St. Paul's Midway Stadium site lands pollution cleanup grants

The former home of the St. Paul Saints soon will be made ready for construction of an office-warehouse building, thanks in part to pollution cleanup grants from the state of Minnesota.

The Dorothy Day Center in downtown St. Paul, a former meatpacking plant in South St. Paul and a long-vacant riverfront manufacturing site in Hastings are all receiving a boost from the same fund, which is geared toward redeveloping polluted properties.

In all, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, or DEED, has issued $6.5 million in remediation funds to 17 projects across the state. The largest grant totals $1.25 million to convert Midway Stadium on Energy Park Drive into a "flex" office building that can accommodate light-industrial manufacturing.

Additional projects include cleaning up the old Hudson Manufacturing site in Hastings, a proposed children's museum in Mankato, residential and office buildings in Minneapolis and Blue Earth County and a senior housing complex in Vadnais Heights. Each grantee must provide matching funds.

DEED's Contamination Cleanup and Investigation Grant Program funds environmental analysis or remediation at future redevelopment sites with the aim of boosting the property tax base and creating or retaining jobs. The program has been around 21 years and accounts for some 75 percent of funds devoted to brownfield and polluted site clean-up statewide.

In St.

Contaminated land in downtown St. Paul that had once hosted a gas station and auto repair business soon will provide housing and supportive services for the homeless. DEED awarded $369,000 for the Catholic Charities' Higher Ground project at the remodeled Dorothy Day shelter facility.

In Hastings, $256,000 will help cover the cleanup costs at the former site of Hudson Manufacturing, an agricultural sprayer. The 3.8-acre site will be turned into apartments, a hotel, restaurant, art space and events center. The city plans to cover matching costs.

Dakota County and the South St. Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority will use $358,000 in DEED funds to clean up a 5.7-acre site that had been used as a meatpacking and processing site. They'll replace it with an office and warehouse as part of the BridgePoint Building Park.

Another $172,000 will help clean up a former gas station, bowling alley and restaurant in White Bear Lake. The 5-acre site will be redeveloped into a 136-unit senior housing facility called the Waters of White Bear Lake.

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St. Paul's Midway Stadium site lands pollution cleanup grants