Downtown/Lowertown : Innovation + Job News

Social networking resources like LinkedIn and Facebook help to expand professional networks, but sometimes you just need the equivalent of a good phonebook.

Toward that end, a particularly valuable resource that lists women entrepreneurs is now being compiled by CoCo, a coworking and collaborative space that recently expanded into Minneapolis.

The project got its start when the founders of CoCo were talking about creating an advisory group of successful business people and entrepreneurs who could offer wisdom and advice, according to co-founder Don Ball.

"We created a short list of candidates that we might approach and it was apparent that we didn't have any women in the list," he says. "Kind of pathetic."

So, Ball tapped into his Twitter network to find a list of successful women entrepreneurs in Minnesota, and discovered that one didn't exist. He put a web form on CoCo's site to collect that information and immediately got questions asking for definition, such as "What do you mean by entrepreneur?" and "In what fields?"

"I made the list really open-ended," Ball says. "We're looking for information about any women entrepreneurs, however one interprets that. So, if you look at the list, you'll see that we have some diversity in peoples' pursuits, which seems healthy and appropriate. I don't need to set the criteria on the collection end. People who want to access the list can determine what kind of entrepreneurs they're interested in knowing about and connecting with."

Currently, the list has about 75 entries, and Ball is hoping to get many more and turn the information into a searchable, sortable database so that the data is more usable.

If the initiative is successful, Ball envisions similar efforts for other directories, like compiling the area's innovators, social entrepreneurs, Hispanic entrepreneurs, or green-energy business owners.

Source: Don Ball, CoCo
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

The Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority (RCRRA) wants to know what kinds of businesses should fill the Union Depot building in Lowertown St. Paul. Once restored, the historic building will be the eastern terminus of the future Central Corridor Light Rail line.

A short, anonymous survey is available online until June 26.

The information will be used for planning purposes, "to understand what kinds of businesses have an interest in opening a shop or selling their goods in Union Depot, and how Union Depot can become a vibrant part of the fabric of Downtown Saint Paul, in addition to serving as the premier multimodal transit hub of the region," says Daniel Fuchs, senior analyst for HR&A Advisors, which is assisting with the survey effort "to explore the best means for developing a vibrant mix of mutually-supportive local businesses and entrepreneurs in the building," according to a Ramsey County Regional Rail News statement.

The purpose of the survey and HR&A work is "to maximize the economic development and job-generation value of The Union Depot project," including to:

� help inform a vision for what kind of marketplace The Union Depot should become, and over what period of time;
� demonstrate your interest in seeing The Union Depot succeed as an economic development driver and jobs-generator for the city and region;
� help identify what kinds of tenant spaces might be made available in the building, along with corresponding infrastructure needs; and
� put businesses on a list to attend an open house for potential tenants of the building.

A six-page pamphlet gives more information about the $150 million project, which is set to be completed in early 2013 and is expected to draw 1 million transit riders by 2014. The pamphlet includes a floor plan showing the 56,000 square feet of tenant space and 38,000 square feet of "civic halls" for retail kiosks.

The pamphlet also offers a market overview for Lowertown and Downtown St. Paul.

Sources: Daniel Fuchs, HR&A Advisors; Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority
Writer: Jeremy Stratton

This isn't the first recession Bill Moran's Blinc Publishing has survived.

Founded in 1996, the Lowertown print shop and design studio rode out the "dot bomb" collapse (largely on the back of letterpress printing, fittingly), and Blinc has emerged from the recent economic woes well positioned, if not unscathed.

After a "precipitous drop-off in work from clients, we sort of stumbled through 2009 and 2010," says Blinc proprietor Moran, "and then round about August, September, it just kicked back in again."

Now, the four-person shop is booked through midyear with work for clients like new customer Blue Plate Restaurant Company. Blinc recently helped them launch Scusi at St. Clair and Fairview in St. Paul and is now branding their next endeavor, The Lowry, which Blue Plate plans to open this summer near 22nd and Hennepin in Uptown.

Blue Plate is just one of the large, regular customers Moran is focused on. Blinc also helped long-time customer Minnetronix with the identity branding of a new product in January. Moran also mentions a few not-yet-for-publication projects on the horizon.

That may be a good sign for more than just Blinc, which Moran agrees serves as a bellwether for larger corporate activity. "My business is, in some ways, a reflection of [our clients'] business," he says.

Customers dialed down and halted projects in 2009 and 2010. Now, stalled projects have started moving forward, and Moran finds himself in less of a reactive position in terms of marketing to clients--focusing on fewer, larger customers and bigger projects, and even passing on work he would not (or could not) have two years ago.

