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.]

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.

Hooking up Pierce Butler

I never thought I would live long enough to see the completion of Phalen Boulevard, but somehow I did.

And at the dedication ceremony for the boulevard’s completion, Mayor Kelly stated that the job was not really done, that the connection west of 35E for Pierce Butler really needed to be made to allow for the whole strip through the city to be made accessible for development.

That is what I had always thought and it encouraged me to hear a sitting Mayor say so. Of course, three months later Randy Kelly was no longer mayor.

Maybe it was partly because of that and almost certainly partly because of the staggering economy the connection to Pierce Butler has not seemed to progress much.

But the lead story in this week’s East Side Review seems to indicate that it may well be finished during the lifetimes of many who are alive today.

Well, you know what they say about hope.

for some historical perspective, see ECBD? what's that? [7/14/08]

The sign is up, the ground was broken, and now the little bear has come out of hibernation

I did visit the new Cub store at 1177 Clarence which opened this morning. I arrived at about 7:30 a.m. and there were about 80 cars in the parking lot. Although they are really hyping the LEED stuff, the store did not seem a lot different than any other Cub Store as far as navigating and shopping are concerned. They were giving quarter-hourly LEED tours, but I did not take one.

One thing I noticed before I could get in is that they have reserved some of the best parking places [similar to the ones for the handicapped] for cars that make 30 mpg. I don’t know how they can enforce that and wondered if it isn’t just a bit elitist, but I went in anyway.

The store will give those of us in the northern and western parts of the East Side another option for shopping, but like Rainbow and the other Cub stores they still sell Hormel pork so people of good heart who are looking for pork will still need to go elsewhere.

I paid the cashier when I left and noticed that the coupons on the back of the register receipt were for places in St. Anthony and New Brighton. I assume that they must have brought over paper rolls designed for the Apache Plaza store and imagine that that will change.

As I was leaving I was given a woven Cub grocery bag with chips, cookies, grape juice, and an unknown substance in a packet [maybe hot chocolate mix or soup mix or cheese sauce mix] which I guess I will have to open to figure out what it is.

I know that the economy is shaky, but people need to eat and based on how the store was doing in its early hours, it seems that this store might be there for quite a while.

Earlier posts: http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2007/11/revealing-sign.html [11/1/07]
http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2008/03/phalen-village-cub-groundbreaking.html [3/18/08]

Well, it is almost morning

Well, it is almost morning. [Cf. Previous post, But will the respect us in the morning? (1/9/08)]

Mining has agreed to sell its East Side property to the Port Authority. A lot of questions about reuse still have to be resolved, but when Port develops, the new jobs that result tend to be better than when a lot others do so.

And had Mining decided to do the redevelopment they probably would have done their own thing taking counsel with nobody else. Now the city and the neighborhoods will have at least some chance for input in all that comes about.

I’m still not sure that we are respected, but maybe when morning is finally here we will have a better idea.

Phalen Village Cub groundbreaking

I just returned from the groundbreaking for the new Phalen Village Cub store at 1157 Clarence.

Chuck Repke [who somehow manages to continue serving as Executive Director of both NENDC and District 2 Community Council] did a wonderful job as master of ceremonies. The expected politicians and developers gave the usual speeches.

Mayor Coleman the Second spoke first and suggested that perhaps Dan Bostrom could find future employment at the new store. It was made to look like it was being said in humor. The audience is free to make their own individual conclusions.

Councilmember Bostrom then commented that if he worked there that he would not be able to be a greeter for [a large Arkansas-based discount chain whose name I prefer to withhold], leaving one to wonder how he knew that said chain even had greeters.

Representatives of Oppidan and Cub spoke. Appropriate City staff people [including Penny Simison, Sheri Pemberton, Larry Zangs, and Tom Beach] were complimented for their work in making the thing possible and Oppidan’s representative lauded Mr. Repke.

In other words, it went pretty much to form as groundbreakings go.

Previous post: Revealing the Sign [11/1/2007]

Revealing the Sign

There was a time when people decried the displacement of local merchants by large chain store supermarkets.

Times have changed.

I just returned from a sign unveiling for a new Cub Store on Clarence south of Maryland. It wasn’t groundbreaking. Probably fifty others were out in the wind for the festivities. Nobody brought any shovels. Borings are already being done. There were some speeches and the bigwigs removed the cover from the sign.

The required officials were there, from the developer [Oppidan], Cub Foods and from the local officialdom. Councilmember Bostrom served as sort of an emcee and Mayor Colemsm the Second spoke.

The Cub exec spoke of this as their fourth Saint Paul Store. I am wondering where the third one is to be.

After the speeches most of the crowd managed to make it up to the Parkside Lounge for sandwiches and drumsticks. The Parksdide will soon be disappearing to make room for the new store..

As these events go, the event was not especially notable, but it does indicate that there will soon be another place for Saint Paul people to get their vittles.

Kudos should probably be given to North East Neighborhoods Development Company, Councilmember Bostrom, and city PED for getting the project this far. Mr. Bostrom certainly made sure that Mr. Chuck Repke of NENDC got his recognition.