OctoberNews2009

It takes a region to raise Saint Paul’s visibility

German Immigrant is small business success 

Grzywinski honored

Anfang legacy 

From the President

This month, I would be remiss if I didnt start this column by celebrating the great news about two important East Side development projects. In October, the Port Board of Comissioners approved land sales and financing for Health East Medical Transportation and Baldinger Bakery. While further detail is provided in a separate article in this edition of the RePort, those two projects will result in at least nearly 200 jobs, and new capital investment of $34.5 million along Phalen Boulevard. Equally important, both projects involve modernization activities that will help these valuable employers meet the demands of the marketplace. We are truly excited about these deals and are working toward others, as well.

But the other topic that I would like to explore this month is the growing momentum around the region for a more coordinated and cooperative marketing effort. The Port’s primary economic development partners including the St. Paul Chamber, Capital City Partnership, the Riverfront Corporation and, of course, the Mayor’s Office and Saint Paul’s Planning and Economic Development Department are discussing ways to improve how we portray the citys assets to business prospects within the City, Region, nationally and internationally. Those discussions are being complemented and buttressed by a second discussion among regional business and government leaders about creating a more sophisticated approach to marketing the entire Twin Cities Metropolitan Area.

There is enough excitement around the notion of regional marketing that it was the catalyst for an Inter City Leadership Visit, organized by the St. Paul Area and Minneapolis Chambers of Commerce, to Charlotte, NC. The Ports Lorrie Louder and I participated in the meetings, and we were one of many sponsors of the event.

Our takeaway from the event and previous discussions here is Saint Paul is pretty straightforward. The primary job of site selection firms is to quickly weed out prospective locations for their clients and concentrate their attention on a few good prospects. Those areas with a solid brand, organized marketing and site information, and a one-stop point of entry stand a greater chance of winning business development than those who lack these basic elements. Simply put, the Twin Cities is considered a solid brand we still have a good image in the marketplace for many of the reasons that weve been reciting to each other for years. But the Twin Cities lacks an organized, focused marketing effort and it also lacks an easy point of entry for anyone who is looking for development opportunities in the region. That means the Twin Cities in general, and Saint Paul in particular, is often weeded out before we have a chance to put on our best face.

The Itasca Project, a civic engagement organization whose makeup includes leaders from the states largest corporations, is interested in a regional marketing effort as a component (and perhaps the centerpiece) of their jobs and economic development initiative.

So why would Saint Paul, the Port, and all of our local economic development partners want to be part of this effort? Arent the other communities in the region our competition? The answer lies in another takeaway from the Inter City Leadership Visit and other research. Both the people who have organized successful regional efforts, and the site selection consultants who help companies make location decisions suggest that the model for successful economic development relies on three basic tenets Brand Regionally, Market Regionally, Compete Locally. When a regional branding and marketing system nets a business prospect for the region, it is up to each individual community to match its positive attributes to the expressed needs of the prospect.

One national site selection consultant referred to this process as, coopetition. One of our Charlotte hosts described the arrangement as follows: Work to get the prospect interested in the region, and then compete like cats and dogs.

However its characterized, there is some energy around attempting to organize our region and we will participate in the effort. To be ready for the day, if it comes, that a regional economic development marketing infrastructure is created and launched, the Saint Paul economic development partners need to continue to improve our own branding and marketing. And ultimately, thats a worthwhile exercise regardless of whether a regional approach is ever created.

A 121-year-old Saint Paul baker and a stalwart medical transportation company have agreed to serve as bookends to the Saint Paul Port Authority’s largest redevelopment project in 20 years, involving most of the 3M Co.’s Saint Paul Campus and two adjacent parcels. The Port’s Board of Commissioners approved land sales for Baldinger Bakery and HealthEast Medical Transportation. The purchase agreements come a little less than a year after the Port purchased most of the 3M Co.’s Saint Paul Campus. Closing is expected by year’s end.

This is a critical modernization project to keep Baldinger competitive in the marketplace, and allows breathing room for HealthEast Medical Transportation to expand its operations, Port President Louis Jambois said.

Baldinger will bring 72 workers to its new site and HealthEast, 122 workers, Jambois said, adding: The projects increase the citys industrial tax base and provide a well-needed boost to East Side revitalization efforts.

The Port has agreed to sell the 9-acre former Griffin Wheelworks site to Baldinger for $450,000. The baker then is expected to invest about $30 million to build and equip a 130,000-square-foot building on the south side of Phalen Boulevard and just west of Johnson Parkway on Saint Pauls East Side. The Port purchased the former Griffin site in 2006 and considers it part of an overall redevelopment of land between the Phalen Corridor and East Seventh Street.

The company will use part of the Port Authoritys New Market Tax Credit Allocation to fund construction. In addition to bringing 72 workers to the site, Baldinger has agreed to add 40 more employees during its 10-year workforce agreement with the Port Authority.

The company has a longstanding business and financial relationship with Chicago, IL-based East Balt Inc., which bakes hamburger buns for the McDonalds restaurant chain; East Balt and Baldinger are diversified in their customer and product bases.

This is a wonderful opportunity for us to stay in Saint Paul as we have for more than 120 years, Baldinger President Steve Baldinger said during a recent Port Authority Board Meeting. Thank you for all of the work you did to make this happen.

