Quintin Rubald provides living proof about the old cliché that says when you’re fired from a job you should consider it an opportunity.

Rubald founded Summit Fire and Protection in 1999, just a few weeks after being laid off by another company. He started with five employees and now has 250 — including 35 who were added earlier this year when Summit acquired Minnesota Conway Fire & Safety and moved its workers from Bloomington to Summit’s offices in the Port Authority’s Great Northern Business Center South.

“In 11 years we’ve become the largest full-service fire-protection provider in the Midwest,” Rubald declares. “It’s a hands-down fact.”

If that sounds like bragging, so be it. The acquisition of Minnesota Conway continues Summit’s methodical plan to diversify in the fire-protection industry.

Originally founded as a business specializing in the engineering and installation of building sprinkler systems, Summit now has a division that provides consulting services for fire-code compliances, plus another division called Dakota Mechanical that specializes in complete plumbing, heating and HVAC services.

The acquisition of Minnesota Conway, which specialized in fire alarms and fire extinguishers, adds another element to Summit’s glossary. “We’ve become a one-stop shop for a building owner or new-construction manager,” Rubald says.

This kind of expansion was anticipated in 2006 when Summit built its headquarters on land that had been prepared for development by the Port on a parcel just north of Minnehaha Avenue between Dale and Arundel streets. That same year, Summit acquired the financial muscle for its expansion plans by selling the majority of its holdings to Chicago-based Prospect Partners LLC, a private-equity firm.

“It’s given us the gunpowder to go out and do the acquisitions and keep the business going, even in a down economy,” Rubald said.

And there have been big deals. For example, Summit handled the sprinkling systems in the University of Minnesota’s new TCF Bank Stadium and its consulting division did major fire-protecting consulting work for the Minnesota Twins’ new Target Field.

At the time it moved into the Great Northern Business Center South, Summit also had offices in Rochester and Saint Cloud in Minnesota, and Iowa City in Iowa. The enticement that brought Summit to Saint Paul was a standard 10-year Port workforce agreement that requires the creation of living-wage jobs with stipulated pay minimums, plus specific building designs. In return, the firm got the land for $1.

It’s been good for the city. Once known as the Dale Street Shops, the 11-acre Great Northern Business Center was heavily polluted railroad and industrial land when it was acquired by the Port in the late 1990s and subsequently cleaned up in preparation for development. In addition to Summit Fire Protection, the site is now home to Restoration Professionals, Circuitech and Dakota Supply Group.

Rubald says Saint Paul has become the epicenter of Summit’s ambitions.

“We’re on the move,” he said. “Our plan is to grow as a full-service of life safety systems. There’s still a tremendous amount of opportunity in the industry.”

Learn more about Summit Fire and Protection at http://www.summitfire.com/

Call it symmetry of purpose: The Saint Paul Port Authority has managed river terminals on the Mississippi River since 1932. It has cleaned up and redeveloped land inland since the mid-1950s. Yet last year, for the first time, the Port used a portion of soil dredged from the river as backfill in one of its redevelopment projects.

This step, although perfectly reasonable for this 78-year-old redevelopment organization, was a footnote on line 15 of the Port Authority’s 2009 “Annual Dredged Material Report” to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency: 15,418 cubic yards of river-dredge silt and sand deposited at the Port’s Southport River Terminal was reused as backfill at the Port’s $6 million Minnehaha Lanes redevelopment project in Frogtown.

“We will be reusing this material in future projects because it’s green and that’s what we’re all about here at the Port Authority,” said Kelly Warden, the Port’s Vice President of Property Development and the Minnehaha project manager. “Reusing this material saved – and will continue to save – us money on redevelopment projects.”

Warden, who also is the Port’s project manager on the $5 million Southport River Terminal redevelopment project, said it made perfect sense to use the dredge material as fill. The dredge material from efforts to keep the river channel open to barge and boat traffic, is deposited at Southport by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other private contractors.

Eric Hesse, of Liesch Associates, the Port’s consultant on the Minnehaha redevelopment project, said that while not all dredge material is suitable for the geotechnical support for buildings, the particular material used at the Minnehaha site is highly organic and can sustain vegetative growth that buffers the property against erosion. The material has been used in other Minnesota cities and throughout the country for similar purposes.

The symmetry of mixing environmentally friendly projects is not lost on Warden, who is used to breaking ground in her work at the Port Authority. Just last year, her Minnehaha redevelopment project was the first in the nation to land U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stimulus funding to help demolish a building to make way for a new development.

From the President

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal informed the Saint Paul Port Authority in March that our Beacon Bluff Business Center was a finalist for their annual “Best in Real Estate” awards.  The Business Journal’s selection process is pretty rigorous  applications must be submitted, applicants are interviewed, and a panel of regional real estate experts serves as judges.

We were honored to have been selected as a finalist, but didn’t have any expectations.  We planned to attend the annual awards event on  April 14 – both to see how the awards selection turned out and to network with the region’s top real estate professionals.

Even after many years in the development business, I still was greatly thrilled when Beacon Bluff was announced the winner in the Industrial and Warehouse Development or Redevelopment category.  Bill Morin, Monte Hilleman, Tom Collins and I accepted the award on behalf of the entire staff and Port Board.  And of course, the project itself gave the Business Journal good reason to select it.

Anyone driving by the site today would see a flurry of activity.  On the west end, the 46,000 square foot HealthEast Medical Transportation building just off Arcade Street and Reaney Avenue is progressing nicely.  In the middle of the site at Forest and Phalen, Rachel Construction is demolishing the old 3M Building 99 complex to make way for a new roadway that will be built this year, and two clean building pads ready to host new businesses. On the east end along Phalen Boulevard, PCL Construction is grading the site of a 144,000 square foot Baldinger Bakery development. That’s three major construction activities within a stone’s throw of each other, on the east side of Saint Paul, in a down economy.

And the best part is we’re just getting started.

We’ve got shovel-ready building sites within the Beacon Bluff footprint, and we also have existing buildings for those who may be interested in buying and occupying a piece of history.   Our commercial real estate broker, Cassidy-Turley, continues to aggressively market Beacon Bluff and we’ve had conversations with several prospective buyers.  Prospects come and go, of course, but we’re excited about the level of interest that we’ve seen in Beacon Bluff.

We are grateful for the Best in Real Estate award.  It’s both wonderful recognition and validation of our efforts to date, but there’s still much to accomplish.  The Port’s mission is to create quality job opportunities, expand the City’s tax base and advance sustainable development.  We accomplish that mission one site at a time.  We’ve still got a lot of great buildings and building sites and our job is to fill them with a lot of great businesses.  That’s why we’re here.