At a century-old brick building in St. Paul's Mid-City area, lawn mower-makers have given way to CodeWeavers. And the engineers at the software firm that goes by that name will be joined this week by educators working for the Minnesota Literacy Council. With the two tenants, the building will be 60-62 percent leased.
The 18,000 square-foot factory/warehouse now known as
The Foundry at Raymond is the 15th property near the crossroads of Raymond and University avenues to be renovated by Update Company, a family-owned development firm with more than three decades in the neighborhood. Partner Sandy Jacobs says Update currently owns and manages eight buildings in this commercial and industrial section of the St. Anthony Park neighborhood.
Jacobs remembers a less-vibrant era in the 1970s when her parents' home-based painting business began to evolve into Update. She figures the firm's Midtown Commons office conversion of a pair of buildings in 1990 was a turning point for the area. "That when things really started to gel," Jacobs says.
Now she can point prospective tenants toward numerous nearby amenities, including the Edge Coffee Shop, Hampden Park Co-op, Gremlin Theater, and Caf� Biaggio. CodeWeavers has found the location midway between downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis so convenient for employees to bike to work that they installed a shower.
A Central Corridor light-rail transit station will be under construction at Raymond and University next year, eventually increasing the development potential of surrounding land. The St. Paul Port Authority has scooped up a nearby former trucking property, Jacobs said.
Office workers aren't the only ones finding the once desolate area more appealing. Jacobs says a newly landscaped stormwater-runoff collection pond at the Foundry has attracted a
recent eagle.
Source: Sandy Jacobs, Update Company
Writer: Chris Steller