Plans are in the works for the last three large industrial parcels at the Beacon Bluff redevelopment of the former 3M site on St. Paul’s East Side.

That’s a major milestone for a city that must keep its focus on retaining and growing good jobs and its tax base.

The projects — involving a printing company, an enterprise that makes domed sports-facilities structures and an industrial building to be constructed by a west-metro-based developer — help bring to fruition the vision to renew the area that once was a jobs engine for St. Paul.

Monte Hilleman of the St. Paul Port Authority credits the foresight of civic and business leaders a quarter-century ago, in the 1990s, “when all of St. Paul really rallied around Phalen Boulevard,” the business corridor pieced together from under-used property. It links the Port Authority’s Williams Hill and Westminster Junction developments, as well as Beacon Bluff.

Without that critical infrastructure, “none of these three business centers would have been possible to redevelop,” said Hilleman, whose agency focuses on converting polluted “brownfields” to productive job-producing, tax-base-supporting sites.

He challenges us to think about what the area would look like today without the business centers, “how the cancer of disinvestment can just spread.”

There are examples “all over this country of cities that haven’t tackled this tough stuff, and that’s not who we are,” Hilleman told us, noting that St. Paul and Minnesota are national leaders in “turning these contaminated sites around.”

Doing so on the East Side keeps the promise to bring back about 2,000 jobs, among the three business centers. With the latest industrial projects at Beacon Bluff, “we will, in fact, have hit our goal,” Hilleman said.

The development’s name evokes that jobs focus. “The ‘Beacon’ really came from this idea that for many years, decades, generations, the industrial job opportunities on the East Side were a beacon of hope,” he explains, allowing workers to purchase homes and further their kids’ education.

“We really felt like Beacon Bluff was a new beacon of hope and prosperity for the East Side, and we believe it is exactly that,” Hilleman said.

While a few smaller “remnant” parcels remain for commercial projects on the site, we welcome:

Vomela, a “large-format” printing company. Its 300,000-square-foot building on a 12-acre site at Minnehaha Avenue and Arcade Street will be the largest built in a Port Authority business center since the 1960s. It will allow the company — which has 180 employees now and will add 50 over 10 years — to consolidate facilities, which now include buildings on the city’s West Side and in Maplewood. Construction is to begin this summer and be completed next year.

Yeadon, one of the world’s largest manufacturers and installers of air-supported domed structures, will relocate from Minneapolis to a 3.22-acre site at East Seventh and Forest streets. As it grows in a tough labor market, Hilleman notes that the company is willing to hire “second-chance” workers, including those who are “traditionally hard to employ, folks who may have a criminal record, folks who have been through some sort of recovery program.”

Both Yeadon and Vomela, Hilleman said, are looking forward to working with our community partners and hiring people from the East Side.

Yeadon’s new building, to be in operation in the spring, will open with 50 workers. The company will add 30 more over 10 years.

The Opus Group, which last week announced that it plans to construct an 86,000-square-foot building by the end of the year. The project is a “speculative” one in which the company will lease space — and a reflection of confidence in St. Paul and the industrial market here, said Hilleman. The development will bring 90 jobs to the site.

He also notes that the jobs and benefits to the city’s tax base couldn’t have been accomplished by just one organization: “We’re only able to do what we do through the partnership of a lot of other stakeholders.”

And as buildings begin to rise, Hilleman reflects on the determination it took to “remove the barriers to investment and get the private sector re-engaged” in the neighborhood.

It’s good to see that happening on the East Side.