BridgePoint Park Continues to Reinvent South St. Paul’s Business Image; BW Systems Moves From St. Paul and Expands Operation Within Months
South St. Paul, MN (PRWEB) May 29, 2014 -- BW Systems recently completed a new mezzanine addition to their BridgePoint Park facility located in South St. Paul just 18 months after moving from St. Paul. Responding to growing customer needs, BW Systems custom built an expansive balcony work space to accommodate larger project orders. With extensive experience in the electrical industry, BW Systems began by focusing on control panel assembly and wiring; building to customers’ plans and specs. The panels typically house industrial electrical control equipment including; motor variable speed drives, programmable logic controllers, pushbuttons, relays, etc. used to control a variety of machine applications. BW Systems expanded its menu of services in 2003 to include systems engineering, design services and system field service. By 2012, BW Systems outgrew its old St. Paul location and began its search for a new home.
Gary Brandel, co-founder and President of BW Systems, began his search with a simple analysis of determining where his key customers and suppliers were located and surveyed his current staff. Armed with this information, Brandel narrowed his search to a ten-mile radius of the original BW Systems location in St. Paul. The BridgePoint Park site in South St. Paul caught Brandel’s eye. Chief among the reasons Brandel was drawn to BridgePoint is the convenience of the location, “Bridgepoint’s easy access to Interstate 494 and close proximity to St. Paul serves a great deal of our customer and supplier needs.” When asked about South St. Paul’s stockyard history, Brandel replied, “There is a growing new identity here that you can feel when you see the area and all the new development. It’s a growing manufacturing center.” With its 55 employees, BW Systems officially relocated to BridgePoint Park in July 2012.
Interstate Partners, developer of BridgePoint, offered BW Systems the opportunity to help design the layout of the facility to fit its needs. At just over 33,000 square feet, the new BW Systems location is designed around a logical and convenient workflow. “In-coming projects begin at one loading dock and cycle their way through the location’s work spaces before exiting via a large, customer-centric staging and testing area. This area includes 12 testing areas as well as enclosed bays for customers needing a private space for proprietary projects,” explained Brandel. Greg Miller, Managing Partner at Interstate Partners added, “The City of South St. Paul is one of the best cities for a developer to work with to meet the needs of potential tenants. The City has various economic incentive tools (low interest loans, grants to address environmental requirements, tax increment financing) and helpful and friendly staff. The multiple awards received reflect this development’s success.” Miller also highlighted the South St. Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority’s active engagement in the community and its key contributions to revitalizing the area.
In 2012, the Minnesota chapter of the NAIOP (Commercial Real Estate Development Association) named BridgePoint Park the Best New Light Industrial/Low Finish development in the Twin Cities and in 2009, the City Engineers Association of Minnesota awarded the City of South St. Paul and the BridgePoint Business Development Project an Honorable Mention for Project of the Year. “Progress Plus works with the Cities of Inver Grove Heights and South St. Paul to assess the needs of the overall community and grow the region’s economic base,” added Jenifer Gale, President, Progress Plus. “The BridgePoint Park development is a perfect example of these efforts coming together and serving the economic development needs of the community.”
Carl Kuhl, Connolly Kuhl Group, +1 (651) 330-6002, [email protected]
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