JUL 2016 - removed JUL 2025)
Gateway Park Skate Park. 44.916133,-93.198661
Gateway Park South Entrance. 44.915945,-93.198382
Recycling Sparky. 44.9165,-93.198203
Gateway Park Skate Park. 44.917057,-93.198544

Ultimately, I am not requesting 4 gyms to be returned to this cell, I am just to find out what is preventing all valid waypoints from syncing. However, if corrections are possible return at least one gym to the St Paul side of the river (e.g.: leaving Anchor Arm in Minneapolis and Ford Dam Scenic Overlook in St. Paul).

Gateway Park Submission Screenshot
Gateway Park Submission Screenshot1080×2400 316 KB

2

How many wayspot in cell? 3rd gym only appear if the cell have 20wayspot

3

@NianticAaron i think this is one of those cases for your magical touch, ive looked at this a couple weeks ago and couldn’t come up with any logical explanation for this dead cell.

4

We don’t fully know,. The cell image that was originally provided was from a 3rd party mapping site and has since been removed. And since we don’t currently have an accurate Wayspots map from Wayfarer, this does appear to be an issue that staff may have to handle.

This is quite an interesting situation, as it seems some safety precautions may have been taken during the summer of 2020 in the Twin Cities, most likely due to what happened after George Floyd’s d3ath. I won’t discuss what happened here, as it may not be appropriate.

5

There is a restriction at this location placed at the request of the property owner.

6

Hi @SneezingCow
Welcome to the forum :hugs:
It’s not clear these days if when something like this happend your area probablly is effected by this “known issue”:

So it could be an older request.
If things has changed and it seems that such a restriction isn’t needed anymore, you can speak with the property owner and ask them to reverse there decision.
In the thread above you’ll find a link in the first comments with which they can move forward.
Good luck :four_leaf_clover:

7

Confirm… the timing of original non-sync of the cell in 2020 did start at the same time as the riots in Minneapolis. However, as Niantic never confirmed that they did turned off Minneapolis, I left that out of original post. It seems that they turned off all cells that included Minneapolis at that time (Late May 2020 - 18 JUL 2020). With what has happened to this cell, it seems when they did not turn on the cell or did not turn on the complete cell when sync happened. Perhaps they turned off all cells that included Minneapolis, but when they re-activated sync they turned on only a specific geographic tag, not realizing that some cells go across city boundaries, leaving a portion of the cell in a non-sync state.

8

St. Paul did have some issues that summer with rioting, but it wasn’t as big as it was in Minneapolis. I remember watching WCCO’s livestream back then, and they did note some of the St. Paul sites that had issues, such as those in the Midway neighborhood and near the soccer stadium. You could even see the fires on some of the MNDOT cameras in St. Paul when they were happening.

Well, Aaron has now noted that the property owner/manager has asked for a restriction on these Wayspots, so you’ll want to reach out to the city park district to see if they are willing to contact Niantic Scopely to have them restored. At this point, the PO has to give permission to have these restored, and yes, POs can request restrictions on only some Wayspots but not all in an area that they own/manage.

If the park district or city doesn’t have the contact info anymore, they can still send a request at this link:

9

If the park department of St Paul decided to have those waypoints removed that does not explain why the “new” Gateway Park waypoints in that cell do not appear. In 2020 that land was still owned by the Ford Plant. Dozens of waypoints appear on former Ford plant property.

The cell is broken. The likelihood of the park department of St Paul asking for removal of those 2 waypoints AND any future waypoints in that specific Level 14 S2 cell is ridiculous as the parks department didn’t own the land back then.

10

Aaron haws confirmed that the cell isn’t broken as the PO did request removal. Wayspots that have been removed may still show up on the nomination map to discourage others from resubmitting them again.

Again, POs can request for certain Wayspots in a larger area to be removed. You will have to work with the park district to have these restored, and they will have to work with Niantic Scopely. There’s notthing more that can be done by staff due to the restriction from the PO. Yes, the park district didn’t own the land back in 2020, but they do now, so they can request modifications via the link provided above.