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Writing a New “East Side Story,” St. Paul

A comprehensive approach to community Development

The East Side of St. Paul, before and after community development by Dayton's Bluff NHS.

The East Side of St. Paul was settled by Swedes who immigrated around 1900. But by the late 1930s, most of them had moved to other areas of the city, making room for successive waves of new Italian and Latino residents. Today, the East Side is still a neighborhood that attracts immigrants, primarily from Asia and Mexico.

Even 25 years ago, the East Side of St. Paul was characterized by aging housing stock, rising crime rates, factory shutdowns, and business closings. The area has long been home to working class families struggling to recover from hard times, big layoffs by area businesses and the closing of such community landmarks as the Whirlpool plant and the Hamm’s/Stroh brewery.

But since the early 1980s, local residents and business owners—through the East Side Neighborhood Development Company—have worked with public, private, and nonprofit partners to rebuild and revitalize the neighborhood. In 1998, as one of their projects, they established a public safety committee with LISC’s help. That effort began to “take back” the neighborhood’s high-crime commercial areas and won a 2002 MetLife Community Safety Initiative Award.

The neighborhood’s success has been all the more significant because of the comprehensive, three-pronged approach used: housing, economic, and human development strategies. Emphasis has been placed on community involvement in decision making, which means neighborhood residents have been actively engaged in the company’s development work. The neighborhood’s latest undertaking is a Prosperity Campaign to build personal wealth for residents through entrepreneurship, financial literacy, job development, and homeownership.