When a big city loses a homegrown Fortune 500 company, it hurts. It hurts less when the company moves its operations only as far away as a nearby suburb, since jobs stay close. But either way, the city can be left with land that once cradled a world-class business but now sits idle or underused.
Examples in Minneapolis include the former General Mills sites on the downtown riverfront and on the city's East Side. After General Mills decamped to the west to establish a new corporate campus in Golden Valley, both areas required years of redevelopment effort to get back to their current states of economic vitality.
On its own East Side, St. Paul has 45 acres that once were home to 3M, before the company originally known as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing moved its world headquarters further east to Maplewood. The sprawling former 3M site along the Phalen Corridor--together with two smaller, adjacent sites--has been rechristened Beacon Bluff.
The sprawling former 3M site along the Phalen Corridor has been rechristened
Beacon Bluff and is being marketed for industrial redevelopment by the
St. Paul Port Authority and commercial real-estate firm
Cassidy Turley. On 4.5 of those acres now stands a new
HealthEast Medical Transportation facility. It opened for business this summer with 120 jobs and a $5.1 million investment in construction.
"It's really an important step to reclaim the jobs that were lost when businesses like 3M and Whirlpool went away," said Mayor Chris Coleman at a ribbon-cutting event last month to dedicate the building. "This marks the beginning of the reshaping of the whole East Side."
Source: Tom Collins, Saint Paul Port Authority
Writer: Chris Steller