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.
