Latest News

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Friday, January 17, 2020

Check out some of our Board Candidates for our 2020 Board Elections which will take place at our 28th Annual Meeting on Jan 24th at Vomela! To register click here. Chelsea Fey, Visit Saint Paul I do not have a business on the East Side but love working with this community! They are hardworking, resourceful, creative, and bring energy and vibrancy to Saint Paul. I am the Partnership Engagement Manager for Visit Saint Paul, the city’s official convention and visitor’s bureau. I have worked closely with ESABA partners the last two years to bring more visibility to all the assets on the Eas...

ESABA Business of the Year: You Pick the Winner!

Monday, January 06, 2020

Upate! Pick the Winner! Click here to submit your choice. ESABA's Annual Meeting and Awards Luncheon is coming up! In addition to electing board members, we have the honor of presenting two awards to outstanding ESABA businesses, and you get to choose the winners! Nominate your fellow member businesses for the following Annual Awards: East Side Business of the Year Commitment to the Community Here is how the selection process works: nominate a business between now and Friday January 14th in each of the 2 categories and tell us why you feel this business deserves the award. For each nomination you enter, your name will b...

Holidays on the East Side

Monday, December 16, 2019

The weather is frigid and the days are short but there’s plenty of holiday cheer on St. Paul’s East Side. One of our favorite things about the holidays is the wonderful opportunity to create memories with our families and friends. The East Side offers all kinds of activities for all ages. Families with younger children can enjoy a dinner with Santa at Dayton’s Bluff Recreation Center on Thursday, December 12th. This free event is open to all ages but is geared for children 13 and under. The event includes a pasta dinner, arts, crafts and visit with Santa. Make sure you brin...

Metro Students; Get your Coffee and your Discount

Friday, December 13, 2019

As we know, many Metro State Students come to class and then immediately leave, but chances are they might pick up a coffee along the way. Metro State University is located on the east side of St.Paul, but a lot of students aren’t familiar with what is offered around them. There are two great coffee shops that are located just blocks from Metro State; Swede Hollow Cafe and the Goat House, and students should take advantage of the discounts they offer. Swede Hollow is a small cafe that has a varied menu. They offer soups, salads and sandwiches for lunch a...

Wish Big! East Side is Our Side

Monday, December 09, 2019

Our East Side nonprofits give it their all every single day. We celebrate the contributions they make and invite you to give back at this time of year to help them finish strong. Here are some recent requests you could catch-up with and help them with their holiday wish lists for a stronger East Side: East Side Elders Online Auction Lower Phalen Creek Project's Big Cash Match Cookie Cart has your perfect holiday cookie package Faith City Church ups their game - launches Grocery Store and Soccer Sanneh Foundation celebrate 10 years at Gala 4 Goals - help make it happen Johnson High Choir hoping to hea...

East Side Eateries - Food Spotlight

Friday, December 06, 2019

The East Side has long been home to some of St. Paul’s renowned bars and restaurants, so it’s certainly no secret that there is a variety of great food to be found all over the East Side. We wanted to highlight a few that we thought were awesome. Metro students looking for a quick bite before class or a celebratory beer after finals should swing into Yoerg Beer, located right by the university at 378 Moriah Ave. Yoerg is named after the first commercial brewery in Minnesota, a brewery of the same name that brewed Bavarian style ales in caves along th...

First Peoples and Immigrant Communities; A Brief History of the East Side

Friday, November 22, 2019

The identity of the East Side of St. Paul is rooted in its composition of immigrants from overseas and shifting populations in the United States itself, but long before any European settled here it was home to the first peoples of the Hopewell tradition and later the Dakota. The Hopewell and the Dakota interred their dead in burial mounds on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. At one time there were numerous mounds, but over time they have been excavated and destroyed for various development projects, including the expansion of the rail yard at the base of the bluff. In th...

FALL ADVENTURES

Friday, October 25, 2019

Visit your local Eastside YMCA and have a great experience. We can help you know about a healthy lifestyle and healthy routine. Make sure you bring in the FREE 5 day trial pass. We have a huge fitness floor with cardio machines and weights. Group fitness classes. Aerobics classes. Swimming pools. Sauna and Steam room. Sport gyms. 2 hours of free day care for children while parent exercises.

