Time to rename Hillcrest, St. Paul Port Authority says

According to its ambitious plans for the former Hillcrest Golf Club, the St. Paul Port Authority is seeking to transform the 112-acre site into a regional hub for light manufacturing jobs and affordable housing. So now, officials said, it's time to give it a new name.

And that's where the surrounding neighborhood comes in.

Officials are asking residents of the historically blue-collar and increasingly diverse area to begin submitting words — ones that nod to the area's history, or maybe foretell its future. A naming committee will select and meld those words into three finalist names for the site and by early November, the community will vote. The new name is expected to be announced Nov. 16.

"The name is really important because it needs to embody what the East Side is all about," said City Council Member Nelsie Yang, who represents the area.

Said Lee Krueger, president of the Port Authority: "Each of our redevelopment projects has a name, from Energy Park to Beacon Bluff. It's important to us that the people who live and work near the former Hillcrest Golf Course have a voice in what this mixed-use development will be referred to going forward and that it truly reflects the heart and soul of the neighborhood."

And there's the rub: In such a diverse area, there's not just one.

Since 1850, the East Side has drawn waves of immigrants seeking jobs and new lives. According to the website of the East Side Freedom Library, which chronicles the history of the area and its workers, there have been three distinct waves of newcomers to the East Side. In the mid-1800s, immigrants from Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia fleeing poverty and turmoil were drawn to the area by jobs in manufacturing, construction and transportation.

According to the site, they "built the infrastructure of the new city — bridges, tunnels, roads, railroad track, houses, factories and warehouses — and they provided much of the labor which ran its industries, its ships and its railroads."

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a new wave of immigrants came from southern and Eastern Europe. Some also came from the Middle East, joined by immigrants from Mexico and African Americans from the South. Large employers — Hamm's, 3M and Whirlpool — at one time employed an estimated 10,000 workers, and the East Side boomed.

A third wave of new Minnesota residents came starting in the 1980s. As plant closings led to residents moving away, newcomers from Southeast Asia, East Africa, Central America and other American cities were drawn to the area to find work and inexpensive housing. Port Authority officials have said they are hopeful Hillcrest's future combination of new housing and light manufacturing will hearken back to an earlier day when workers lived in the neighborhoods surrounding their jobs.

Rebecca Nelson has a different idea.

President of both the Dayton's Bluff Community Council and the Payne-Phalen Community Council, Nelson is from Sisseton, S.D., and is Native American. Long before Hillcrest was a golf course, long before its surrounding neighborhoods were home to factories and breweries and railroads, the area was home to Dakota people, Nelson said. A long time ago, she said, there was even a Dakota village on the shore of what is now Lake Phalen.

She said she would like to see a new name for Hillcrest that acknowledges the area's even older history.

"Dakota people name things pertaining to the land, so maybe something like 'Rolling Hills,' " Nelson said. "But I don't know enough of my language to be able to say what those words are."

Peter Rachleff, co-executive director of the East Side Freedom Library, acknowledged that he might have leaned toward names honoring the area's labor movement history. Then he heard Nelson's idea. He and others have been wrestling with ways to more significantly acknowledge the history of the area's Indigenous people, he said.

"Actually, putting a Dakota name on a significant development would be a great way to do that," Rachleff said.

James Walsh • 612-673-7428