It’s good to see the East Side of St. Paul get due attention.

It’s even better when the attention aims to bring business development and jobs, jobs, jobs.

The Center Cities Competitiveness Initiative touts the East Side’s shovel-ready sites; convenient location; highway, rail, river and air transportation connections; and access to a “ready and qualified labor market.”

There’s promise in its work — focused on that neighborhood and one in Minneapolis — under the umbrella of GreaterMSP, the regional development partnership.

“There’s a world of opportunity,” the initiative’s director, Shauen Pearce-Lassiter, told us, noting the initiative’s work with prospects who will foster “not just more jobs but jobs that are attainable by local residents.”

Among its distinctions, the initiative brings together the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, their respective counties, chambers of commerce, the St. Paul Port Authority and the McKnight Foundation.

“It’s a really exciting opportunity,” St. Paul Planning and Economic Development Director Jonathan Sage-Martinson told us, to redefine how to “work together to maximize jobs and investment” in the two cities.

“It’s a dynamic group,” Pearce-Lassiter said, working to “make sure that areas that have been disinvested are actually in the vanguard of growth for the entire city and for the region.”

The partners recognize, she told us, that we can “accelerate the rate of investment and increase employment opportunities.” When that’s accomplished in neighborhoods like the East Side, “the whole city benefits, not just from more tax dollars but from more residents who are able to live healthy, sustainable lives.”

The group is “very clear about the focus on the East Side,” and its potential, Pearce-Lassiter said, noting such assets as the Port Authority’s Beacon Bluff redevelopment of the former 3M site and the $75 million Health Partners Neuroscience Center that opened on Phalen Boulevard earlier this year.

With that level of investment, you have a network of companies who are saying they’re here, they’re thriving and that they “invite you to become part of our business community on the East Side,” she said.

The initiative isn’t yet ready to make public the results of its outreach work, we were told, but among recent efforts was a successful July event to spotlight neighborhood assets and build relationships with real estate brokers. The “Invest on the East Side of St. Paul” fact sheet prepared for the event also is being promoted on social media. Information is at greatermsp.org/center-cities.

The work is supported by a $400,000 grant that McKnight’s Eric Muschler describes as an outcome of area foundations’ experience working together during construction of the Green Line. Much good came of efforts of the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative, he told us, but so did concern that there might have been “missed opportunities for job creation, missed opportunities for workforce development.”

There was “a longer-standing learning,” he said, “that we could have done more.”

The East Side and its companion neighborhood across the river — north Minneapolis — are locations of longstanding focus for McKnight, Muschler told us, noting that they include areas of concentrated poverty, yet “there’s a whole lot of talent that exists there, there’s a whole lot of opportunity there.”

McKnight and other funders are “light and beacons for us here in the region,” Pearce-Lassiter told us.

The foundation has been steadfast in its commitment to inclusive growth and equity, she said, and belief that this strategy “can grow the city — strengthen the city — by investing in these areas.”

When it comes to the collaboration, Sage-Martinson makes the point that the public and private development partners in St. Paul work together routinely, but the opportunity to connect with Minneapolis and regional colleagues is beneficial.

“We’re learning together about what works particularly well in a center city,” he told us, and the initiative “challenges us, in some cases, to rethink what we can do to up our game.”

We wondered if the initiative is a departure from the norm for the agency that works largely to raise the Twin Cities region’s profile nationally and internationally. The initiative is about the overall region’s success and economic prosperity, “which is really our mission,” GreaterMSP’s Mike Brown told us.

“There are some pockets of the region where that’s a little more challenging,” he said, and efforts to take action in neighborhoods that need it help the region overall.

The result for the East Side is a compelling sales pitch focused on its assets: central location, access to amenities and an available workforce.

With its success, we all can win.