St. Paul recruits new business developments

The St. Paul Port Authority and City of St. Paul, which is trying to fill the vacant Macy's space downtown, also have recruited new business investments. A couple of the developments:

• Matsuura Machinery USA, the Japanese machine-tool manufacturer, will officially inaugurate its first U.S. sales-and-service center on May 14. Dignitaries will include owner Katsu Matsuura.

The 78-year-old contract manufacturer, which has thousands of machines operating in the U.S., expects to employ 30 workers and generate $30 million in revenue annually by 2014 from a 40,000-square-foot building built by Wellington Management in the River Bend Business Park on 300 Randolph Road near Shepard Road.

Matsuura, with about $170 million in annual revenue, designs and manufactures computer-controlled centers for the aerospace, medical products and tool-and-die industries. A spokesman said St. Paul boasted a central U.S. location, convenient access to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and skilled workers. The new facility includes a showroom and demonstration area, training rooms, accessories and spare parts storage, and a spindle-repair facility.

• Graves Hospitality and the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe plan to spend $15 million-plus to renovate St. Paul's largest hotel, the Crowne Plaza Riverfront, on Kellogg Boulevard, and the DoubleTree by Hilton at 6th and Minnesota Streets. The Mille Lacs Band acquired the hotels recently from out-of-state owners.

"We will make separate announcements about the scope of the work and the specific investments," said Ben Graves, president of Minneapolis-based Graves Hospitality. "The work will be done over the next couple of years. We're going to rebrand the DoubleTree and make it more relevant to the neighborhood and the Crowne Plaza may no longer be a Crowne Plaza."

Graves said he expects employment will grow from about 300 to 350 by next year, including a new restaurant and other additions at the DoubleTree.

Cargill CEO Greg Page warned last week that the global commodities industry must embrace ethical, transparent business practices or face increased regulations.

"We can either earn and embrace the governance and regulations we want and need, or ignore our ethical, behavioral and societal obligations, and then accept the governance that others may impose upon us," Page said in the keynote speech at the Financial Times Global Commodities Summit in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Page said in an interview with the Financial Times that Cargill's tradition of long-term ownership and low payouts has been beneficial. "The family has always had a modest dividend policy which has allowed the company to grow faster than the population of the family," Page said. He attributed the company's ability to remain private through seven generations to "a well understood sense of responsibility'' among the family members.

Patrick Kennedy

"Cargill was a wonderful experience, but I'd been there 12 years and I previously enjoyed private practice and litigation," Reyes said last week. "Barnes & Thornburg is a very entrepreneurial firm that's growing strategically."

Bruce Goldfarb, a veteran institutional equity salesman at Craig-Hallum Capital, and Nate Sand, a stock trader from Piper Jaffray, are the latest professionals to join Lake Street Capital Markets, a boutique investment bank formed several months ago by veterans of neighboring Craig-Hallum. Lake Street CEO Tom Cullum, a Craig-Hallum and RBC Capital Markets alumnus, said Lake Street has 12 professionals who were motivated to do their own thing and explore "an opportunity in the marketplace," thanks partly to the closing of several research-and-trading boutiques nationally. Cullum envisions 50 to 60 professionals researching, selling and underwriting medical-technology, energy, consumer and media companies within three years.

Dee DePass and Patrick Kennedy contributed to this column.