Sometimes it takes the right ingredient to make a recipe work.
In the case of Baldinger Bakery and the St. Paul Port Authority, just add $19 million in New Market Tax Credits to make the dough rise.
The NMTC financing, through the Community Reinvestment Fund (CRF), will result in a new, 145,000-square-foot facility for Baldinger in the Dayton's Bluff area of St. Paul. The project, expected to be completed this year, should create 80
full-time construction jobs.
Moreover, Baldinger will hire 40 new
full-time employees over the next ten years--70 percent of those from
St. Paul --at a minimum of $11 an hour, according to
East Side Pride.
Baldinger's roots go back to 1888, when immigrant Henry Baldinger opened his bakery in St. Paul. Nearly 125 years later, the bakery has grown into a giant commercial operation, shipping to international markets and supplying McDonald's with approximately 30 percent of its buns, along with strategic partner East Balt Bakeries out of Chicago, according to the Baldinger website.
Having grown out of its 60,000 square-foot West Side facility, Baldinger sought to stay in St. Paul through a deal with the St. Paul Port Authority (SPPA), which was looking for a tenant for the 9.4-acre site of the former Griffin Wheelworks foundry. The site is part of the SPPA's 61-acre Beacon Bluff Business Center, a redevelopment of 3M's former headquarters on St. Paul's East Side.
The deal "languished as credit remained tight and Baldinger received a generous incentive offer to move to a nearby suburb," according to a press release from Haberman for the Community Reinvestment Fund (CRF), which became a player in the game when it contributed the $19 million in NMTC financing, along with the SPPA, last year.
The Griffin site is located in a qualified low-income census tract, making the project eligible for the NMTC financing.
Baldinger's website offers a virtual aerial view of the future bakery.
Sources:
David Hlavac, Haberman East Side Pride Baldinger Bakery Writer: Jeremy Stratton