Cleanup grant will help prep Midway stadium site for next outing

A $1.25 million state grant announced Tuesday will help bring an industrial building to the old home of the St. Paul Saints.

The money, from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, is about one-fourth of what's needed to clean up decades of pollution on the minor league team's old Midway stadium site.

The St. Paul Port Authority is working with United Properties, a commercial real estate company, to construct a building big enough for four to five tenants on the roughly 13-acre property. That should bring 200 to 300 jobs to the area, said Tom Collins, a port authority spokesman.

"We're pretty excited and we're obviously grateful," Collins said. "The stadium is on top of some pretty nasty stuff."

The Midway stadium site was used as a dump for decades, Collins said, though he's not sure what pollutants will need to be removed before construction on the new building begins in early 2016.

The Saints played their last game at Midway earlier this year, and construction on the team's new stadium in Lowertown is set to finish in the spring. Construction costs on the new stadium and its surrounding area have ballooned, due in part to contaminated rubble nearby.

Collins estimated cleanup costs at around $5 million of the project's total $15 million price tag. Work won't begin until the city's Parks and Recreation Department transfers the property's title to the port authority in May.

The grant was one of 10 totaling $4.16 million awarded by the Department of Employment and Economic Development, according to Tuesday's announcement. The other grants are going to projects on polluted sites in Minneapolis, Duluth and other cities.

Several companies have already expressed interest in moving into the new building on the Midway site, Collins said. He doesn't expect to have any trouble finding tenants when construction finishes in late 2016.