New business on Dayton's Bluff

It appears that Baldinger Bakery will be leaving the West Side and that Health East’s ambulance depot will be leaving the North End. Both will be moving to Dayton’s Bluff, the latter to part of the Minnesota Mining site and the former just east of it. I assume that the affected Dayton’s Bluff neighbors will be receiving more information and given a chance to address whatever concerns they may have.

Both moves will be heralded by all the right people as great steps forward in the economic development of our city. We will hear the gooey comments from Mayor Coleman the Second and Council President Lantry [into whose ward the moves are being made] and business association types. Yet both are just moving within the city, not into it.

I don’t know the details of either move, but on the surface the Health East one certainly seems to make sense. Storing ambulances indoors in Minnesota winters makes more sense than keeping them outdoors.

It seems reasonable to think that both moves indicate companies who are willing to make a long-term investment in the city and that has to be good. But the Port Authority and other development agencies need to start working with the North End and West Side communities to fill up the holes being created in their territories.

And all of us will have to watch what happens.

[Ironically, old timers will remember that until the mid 1980s that Health East had a hospital just a few blocks from where they used to operate a hospital. There’s a story there.]

Who watches the news at the newspapers?

Dr. Vernon Sommerdorf died on October 19. The paid obit in the newspaper mentions his age [88] and tells about much of his life and accomplishments – his navy service, medical career [including his Payne Avenue practice and work at Mounds Park Hospital], his community service including both his extensive work with foster children and his church work.

The paid obit notice did not note Dr. Sommerdorf’s six years [1967-73] of service representing local districts in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Of course, what is included is the family’s choice.

I met the Dr. Sommerdorf [he did some lecturing on public health at a class I took in college and he appeared at and hosted some political events] but I never knew him and this article is not really a RIP about him. It is instead an indictment of the inability of the local rag to recognize this as a news story.

I am being ciritical primarily of the local rag, but the Star[Journal- and] Tribune missed it too. Even if Dr. Sommerdorf’s career as mentioned in the obit [and I have to concede that sometimes the family-paid obits polish the resumes once in a while] it would seem that if the papers hired folks who know local history they would think it noteworthy that somebody who had represented the city at the Capitol had passed on.

And people wonder why newspaper sales are declining.


(A link to the DPP obit)

Post office update

Both of the post offices in our city which were being threatened with closure are being saved. We need to thank whomever led the USPS to think twice should be commended.

I have no inside knowledge but suspect that our Congressional delegation is due thanks.

Earlier post: http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2009/08/post-offices-not-big-enough-not-to-fail.html [8/4/09]

Post offices not big enough not to fail

Per KARE Television

Two Saint Paul post offices are scheduled by USPS for closing. One is the Como Station in St. Anthony Park. The other is Seeger Square on Arcade Street.

A post office is more than a place to send and pick up mail and to purchase postage, necessary as those things are. It is kind of a third place, a community gathering place and a neighborhood amenity. I doubt if there really is another post office which can serve St. Anthony Park like the present one does and I am darned sure that there is no post office which can serve the people of the East Side like the one at Seeger Square does.

This is the only post office in either the Payne/Phalen or Dayton’s Bluff areas. [Yes there is one called the “Dayton’s Bluff Station” but it is not on Dayton’s Bluff, but instead well on the other side of Johnson Parkway. Truth has never been a treasured quality at USPS.]

Closing this station will mean that more than 50,000 people will no longer have a post office in their neighborhood.

Is that responsible efficiency? Maybe, but as I noted above a post office performs necessary services. And a government which can bail out big banks and insurance companies ought to be able to keep necessary community functions being filled.

But neighborhoods just aren’t “too big” to fail.

I can also suggest this earlier article by Mary Thoemke in the Daily Reader.