ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - When White House officials chose St. Paul’s Union Depot for President Barack Obama’s announcement Wednesday of a $600 million competition for federal grants to fund infrastructure projects that create jobs, they picked a site that received nearly $125 million in federal funds for a major renovation in an earlier round of the program.
Union Depot went into decline in the early 1970s after the city’s dwindling passenger train service was moved to a new depot in the Midway area between downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis.
“This project symbolizes what’s possible,” Obama said of the station’s rebirth.
U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-St. Paul, said the station was in serious disrepair when she toured it shortly after being elected to Congress in 2000.
“It had been overrun by pigeons, windows were broken and shuttered, and the space was cold and largely abandoned, except for a few empty mail carts,” McCollum said in a statement beforehand.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - The two North Dakota residents involved in a shootout that wounded a Minnesota sheriff’s deputy later died in a murder-suicide, the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said Wednesday.
Investigators believe 24-year-old Devin Blowers shot and killed 29-year-old Katie Christopherson, then fatally shot himself, the agency said.
The bodies of the two Fargo, N.D., residents were found after Douglas County Deputy Dustin Alexander, who was wearing a bullet-resistant vest, was shot in the chest Monday night while checking a suspicious vehicle near Alexandria in west-central Minnesota.
Alexander had gotten identification from Christopherson and Blowers and briefly returned to his squad car, the BCA said. When the deputy returned to the suspects’ vehicle a second time, Blowers shot Alexander, striking him in his vest, a preliminary investigation found. The deputy returned fire, and the suspects fled in their car but became stuck in the snow and ran away.
About four hours later, law officers found Blowers and Christopherson dead near an outbuilding. A handgun and a shotgun were found near their bodies.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Snow has caused a light-rail train to derail during operator training in downtown St. Paul.
A Metro Transit spokesman says the lead car of a three-car train came off the Green Line tracks around 4 p.m. Wednesday after hitting snow from last week’s snowstorm.
Only the operator was aboard and no one was hurt. The train was brought back on the tracks about two hours later.
Operator training began this week in preparation for the line’s June 14 opening.
The derailment came after President Barack Obama was at St. Paul’s Union Depot to announce a proposed $300 billion investment to update aging roads and railways. Obama boarded a different, parked train inside a nearby light-rail operations and maintenance facility but did not ride it. He called it “a spiffy-looking train.”
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WELLS, Minn. (AP) - Government officials and private citizens in a small Faribault County community are frustrated an $8 million investment to redevelop a shuttered food processing plant never produced a single job.
The city of Wells constructed new roads and utilities to accommodate the new development, which promised to bring 200 jobs to the community of 2,500. Entrepreneur Stephen Singleteary, owner of Diversity Food Processing, secured numerous governmental loans to refurbish the factory and briefly opened the plant in 2010. It closed just a few months later and the property went into foreclosure. The city was recently notified that plant has been turned over to Pioneer Bank in Mankato.
Drug store owner Ben Musser tells The Free Press (https://bit.ly/1mHn8RPhttps://bit.ly/1mHn8RP ) local residents are angry and disappointed that Singleteary failed to follow through on his plan.
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Information from: The Free Press, https://www.mankatofreepress.comhttps://www.mankatofreepress.com
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