left to right - Brad Anderson, Senior Director of HealthEast Medical Transportation; Ann Schrader, HealthEast Care System Chief Operating Officer; Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman; and Port Authority President Louis Jambois

Several dreams moved closer to reality this summer with the completion and opening of the new HealthEast Medical Transportation facility at the corner of Reaney Avenue and Arcade Street on Saint Paul’s East Side.

“It has been a 25-year journey that has gotten us to this point,” said Ann Schrader, chief operating officer of HealthEast Care System. “Now we can start living the vision we’ve dreamed about for all these years.”

But perhaps more significantly, the new transportation facility, constructed on what was once a 3M Co. parking lot and equipment storage area, also represents dreams for the future of the East Side.

“It’s really an important step to reclaim the jobs that were lost when businesses like 3M and Whirlpool went away,” said Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, who joined Port Authority President Louis Jambois and HealthEast officials in an Aug. 18 ribbon-cutting ceremony that dedicated the 4.5-acre facility.

“This marks the beginning of the reshaping of the whole East Side,” Coleman predicted.

Built at a cost of $5.1 million, the new facility is a major multipurpose building.  It’s part of the Port Authority’s initiative to redevelop the old 3M campus.

“I don’t think we could have done this without the Port’s help – particularly their financial expertise,” said Brad Anderson, System Director for HealthEast Medical Transportation. “They helped us line up a lot of partners, including federal and state resources.”

In addition to a massive indoor parking lot for HealthEast’s fleet of ambulances and medical-transportation vehicles, the sprawling one-story building houses a 10-bay automotive maintenance shop that is also open to the general public, plus a 911 dispatch center that will serve 10 communities in northern Dakota County. The communications center also will coordinate a variety of medical transportation services, using GPS technology to track locations.

Ambulances dispatched from the building now average 30,000 runs – or 82 dispatches a day — ranging from emergency calls to non-emergency patient transportation for such things as doctor appointments.

Equally significant is the new facility’s training and education area that includes a 100-seat conference center, a simulation training area with remote television capability, plus a large computer lab for other training exercises.

“Part of our strategic planning is to provide a continuity of service by having doctors and nurses train together with paramedics and EMTs,” Anderson noted. “We can provide it by having these professionals come to our EMT campus or teleconference or use online services. It’s all together under one roof.”

Anderson says the new East Side facility is a vast improvement – and more than twice as big – over the old transportation facility at Dale Street and Como Avenue that had housed HeathEast Medical Transportation since 1995.

“In the winter, the ambulances sat outside and the crews had to keep them running so that the equipment didn’t get too cold for the patients,” Anderson recalled. “We had a conference room, but it could only hold 20 people.”

Coincidentally, 2010 also marks the 100^th anniversary for the ambulance service, which traces its origins back to 1910, when an entrepreneur named Henry Olson converted a Model “A” Ford into an emergency vehicle. After 75 years and several mergers, the service became part of the HealthEast Care System in 1986. It’s now part of an integrated system that includes four hospitals (Bethesda, St. Joseph’s, St. John’s and Woodwinds Health Campus), plus 14 primary and specialty care clinics and other services.

For Anderson, who went to work for the ambulance service 35 years ago when he got an after-school job washing vehicles, the opening of the new transportation facility is a highlight of his career.

“At the end of the day, what we do is a business,” Anderson said. “But I don’t think I would have stayed with it all these years if it hasn’t been something more than that. I think most of us feel that we’re serving the community first and everything else comes after that.

“We have this great new facility, but the general public will never see it,” he added. “What they will see, many of them, is the inside of an ambulance. Our personnel are the first line of contact with patients who need health services. This new building is part of our goal to deliver some of the best-quality care anywhere.”

Crews continued to redevelop the 61-acre Beacon Bluff Business Center. In late June, construction crews leveled a 317,000-square-foot building on the site. The building is not one of five the Port Authority and Casserly Turley are marketing nationally for reuse.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development awarded the Saint Paul Port Authority two grants totaling $1.55 million  for contamination remediation at the Beacon Bluff Business Center ($950,000) and the Port’s newly acquired Pelham Business Center ($600,000) at Interstate 94 and Minnesota Highway 280.

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.”