If the vision was to make St. Paul a great place to live, work and play, the city got two out of three under Mayor Chris Coleman.

Big projects accomplished during his 12-year administration — the Green Line, CHS Field, the Palace Theatre and a repurposed former Macy’s store, with a soccer stadium rising in the Midway — have been praised as community amenities that enhance vitality and spur more development. Coleman, a Democrat now running for governor, has earned recognition for persistence in the face of roadblocks that might have defeated others in bringing complex, ambitious projects to fruition in his hometown.

The administration “delivered completely” on two legs of the live-work-play triangle, observes John Regal, a Securian Financial Group executive and former St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce board chair. “These big projects absolutely point to making St. Paul a great place to live and play.”

“But making St. Paul also a great place to work really wasn’t one of his priorities,” Regal said. That began to change toward the end of his tenure.

In the face of concern about too many office-to-residential conversions, Coleman announced in his 11th budget address in August 2016 a goal to add 3,000 jobs within three years. Last year included formation of an Innovation Cabinet, a strategy to spur growth in tech-sector jobs and the Osborn370 remake of the former Ecolab office tower as a workplace for innovation companies. A ribbon-cutting last week celebrated a move by Reeher LLC, an education fundraising software company, to the building.

Coleman has noted that his administration followed advice that if the city grew the residential base downtown, creating more vibrancy, then commercial development would follow.

Louis Jambois, former president of the St. Paul Port Authority, acknowledges that work on jobs came later in Coleman’s term but emphasizes the importance of the former mayor’s focus on changing perceptions about St. Paul.

When there is a perception that an area has vitality, Jambois said, “it stands then that it might also be a really good place to do business.”

“That, I think, informed his vision to go out and make St. Paul the coolest place it could possibly be,” he told us, describing a St. Paul more comfortable “with being St. Paul” and less obsessed with comparisons with Minneapolis.

“Reinvestment begets additional reinvestment,” Jambois reminds us. “There’s just no question about that.”

Midway Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Chad Kulas sees that principle in action in his part of town.

“Soccer is happening because light rail happened first,” he told us. Proximity to the Green Line helped close the deal after negotiations faltered in Minneapolis. The facility, last week reported to be about 30 percent complete, “is generating big interest in the Midway,” Kulas said, “really showing that it’s primed for development.”

Additional perspective from Jambois, who retired in 2016, also includes a reminder about business development, jobs and tax-base-expanding achievements that aren’t typically included on lists of the biggest Coleman-era projects, and shouldn’t be forgotten.

Included is Port Authority acquisition and redevelopment of the former 3M campus on the East Side and the repurposing of the former Midway Stadium site as part of the development deal for what became CHS Field.

Perspective also includes the point of view of Tom Goldstein, a frequent critic of the big projects during Coleman’s tenure and a candidate for mayor last year. He describes “what feels like almost an obsession with building things with public money, without what I would call any real analysis” of the benefits.

“I’m hard pressed to believe we’re better off,” he said, “if the only way we measure being better off is that St. Paul is more lively that it was 12 years ago.”

He argues that those who benefit are people who are more well off, including those who have the means to attend concerts and ballgames, while pressing concerns remain about job creation, academic achievement and affordable housing.

Rather than the big projects, he suggests that a far better strategy for St. Paul would have been to take advantage of low post-recession interest rates to fix our streets, bridges and other infrastructure and address the backlog of parks-and-rec maintenance needs.

This month a new era began at City Hall with inauguration of Mayor Melvin Carter amid cues about an approach that emphasizes diversity as an asset and attention to the economic contributions of all our communities.

It’s welcome attention, with hope for open doors to economic opportunity for more people.

Now in St. Paul, it’s time to build on the accomplishments of the Coleman era by working on work.