Last January, days after US Airways Flight 1549 made a miraculous emergency landing in New York’s Hudson River without losing a single life, employees at one of Saint Paul’s oldest companies watched with interest as a giant crane attempted to lift the plane out of the river.

Would the crane be able to lift an 80-ton airliner filled with water? The delicacy of the operation interested staffers at National Oilwell Varco (NOV)’s offices in the Saint Paul Port Authority’s Riverview Business Center. But the ability of the crane to lift the airplane was never in question – not to these people.

Their company had designed the crane being used, the Weeks 533, a floating heavy-lift crane capable of hoisting 500 tons and revolving after doing it.

And, in fact, as cranes go, the Weeks 533 is not one of the bigger ones for the firm that traces its origins in Saint Paul back to building equipment for the timber industry in the 19th Century. The company’s Saint Paul operation has designed the largest crane in the world, capable of lifting 7,400 tons, or 14.8 million pounds. And in 1991, two of the 6,000-ton cranes it designed set the Guinness World Record for the largest single lift: 10,750 tons (21.5 million pounds).

The company’s buildings on Plato Boulevard are quiet places. Most of the 180 employees work in small offices or in warrens of cubicles where signs request visitors to keep the noise down. The corridors are lined with award plaques for engineering achievements and framed photographs of engineering behemoths.

While giving a tour, Cathy Leritz, the company’s Director of Human Resources, Quality Management and Risk, paused in front of a photograph of two cranes next to an off-shore oil-drilling platform.

“These are twin 6,600-ton cranes lifting a six-story building – living quarters – on to a stationary platform in the North Sea,” Leritz explained. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but the cranes are on a floating vessel next to the platform.”

Designing “super marine cranes” for offshore construction is one specialty of the Saint Paul operation. The visitor pointed to small objects in the photo that looked like several ants standing on their hind legs. “Those are people,” Leritz said.

It’s not surprising that few people are familiar with National Oilwell Varco, which is a name that has evolved from a convoluted series of mergers and acquisitions during the past decade. Probably the most familiar name of the Saint Paul company is American Hoist and Derrick – or Amhoist – which was its name from 1892 through the days when it had foundry and fabrication operations that stretched along the Mississippi River from the Wabasha Street Bridge to Highway 52. Amhoist equipment was used to build the Panama Canal and Mount Rushmore.

“We keep evolving, but now we’re really an engineering and project-management company,” Leritz said. “Virtually everything we design is a prototype. We design it and we have a whole group of project managers who oversee the project from beginning to end by subcontracting all over the world. The boom might be made in Korea, the upper works in China. At any one time, we can be dealing with people from Norway to Singapore.”

Not everything they design winds up in deep water. At the Target Center in Minneapolis, for example, NOV’s Saint Paul engineers designed a concrete arena floor that can be raised or lowered on nearly 100 separate jacks.

National Oilwell Varco, which took its current name after a merger in 2005, has its headquarters in Huston, TX, and has 35,000 employees in 49 countries. But while the company and its products are huge, longtime employees characterize the Saint Paul operation, Leritz said.

“We have plenty of people who are 35-year-plus veterans,” Leritz noted. “We have a very low turnover. The people here are really the company in terms of technical knowhow.”

But why have an engineering operation that designs equipment for deepwater oil drilling located in the Midwest?

“Nobody wants to leave Saint Paul,” Leritz explained. “Occasionally there’s talk of moving us, but it’s never been seriously considered. Besides, we’re also equal distance from all the coastlines, and because we have an airline hub, you can hop a flight to Amsterdam or the Orient.

“We don’t have a walk-in customer base because all of our business is through the industry – and those people know us and our reputation,” Leritz added. “We’re also not manufacturing here, so it doesn’t matter where we are. We have a long history in Saint Paul, but technology and people with knowhow have kept us here.”

The past and the future came into alignment this week at a ceremony unveiling Beacon Bluff, the Port Authority’s project to create a vibrant new business district out of the historic 3M Main Plant Campus on Saint Paul’s East Side.

After a brief struggle amid much laughter, Mayor Chris Coleman and Port President Louis Jambois yanked away the black cloth covering a large sign displaying the century-old district’s new name and logo. Beacon Bluff is officially launched.

The site selected for the ceremony was fitting: The lobby of Building 21, an imposing limestone structure designed by architect Albert Kahn in 1939 to house 3M’s corporate headquarters. Though temperatures in the currently unheated building were frigid, participants stood on a pattern-inlaid marble floor and marveled at the gracefully curved Art Deco wood paneling that reached from floor to ceiling.

One older attendee recalled where the offices of William L. McKnight were located, noting that McKnight had been president of 3M for a decade when the building was constructed in 1939 and had offices there until the early 1970s.

“We see much history here,” Mayor Coleman said, adding that Beacon Bluff “balances what has been a great past and great opportunity.”

After a year of study and nearly 30 meetings with a Community Advisory Committee, the Port has launched a marketing campaign to develop 61 acres, including 46 acres that were once the 3M campus, plus adjacent property once used by Globe Building Materials and Griffin Wheelworks. The plan envisions selling five existing 3M buildings for reuse — including Building 21 — and the remaining property for building sites.

In all, Beacon Bluff would include a mix of light industrial, office and retail businesses that together would bring about 1,400 jobs and $2 million in annual property taxes.

“We think this is what we’re all about in the redevelopment game,” Jambois said. “We are about jobs, tax-based growth and building sustainable communities.”

Reviving a heritage is also a major goal. Saint Paul City Council Member Dan Bostrom, who is also a Port Authority commissioner, noted that his father spent his career working for 3M in Building 20, located directly across the street from the former corporate headquarters. As an East Sider, Bostrom said his dad vowed never to have a job that he couldn’t reach by walking from home.