New Karen community space opens on Arcade Street

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

A new community gathering space called Urban Village has opened at 1082 Arcade St. The space, geared toward supporting the local Karen community, fills a long-vacant building. The Karen are an ethnic group from Myanmar, also known as Burma, who fled the country due to persecution and genocide. The community space opened just this spring but has already held a number of art shows and community discussions, including a budget chat with St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter. Click here for the compete article.

Johnson High School Choir Sponsors Needed!

Monday, September 23, 2019

For the first time in almost 30 years, Johnson High School is stretching to take the choir on a choir tour to Chicago, IL. People have been saying that it cannot be done because of the financial barriers that our students face each day. Their director is determined to prove them wrong and give our students an opportunity that they would not normally be able to have. On April 2nd, they plan to embark on a three day adventure to Chicago where students will work with a collegiate choral conductor, attend a Broadway musical, perform at Medieval Times Dinner Theater, and take i...

CLUES celebrates expansion

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

The nonprofit Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio, also known as CLUES, celebrated the grand opening of its headquarters expansion on July 31. The build added 19,000 square feet to the nonprofit’s headquarters on East Seventh Street in Dayton’s Bluff, more than doubling its space, which is shared with the Mexican Consulate. Founded in 1981, CLUES serves more than 35,000 Latino people each year from throughout Minnesota and the midwest. Its programs and services include career and financial coaching, cultural and civic engagement, education services for youth and adults, and health and wellbeing services. Click here for the complete article.

Want to Start A Food Business?

Friday, August 16, 2019

This program is designed to teach the fundamentals of starting a food business to people who already have culinary experience. You'll work with food industry experts to create a solid business plan, so that you can avoid the common failure factors associated with this challenging and exciting market in the Twin Cities. This program is in partnership with East Side Area Business Association (ESABA). Now accepting applications for the Fall cycle. Find out more: Fill out the application today and send it to Robert Taylor with NDC: rtaylor@ndc-mn.org 651-379-8116 Workshop #1 What It Takes to Be in the Food Business Types of Facilities of the Various Food Busines...

Historic Yoerg is a nice fit for former Strip Club Meat and Fish building

Wednesday, August 07, 2019

It’s been a long road for Yoerg Brewing. The reboot of Minnesota’s first brewery began in 2016 with its original recipe brewed across the border in Wisconsin, for sale here. The brewery, which dates back to 1848 but had been closed since 1952, had planned to open a tavern/restaurant to showcase its beer on the West Side of St. Paul, but that deal fell through. There is a happy ending, though, as Yoerg eventually ended up in the charming building that formerly housed Strip Club Meat and Fish on St. Paul’s East Side. We dropped by for a quick dinner recently, and were please...

Cozy up to Railroad Island, the Twin Cities neighborhood you’ve been neglecting

Tuesday, July 09, 2019

The East Side Featured in City Pages! Full of bewildering bluffs and industrial history, Railroad Island is the authentic truth St. Paul keeps behind a gaping railroad ravine and 35E. It’s a disorienting place, 180 acres of neighborhood wrapping around the east side and smooching Swede Hollow Park. It’s lush with trees; you can’t see the St. Paul skyline from here, though it’s close. Streets are tossed around and mended together where they don’t make sense, split by the railroad gorge, thus the clutter of the place. Cross streets are a little darker, so it’s easy to feel inquisitive, even meddlesome...

New name, same character: Flat Earth is now St. Paul Brewing

Tuesday, July 02, 2019

When John Warner bought what would become Flat Earth Brewing in 2010, he looked at a few locations to move it before settling on the old Hamm’s Brewing buildings off Minnehaha Avenue on the East Side. “It was so awful,” he says of the buildings and their decrepit state, but he wasn’t deterred. “God told me to do it, so I did it.” Warner bought the future home of Flat Earth Brewing in November of 2012. Some two years later, after working to make the space safe for brewing and a taproom, he moved Flat Earth from Highland Park to the Eas...

The life and times of a White Bear Ave. watchmaker

Sunday, June 23, 2019

Bob Tuerk, the 79-year-old owner of House of Clocks on White Bear Avenue, has been on a nonstop grind since he was 14, and doesn’t plan on slowing down any time soon. Succession was not in the cards for House of Clocks. The clock and repair shop, with dark brown grandfather clocks decorating its building, has been at the intersection of White Bear Avenue and Arlington Avenue East since 1975. Bob Tuerk, its fiercely independent and hardworking owner, has been there the whole time. The plan, set around 2014, he says, was that he’d take on an apprentice, who would eventually take ove...