The turnaround has allowed him to rehire two longtime employees, and another is sustained as a freelancer.

Meanwhile, buzz is generating around the Hamilton Woodtype Museum in Wisconsin, of which Moran is artistic director and his brother Jim is museum director. A documentary about it is making the rounds at film festivals, and PBS will soon begin airing the film.

Work from the Hamilton Museum and Moran's studio will also be featured in a retail poster shop, part of an exciting multi-firm and multi-tenant-space entertainment and retail development planned for Downtown St. Paul. (Stay tuned for more on this soon.)

Source: Bill Moran, Blinc Publishing
Writer: Jeremy Stratton

When the economy fell apart two years ago, tens of thousands of architects nationwide lost their jobs as the planning and financing of new projects ground to a halt.

Apartments have recently emerged as a source of hope for builders. Now, another bit of information to fuel tepid optimism: a local architecture firm tells us they've been adding employees again.

BWBR Architects in St. Paul hired about a dozen new employees in 2010 as maintenance and small remodeling projects started to trickle in again.

"We typically are not doing developer buildings where somebody builds the building and then flips it to someone else within three, four, five years. The clients of our buildings own their buildings and own them for 50 or 75 or 100 years," says Peter Smith, BWBR's vice president.

As a result of that longer-term focus, Smith says their clients are typically more interested in maintaining the quality of their buildings, and that means small but regular remodeling projects over the course of a building's life. He says BWBR has managed to maintain longer-term relationships with its clients.

Another fortunate factor: "We don't do retail. We don't do housing. Those things tend to have been hit much more severely over the last two years," says Smith. Instead, much of BWBR's work involves projects that require a higher level of sophistication, such as health care facilities, science and research buildings, and correctional facilities.

Completed projects include Maple Grove Hospital, the 3M Innovation Center, the Elmer L. Andersen Health and Human Services Building, and Lawson Commons. The 89-year-old firm is based in the Lawson Commons building in downtown St. Paul. It started 2010 with just under 100 employees and now has 111.

Source: Peter Smith, BWBR Architects
Writer: Dan Haugen

BioMedix Vascular Solutions has outgrown its space in the suburbs and is preparing to move to downtown St. Paul in the spring.

The health care technology company makes a suite of hardware, software, and online services to assist physicians in diagnosing vascular disease.

It's currently headquartered in an 8,000-square-foot office space in White Bear Lake, but spokeswoman Meg Heim says the location can no longer accommodate the company's growth.

BioMedix's new home will be at 178 E. Ninth St., a three-story, 24,000-square-foot building that's currently boarded up and is slated for renovation before the move-in date, likely to be sometime in March. The company will lease two and a half floors of the building -- all but half of the first floor--for its approximately 75 local employees. (The company employs about 150, but half are traveling or remote salespeople.)

"We are looking forward to the energy and the atmosphere that downtown St. Paul offers," Heim said in an e-mail earlier this week.

She said preparations for the move are well underway, and that they're looking forward to seeing the building when the renovation is complete.

The growth that prompted the move has come across several product categories, including its medical hardware and health IT software, Heim said. The new space will help accommodate the growth the company expects to see in 2011, as well as help support its existing, and expanding, client base, she said.

Source: Meg Heim, BioMedix Vascular Solutions
Writer: Dan Haugen

A nonprofit whose mission is showing low-income high school students a path to economic self-sufficiency looks to be nearly self-funded in its third year.

Genesys Works is a St. Paul program that offers students in an intensive eight-week IT and professional skills training course before placing them in one-year paid internships.

"We are truly a social enterprise. We operate very much like a for-profit IT staffing company, that just also happens to have a nonprofit mission of helping low-income students of color," says Jeff Tollefson, Genesys Works' director in the Twin Cities.

The organization was founded by a former Compaq executive in Houston. It started a Twin Cities branch in 2008 and launched a Chicago program this year.

Tollefson says about 90 percent of the program's budget this year should be covered by fees collected from its corporate partners, mostly large employers that pay to have students placed at their organizations, much as they would working with an IT staffing agency.

Genesys Works partners with Minneapolis, St. Paul, Richfield, and Robbinsdale school districts to recruit students, who apply for the program in the spring. An eight-week training course begins in June, and the top students are then placed at employers, where they work as IT technicians throughout their senior year of high school.

The program hopes to have a summer class of 150 students next year. It's also going to pilot a finance and accounting program in 2011 with about 30 students.