“We want to see those opportunities come back,” Bostrom said.

The project, considered the largest redevelopment effort tackled by the Port in 20 years, has already notched some successes. HealthEast Medical Transportation service recently broke ground for a 44,000-square-foot medical transportation and training facility on Arcade Street, which is the far-western edge of Beacon Bluff. And Baldinger Bakery, a local institution since the 1880s, is expected to break ground this spring on a 144,000-square-foot building at Phalen Boulevard and Atlantic Street. Taken together, the two developments represent nearly 14 acres of the 61-acre project.

The five existing 3M buildings represent the historic core of the company’s original campus and retrofitting them for reuse is considered efficient, environmentally desirable and historically responsible. When completed, Beacon Bluff will fill the center of the Phalen Corridor, crowning a 15-year effort to transform a once-polluted rail corridor into a thriving East Side neighborhood.

One person who watched the unveiling ceremony with obvious approval was Barbara Raye, whose company, the Center for Policy, Planning and Performance, has been working for the past year to bring together the various stakeholders, planners and community members to formulate a development plan. As she surveyed the audience dominated by project participants, Raye seemed pleased.

“The energy here is very positive,” she said. “Everyone seems to be going in the right direction.”

The Port has retained the firm of Colliers Turley Martin Tucker to conduct an international search for companies interested in the rehabilitation and reuse of the historic 3M buildings. The Port will actively seek buyers for the remaining shovel-ready sites in Beacon Bluff.

“We’ve still got a lot to do,” said Monte Hilleman, the Port’s vice president of development. “But we’re moving forward.”

  From the President

If 2009 was such a slow year, how did it disappear so quickly?

I’ve had the honor and privilege of being the Port’s President for just slightly more than one year and I am happy to report that there have been no dull moments. Acquisition and redevelopment of the former East Side 3M campus dominated our efforts in 2009. The Port now owns the entire 46-acre site. Equally important though, the Port worked for a solid year with a small army of individuals and organizations to help us determine how the redevelopment of that site should proceed.

On the fee for service side, we employed architects, engineers, historical consultants, environmental specialists, marketing experts and commercial realtors.

On the volunteer side, we worked with district council representatives, Historic St. Paul representatives, Saint Paul Planning Commission members, business association representatives and interested citizens.

The result is a plan that calls for the immediate demolition, clearance and environmental cleanup of some buildings, and the preservation and marketing of other buildings for a period of up to two years.

We are working with two firms to brand and market the buildings that we would all like to see reused, as well as the rest of site. I want to thank the entire team, but mostly I want to thank the volunteers who gave up countless hours and helped us think creatively about the reuse and redevelopment of the site.

I also want to thank Saint Paul City Council members Dan Bostrom and Kathy Lantry for bringing the Advisory Committee together, and Mayor Chris Coleman for his unwavering support for job creation on the East Side.

But the 3M redevelopment was by no means the only Port activity in 2009. We are finishing up construction on our new Southport Barge Terminal and will move operations from the current site near the Lafayette Bridge to Southport next spring.

We also are prepared to launch next year our truly innovative Trillion Btu energy conservation loan program.  We will use economic stimulus funds from the U.S. Department of Energy and appropriated by the Minnesota Legislature. We were hoping to roll out the program earlier, but the paperwork barriers out in Washington D.C., turned out to be more formidable than the concrete and asphalt barriers at the former Minnehaha Lanes site, where we’ve completed building demolition, contamination cleanup and parking lot construction. We have a great development site ready to go and a couple real prospects are kicking the tires now.

We also assisted HealthEast Medical Transportation service and Baldinger Bakery in expanding and modernizing their operations on two of our East Side properties. HealthEast has begun construction on one of the former 3M parcels. We still are working with Baldinger to finalize the financing for that important project. Interestingly, both projects were contingent on lower-interest financing through the Port’s allocation of federal New Market Tax Credits (NMTC) – signaling to us that the much-publicized commercial credit crunch is not over. It’s also clear that we will pursue another NMTC allocation for 2010.

With new leadership at the Port, 2009 was the time to reflect on the past and look into the future. Our job was to create a strategic plan for the Port that will help us progress into the second decade of this century. The consultant Prouty Project assisted us. The outcome wasn’t revolutionary. It was mostly a validation of what we currently do. But it also opened our eyes to new opportunities that we might have otherwise missed. From the strategic planning process we determined that our core purpose for existing is to improve the lives of Saint Paul’s citizens by helping build a vibrant economic community. Our vision is to be the premier local economic development entity in the nation (no point in aiming low). Our mission should be familiar to those are familiar with the Port’s history; it is to create quality job opportunities, expand the City’s tax base and advance sustainable development.

To meet our core purpose, achieve our vision, and accomplish our mission, we also needed to establish our core values. These values serve as guideposts to help the Port Board and staff to determine which opportunities we should embrace, and which we should refer to others. The primary core value is to remain fiscally sound. As an entity that must be both entrepreneurial and prudent in order to keep the doors open, this value is an imperative. But the other core values are important guideposts as well. We intend to be socially responsible, collaborative, innovative, willing to take reasonable risks, and we must act with the integrity that is expected of public entities. Nowhere in our plan does it say that we will only do one type of development, or that we won’t do some types of development. We know the Port’s sweet spot is industrial development, but if we can assist or fill a niche on other types of developments that are consistent with our purpose, vision, mission and core values, we should. As our Saint Paul economic development partners contemplate the future of our joint efforts and relationships through the Mayor’s Economic Development Task Force, the Port’s strategic plan represents flexibility, with criteria, that will help us do our part to create a long-term vibrant economic future for St. Paul.

I’m looking forward to 2010. But in the meantime, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season.