Mission: Nonprofit government agency that manages the St. Paul Harbor, conducts inland economic development activities, port consulting, brownfield redevelopment and offers energy-saving finance programs
Based: 380 St. Peter St., St. Paul
Founded: 1929
President: Lee Krueger
Employee count: 19
Website: sppa.com
The St. Paul Port Authority, as the name suggests, owns and manages four ports on the Mississippi River in St. Paul.
It also engages in inland economic development and has created 16 business centers that have contributed to more than 25,000 jobs in the capital city.
The Port Authority focuses on projects that will offer light-industrial jobs, President Lee Krueger said, seeing those as “poverty busters.”
The average job at a Port Authority business center pays $49,000 plus benefits. These often are jobs with a low barrier to entry that may not require post-secondary degrees.
Those are key, Krueger said, in light of a recent Metropolitan Council study that found that St. Paul has the highest share of residents living in poverty in the Twin Cities metro area, at nearly 41 percent.
“These become head-of-household jobs,” Krueger said. “It’s our position that these industrial manufacturing jobs are a great pathway out of poverty. If we can focus on growing these types of jobs, it’s doing our part to grow people out of poverty.”
A variety of businesses occupy Port Authority business centers, including Summit Brewing Co., Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare and U.S. Bank.
Three large parcels in the Port Authority’s Beacon Bluff business center on St. Paul’s East Side are expected to close this spring with construction to follow, Kruger said. The projects will bring 200 to 300 jobs to a site that once was home to the headquarters of 3M Co.
The Port Authority, a nonprofit government agency the Legislature established in 1929, also played a key role as a partner in the Treasure Island Center, the mixed-use redevelopment project that opened in late 2017 in the former Macy’s building in downtown St. Paul. The Port Authority also served as project manager for the St. Paul Public Safety Training Facility, which opened last fall.