HealthEast Medical Transportation service and its 122 employees will soon operate out of a new 46,000 square foot building on the northwest corner of Reaney Avenue and Arcade Street. The site is part of 35 acres of the former 3M Saint Paul Campus, which the Port purchased last year. The Port is negotiating with 3M for the purchase of an additional 11 acres on the East Side.

HealthEast Medical Transportation, a subsidiary of HealthEast Care System, will buy the 4.5-acre site from the Port Authority for $425,000, and is expected to use a portion of the Ports New Market Tax Credit allocation to help finance $4.5 million in new construction on site.

The building will be used to service and provide a temporary storage area for ambulances, as well as house the companys administrative and classroom operations. Currently, the ambulance service is housed near Como Avenue and Front Street in Saint Paul.

As part of its 10-year workforce agreement with the Port, HealthEast Ambulance will pay most of its employees at least $11 an hour plus benefits and make every effort to ensure that at least 70 percent of its new hires will be Saint Paul residents.

Were excited to be the first new neighbor, Brad Anderson, senior director of HealthEast Medical Transportation, said. The new facility is a dream come true. It will serve our employees and allow us to expand our scope of services in the metropolitan area

Not since the development of the Ports 71-acre Westgate Business Center in the late 1980s has so much abandoned or underused property been redeveloped in an environmentally friendly way at one time. When combined with 15 acres of Port-owned property nearby, about 61 acres of land will be returned to productive use.

Dick Anfang is leaving big shoes to fill as he steps down from the Saint Paul Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners. “If you look around Saint Paul at any significant project in recent years, Dick has had a role in it,” says Harry Melander, president of the Minnesota Building & Construction Trades Council.

Melander would know. During the past decade, he’s succeeded Anfang twice in top labor union positions and now he’s been appointed to take Anfangs seat on the Ports Board.

 Dick Anfang was a great mentor to me, Melander said. He’s not only been a good guy to work for, but he and I are also great friends.

Retirement is a fitting benefit for Anfang, who stepped down as head of the state building trades council on August 1 of this year and officially leaves the Ports Board this month. I spent 42 years in the union, 25 of those years as a full-time union representative, he said. During all those years I worked strongly to provide such benefits as pensions and they deserve to be used. So now its time.

But, typically, he wont be idle. In late summer, for instance, Anfang and his wife, Jaye Rykunyk (Chair of the River Centre Convention & Visitors Authority) took a five-week, 7,000-mile motorcycle ride to the West Coast and back, sleeping in a tent for all but four nights on a 31-night vacation.

Anfang joined the Ports Board seven years ago when he was appointed to a vacant seat by then-Mayor Norm Coleman. He was later reappointed by Colemans successor, Randy Kelly, and he served two one-year terms as the Boards Chair during his tenure. His was a strong voice for labor on the Board.

The Commission has always been a melding of people with various points of view, Anfang said. The building trades have been represented on it for many years because a huge part of the Port Authoritys function is job creation and economic development. When you have that as an objective, it makes sense to have a labor representative who is familiar with those issues.

Among the accomplishments during his years with the Port, Anfang lists the Rock-Tenn plan to repower the recycling plant in Saint Pauls Midway which protected more than 500 jobs, Anfang notes and the purchase for redevelopment of most of the 3M Cos campus on the East Side.

But ongoing functions like maintaining the St. Paul port creates a lot of unseen employment shipping, trucking, industry, agriculture, Anfang added. The Port Authoritys work impacts the local economy in ways many people dont realize.

When Joan Grzywinski was approached more than 15 years ago about joining the board of directors for what is now HealthEast Care System, she gave her stock answer: “No, I’m really busy.” At the time, she was serving on the boards of the St. Paul Port Authority, the St. Paul Foundation, the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation and the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce. And she had a full-time job as president and district manager for Wells Fargo Bank’s St. Paul and South Minneapolis markets, where she oversaw operations for nine retail banks. She retired from Wells Fargo in 2002

 But Grzywinski reconsidered and joined HealthEasts board because she had seen, from her position as a banker, some of the early successes of the senior managers at HealthEast as they tried to cobble together a group of Lutheran and Baptist hospitals in the east metro into one cohesive system.

 It was like a Phoenix from the ashes, she said.

Grzywinski said she’s enjoyed serving on the HealthEast Board so long because it is an active board, with real oversight of the system rather than just fundraising or hobnobbing.

Over the years of serving on the 12-member board, Grzywinski has emphasized something she learned in banking – that the quality of service matters. She talked a lot in the beginning about the importance of being friendly, smiling and looking customers or patients in the eye.

HealthEast embraced those principles and expanded on them. It’s found ways to measure customer service and even include that in performance appraisals, she said.

They’re working now on writing thank you notes to each other and ensuring that the front-line supervisor walks the hospital floors and talks to patients and staff who are there, Grzywinski said. She played a role in other HealthEast accomplishments during her tenure, including the development of Woodwinds Health Campus in Woodbury and the $70 million renovation and expansion of St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul.

Ann Schrader, chief operating officer of HealthEast for the past nine years, praised Grzywinski’s relentless pursuit of patient and employee satisfaction.  HealthEast has been recognized as one of the Twin Cities’ Best Places to Work several years in a row by the Business Journal, partly because Grzywinski placed a strong emphasis on having highly engaged employees, Schrader said.

Without that, you can’t have good patient care.

September 18, 2009, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.