By James Walsh | October 5, 2021
According to its ambitious plans for the former Hillcrest Golf Club, the St. Paul Port Authority is seeking to transform the 112-acre site into a regional hub for light manufacturing jobs and affordable housing. So now, officials said, it’s time to give it a new name.
And that’s where the surrounding neighborhood comes in.
Officials are asking residents of the historically blue-collar and increasingly diverse area to begin submitting words — ones that nod to the area’s history, or maybe foretell its future. A naming committee will select and meld those words into three finalist names for the site and by early November, the community will vote. The new name is expected to be announced Nov. 16.
“The name is really important because it needs to embody what the East Side is all about,” said City Council Member Nelsie Yang, who represents the area.
Said Lee Krueger, president of the Port Authority: “Each of our redevelopment projects has a name, from Energy Park to Beacon Bluff. It’s important to us that the people who live and work near the former Hillcrest Golf Course have a voice in what this mixed-use development will be referred to going forward and that it truly reflects the heart and soul of the neighborhood.”
And there’s the rub: In such a diverse area, there’s not just one.
Since 1850, the East Side has drawn waves of immigrants seeking jobs and new lives. According to the website of the East Side Freedom Library, which chronicles the history of the area and its workers, there have been three distinct waves of newcomers to the East Side. In the mid-1800s, immigrants from Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia fleeing poverty and turmoil were drawn to the area by jobs in manufacturing, construction and transportation.
According to the site, they “built the infrastructure of the new city — bridges, tunnels, roads, railroad track, houses, factories and warehouses — and they provided much of the labor which ran its industries, its ships and its railroads.”
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a new wave of immigrants came from southern and Eastern Europe. Some also came from the Middle East, joined by immigrants from Mexico and African Americans from the South. Large employers — Hamm’s, 3M and Whirlpool — at one time employed an estimated 10,000 workers, and the East Side boomed.