Northeast Metro Business | Page 58

THEN: A century ago, along present-day County Road E, expansive farms and scenes of farmers with their pails of potatoes and horse-drawn wagons full of other crops were as common as today’ s bustling shopping plazas and high-performance cars.

NOW: Current VHEDC Executive Director Ling Becker, front right, with VHEDC Founder Hank Tessier( front, left); and,( standing, from left) former VHEDC Executive Directors Mike Bromelkamp, Jerry Moynagh and Gerry Urban

THE GROWTH OF CITY CENTER & VHEDC GO

‘ HAND-IN-HAND’

Today’ s City Center is a very different landscape from 100 years ago, when large tracts of land – both south and north of today’ s County Road E – were expansive farms mostly owned by the Swedes and Italians who followed the founding French Canadian families of Vadnais, Garceau and Bibeau to the Lake Vadnais area. Today, City Center is a bustling“ downtown,” complete with a modern City Hall and fire station; Walmart Supercenter; Vadnais Square with a bank, several restaurants, Fresh Thyme Farmers Market and Target; hair and nail salons; gas stations; hotels; several state-of-the-art medical facilities; and, so on.

Last year, with the goal of bringing more residents to City Center, the VHEDC re-introduced“ farming” back into the community by launching a summer Farmers Market( see ad, page 64). At one time, scenes of farmers with their pails of potatoes were as common along present-day County Road E as the large families planting and harvesting their fields and loading up horse-drawn wagons with melons, cabbage, corn, peppers, tomatoes and other foods – all bound for St. Paul and other markets.

The Walmart site was once known as“ Andersonville.” Emil and Minnie Anderson had moved their family and their St. Paul coal business office to their first 20 acres in the 1890s. They hauled melons to St. Paul and cabbage to Chaska for sauerkraut production. Their children grew up, had families and stayed on the farm; eventually, a row of nine houses stretched along the southside of County Road E.

On the northside of the road – present-day Vadnais Square – Pasquale Valento and his extended family farmed over 100 acres, purchased with gold and silver he saved from his railroad job in St. Paul. Pasquale and Louise had 15 children and grew crops of asparagus, onions, beans, squash and berries. Another Valento grew strawberries where City Hall is today.

Frank and Agnes Bibeau founded their 30-acre farm in the early 1900s; they were one of the last Vadnais Heights’ farming families to sell land in the early 1980s for the development of the southeast quadrant, which began with Vadnais( Jimmy’ s) Plaza.

According to former City Administrator Gerry Urban, who farms land on Labore Road, long-term planning for City Center began when City officials and the newly-formed Vadnais Heights Economic Development Corporation( VHEDC), led by former Mayor Hank Tessier, met in 1985 to declare the City“ open for business.” Thus began an aggressive marketing plan based on a prime location and open spaces off I-35E.

Urban says,“ The top three goals were a hotel, a grocery store, and a plan for mixed commercial development in the approximate 140 acres of undeveloped or underdeveloped land in the four quadrants adjacent to I-35E and County Road E. The Vadnais City Center Plan became part of the City’ s Comprehensive Plan. Today, we have a good mixture of businesses, but only the northwest quadrant is fully complete.”( Present-day Mayor Bob Fletcher has made it a goal to complete development of the northeast quadrant, where Perkins Restaurant, Fairfield Inn and Allina Health Clinic sit.)

Ironically, it was the northeast quadrant that first realized commercial development in 1975 with Perkins and a gas station. Ten years later, Vadnais Plaza was built across the street; Ruberto’ s Restaurant, a fine dining establishment, anchored it. Then, in

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58 Vadnais Heights Business Guide & Community Profile