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.”

From the President

Louis Jambois

In late June, an unprecedented event quietly occurred in the Twin Cities. The event involved hosting eight national site selectors on an informational site tour of our region. The local partners included the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce, the City of Saint Paul, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, the Itasca Project, and, of course, the Saint Paul Port Authority.

The three-day tour marks the first time all of these partners have worked together to showcase the region. The participating site selectors represent a small group of professional consultants whose primary work is to find suitable locations for business locations and expansions.

Information presented to them was wide-ranging and included the area’s cost of doing business, infrastructure, regulation, workforce, transportation systems, our network of educational institutions and available sites. We also touted our quality of life. Local corporate real estate experts including Doyle Shea, of 3M Co. and Jim Scannell of Travelers Insurance provided their perspectives on the Twin Cities’ business climate, as compared to the many other locations where those companies do business. The site selectors also heard from Mayors Chris Coleman and R.T. Rybak on why the Twin Cities is such a great place to live and do business. They heard from Dan McElroy, the Commissioner of DEED, Frank Cerra from the University of Minnesota, and Doug Baker from Ecolab.

I had the great pleasure of hosting our guests on a bus tour of three of our business centers – Williams Hill and Westminster Junction and Beacon Bluff. All three are great examples of the Port Authority’s Brownfields-to-Thriving Businesses capabilities.

As we toured further down Phalen Boulevard to Beacon Bluff, they were able to watch contamination cleanup and demolition work on two of the parcels, construction activities at the new Baldinger Bakery plant, and the finishing touches being put on the new HealthEast Medical Transportation facility.

The site selectors were genuinely interested in how the Port turns brownfields into jobs and tax base. They asked great questions and gave me a wonderful opportunity to show off our skills.  They were impressed by the quality of our cleanup efforts, the incentives we could offer, and they were very impressed by the quality and appearance of our finished business centers. If they had half as much fun on the tour as I had, they had a really great time.

But perhaps the most important segment of the entire event was a feedback presentation given by the site selectors. They were gracious, but candid. Their comments included some things that we’ve all heard including the need to continue to work on our general business climate. They also stressed the notion that Minnesota is a great place to do business and a too well-kept secret. We need to cooperate, brand, market and recruit regionally, they said. They thought our three-day event was a good first step, but that we need to organize and implement an on-going effort.

In all, the event was a demonstration to all of us that businesses, public officials and development organizations can work together to market our region’s strengths. There also was a common understanding that by working together, we will increase our prospects for future prosperity.

A tomato farm in Frogtown?

That’s the dream of Jim Hannigan, President and Chief Executive Officer of J & J Distributing, a Saint Paul wholesale produce company that supplies fruit and vegetables to most of the grocery retailers in the region.

Hannigan started the company with his wife and two other people in 1978 and now has more than 200 employees. He says a $1.3 million energy-conservation loan authorized by the Saint Paul Port Authority from its new Trillion Btu Fund is the first step toward creating an “urban farm” in Frogtown.

“The loan is for the energy-conservation phase of a three-part project,” Hannigan explained, adding that savings from new high-tech energy systems will be used to repay the loan in seven years.

This innovative program, created by the Port, will save Minnesota businesses money by reducing energy consumption by up to one trillion Btus a year. It is one of the first in the nation to use energy conservation as an economic development tool.

The Port Authority received a $5 million Federal stimulus grant through the Minnesota Department of Commerce for energy conservation projects in Xcel Energy’s Minnesota service territory. The Port program creates a financial reservoir for companies to draw upon for energy-conservation improvements by large energy users. In turn, the companies repay the loans from their energy savings, thereby replenishing the funding reservoir for other energy conservation projects.

The J & J loan is one of two newly launched Trillion Btu projects. Another Port-approved loan of $180,000 will be used to install an energy management system at Bandana Square in the Port’s Energy Park Business Center. Bandana Square, a commercial business complex, is owned by Wellington Management, Inc., which also is applying for a Trillion Btu loan to upgrade climate systems at another of its properties in North Oaks, MN.

Like the J & J loan, the money will be repaid through energy savings – within three to five years, according to David Bergstrom, Wellington’s director of project management and construction services.

“This loan program makes many things worthwhile that once were considered not worth doing,” Bergstrom said. “It’s a low-interest loan that pays for itself through savings.”

And the savings will be huge for J & J, which Hannigan describes as an “energy hog.” That’s easy to understand when you consider how much energy is required to chill J & J’s 100,000-square-foot facility that is filled with highly perishable fruit and vegetables.

The building’s climate system currently has 44 rooftop units that roar like locomotives on hot summer days, Hannigan said.

“Depending on designs that are still being worked out, those 44 units will be replaced by one to six units that are more powerful and efficient,” Hannigan said. “They have the same capacity, but use about half the energy. And they will capture the heat produced as a byproduct of the chillers and use it to heat office space in the building and, eventually, a 20,000-square-foot greenhouse.”

Hannigan also envisions a 20 percent expansion of his distribution facility, something that is expected to produce new jobs in the Frogtown neighborhood. That’s phase two of his three-part plan. But his biggest dream – and his biggest gamble – is phase three: A greenhouse that will grow organic hydroponic tomatoes year-round.

“In the winter, the byproduct of our new energy system will be a cash crop,” he said. “The produce industry is an energy hog and we’ve got to look at our energy consumption and figure out how we can make a difference. In fact, reducing the energy costs of farming and food distribution is something we have to deal with as a country.”

The concept of building growing facilities for food in the middle of urban areas populated by consumers is one way to reduce the energy footprint of agriculture, Hannigan believes. He thinks of himself as a trailblazer.

“The University of Minnesota doesn’t know about this yet, but I’m going to try and make them part of my project,” Hannigan said, referring to the University’s agriculture campus in Saint Paul. “I think urban farming is a very big part of our future, so the new greenhouse should not only be a growing facility, but also a teaching facility.”

Installation of J & J’s new climate system is expected to begin immediately and be completed by November. The expansion of the plant is planned to get underway in the fall.

“The greenhouse is the last part of the project,” Hannigan said. “The phase with the Port is about saving energy and the next two phases are about creating jobs and an urban farm environment. So it’s not just about energy – it’s about the future.”

For more information contact Pete Klein at 651-224-5686.

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/