Tollefson says the response from employers suggests the program is working. Not only is it adding partners, but existing ones are increasing their commitment. Medtronic, the largest employer of Genesys Works students, went from 5 to 11 students this year.

Genesys Works will be recognized with the Innovation Collaboration of the Year Award at the Minnesota High Tech Association's Tekne Awards on Nov. 3.

Source: Jeff Tollefson, Genesys Works
Writer: Dan Haugen

If inefficient data storage is the corporate equivalent of searching for your lost car keys, Digitiliti provides valet service. The downtown-St. Paul�based company offers an integrated data management service that files, stores, secures, and backs up company data seamlessly and automatically--functions that are typically spread across half a dozen software platforms.

"The biggest problem is that for data, there's a point solution for every problem," he says. "If you want to store your data, you buy backup software. If you want disaster recovery, you take it offsite. If you want to be able to collaborate, you buy software for that. We've integrated it into one system."

For this nifty achievement, the company picked up a Tech Award Circle gold medal in July and a nomination for a Tekne Award from the Minnesota High Tech Association in September.

The company launched in 2005 with a data protection service, but quickly identified the need for a broader product, explains Ken Peters, executive vice president in sales and marketing. The company's DigiLIBE (Digital Library) product launched two years ago, and has fueled remarkable growth for the tech company right through the recession, doubling the company's workforce to about two dozen.

In growth, Digitiliti has maintained its flexibility. Headquarters are located in St. Paul's artsy Lowertown neighborhood, an environment that "fosters innovation," according to Peters. And rather than bulk up on staff, they've taken a nimble approach to growth: "We have built a flexible workforce, both internal and external," he says. "Our approach is, hire the best talent. It doesn't matter where they're located."

Source: Ken Peters, Digitiliti
Writer: Joe Hart

All that hopey, changey stuff? It's actually working out quite nicely for GovDelivery.

The fast-growing St. Paul company helps government agencies manage digital communications, everything from e-mail newsletters to social media feeds.

President Obama signed an Open Government Initiative shortly after taking office that calls on federal agencies to be more participatory and transparent in the way they do business. The order has resulted in a spike in demand for the kind of services that GovDelivery provides.

Meanwhile, many state and local governments are facing budget cuts and looking for ways to communicate more efficiently with their constituents.

"There's a lot going on in the public sector market," says GovDelivery founder/CEO Scott Burns. "There's a lot of pressure to communicate what's going on and a lot of pressure to be more efficient and more effective."

GovDelivery recently advertised 14 new positions to keep up with growing demand for its services, which are used to send out more than 10 million messages a day. The company has about 75 employees.

The company was founded in 1999 with an emphasis on local government. It launched a beta version of its e-mail subscription service for the city of St. Paul in 2000. If you've ever signed-up to receive snow emergency alerts in St. Paul, then you've used a GovDelivery service.

The company's clients now include the FBI, the National Guard and U.S. Health & Human Services, which used GovDelivery to get the word out about H1N1 flu.

"We're getting out information on H1N1. We're getting out information on cyber crime. We're getting out information on your local park hours," says Burns. "This is stuff that needs to get into people's hands and that makes their lives better."

Source: Scott Burns, GovDelivery
Writer: Dan Haugen

A pair of industrial designers hopes their new St. Paul firm can help clients create greener housewares and other consumer goods.

Strom Studio celebrates its launch on Thursday, July 1, at its new downtown office in the CoCo coworking space. The industrial design shop will focus on design research and sustainable development.

Co-founders Kerstin Strom and Marshall Young have backgrounds in the children's safety products and medical devices, respectively. They already have clients from networking at this spring's International Home + Housewares Show in Chicago, though they can't drop any names yet.

The timing is right, says Strom, because many companies' green marketing efforts are being met with greenwashing accusations. Strom Studio will help companies work through sustainability issues early on in a product's development instead of waiting until it's complete.

Strom credits CoCo, too, for the timing of their company launch. (She's also events coordinator for CoCo.) The coworking space eliminated much of the overhead related to starting a company, she said.

Another key factor: CoCo is across the street from what's expected by 2014 to be a high-speed rail stop connecting St. Paul to Chicago, where Strom has clients already.

"It's a great opportunity for us to stay in the Twin Cities," Strom says about the future rail link, which she expects will generate significant commerce back and forth between the Twin Cities and Chicago.

Strom Studio celebrates its launch with a open house 4-10 p.m., Thursday, July 1, at CoCo, 213 4th St E., 4th Floor, in St Paul.

Source: Kerstin Strom, Strom Studio
Writer: Dan Haugen