Latest news with #StPaul
CBS News
10 hours ago
- CBS News
Big River Pizza in St. Paul announces closure, citing safety concerns
After nearly a decade in business, a popular pizzeria in Lowertown St. Paul has decided to close. Big River Pizza announced the decision in a Facebook post earlier this week. "This was not a decision we made lightly. We held out hope until the very last moment," the post said. Owners say "the current political and policy landscape in town has made it increasingly difficult to ensure the safety of their employees." Residents say they are going to miss their go-to pizza place, but acknowledge that safety in the area is a growing concern. "I know there's a lot of crime in the area. I've seen a lot of police in the area. So it really sucks that's the reason they have to close," Henry McCulloch said. Big River Pizza says it has had outstanding support from St. Paul police and other city departments, but they say broader policy challenges have impacted their ability to operate. "In light of recent events in Minnesota, we won't be elaborating further on the local political landscape at this time," Big River Pizza said in the post announcing its closure. The owner has not responded to WCCO's attempts to talk with him. Big River Pizza will continue operating through June 29.
CBS News
13 hours ago
- General
- CBS News
St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood celebrates Juneteenth, honoring families' resilience
On Juneteenth, the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, gathered to honor a history of resilience. "They had a rhythm in Rondo, it had a different vibe than any other place in the city of St. Paul," said Marvin Anderson, director of the Rondo Center of Diverse Expression. Once home to a thriving Black community, Rondo was upended by the construction of Interstate 94 in the late 1950s. Hundreds of homes and businesses were demolished to make way for the freeway, displacing countless families. "I-94 totally destroyed the Rondo community. It was a complete and utter devastation of the businesses, the social institutions and cultural institutions," Anderson said. "A lot of our stories, our journeys, are filled with pain." Anderson's family was directly impacted by the construction. "It was a devastating event for my family, and when I left here I had never gone back to the home I grew up in," he said. For Allison Williams, her parents witnessed first-hand what it was like to watch the construction. "I remember stories of my mom, when she was a newly-wed. They came out and stood and watched the bulldozers tearing up what used to be their neighborhood," Williams said. WCCO But this year's Juneteenth celebration was a reminder that Rondo's spirit could never be broken. "Our values in Rondo were timeless, just like the values that people learned on the plantation. They've lasted for 400 years," he said. "How did we survive in America unless we had a set of values that we were able to transmit to each other? That's what sustained us here, our sense of who we are and where we came from." The event featured speakers from four Rondo families, reminding the next generation what their families had to go through and how they have stayed resilient over time. "With memories of the elders of Rondo, they are translated to the imaginations of the youth of Rondo," he said. The event was an opportunity for those in attendance to reflect on how far the neighborhood has come since the I-94 construction. Anderson hopes the Rondo neighborhood can grow with the proposed plan to build a land bridge over I-94 to reconnect the neighborhood that was torn apart by the construction. If you would like to be a part of preserving this rich legacy, there are plenty of upcoming events in the neighborhood, like Rondo Days in July. Click here for a list of Juneteenth events in the Twin Cities.
Forbes
18 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Ecolab Builds The Future With Data And AI
Ecolab corporation headquarters in St. Paul, MN getty Ecolab Chief Digital Officer Kevin Doyle has been with the company for 15 years and in his current post for two. He oversees a broad scope, blending traditional CIO responsibilities with a mandate to build innovative data-rich digital products. His team supports both Ecolab's 48,000 employees and a diverse global customer base, bringing together IT, digital product development and supply chain modernization under one strategic roof. Ecolab's mission to make the world cleaner, safer and healthier translates into an expansive portfolio of offerings from water treatment and infection prevention to advanced analytics and industrial automation. 'We touch a lot of different areas,' Doyle said. 'Pretty broad base of what we're capable of, but all impactful.' His team drives value creation through data-driven insights, IoT applications and mobile solutions tailored to both internal operations and customer-facing engagements. Delivering Value Through Ecolab Digital A recent organizational shift brought Ecolab's commercial digital solutions group and IT teams together under a single banner: Ecolab Digital. 'It was to take advantage of all of the technology, wealth of knowledge and capability that we had, and use it to differentiate, not only for internal operations or our customers, but how we can jointly do that,' Doyle said. Ecolab Digital delivers a broad array of commercial innovations, including digital twins in data centers and food retail facilities, AI-powered dish machine diagnostics and predictive analytics that detect waterborne pathogens like Legionella. 'We cover a lot of different territories,' Doyle explained. 'But we have a base platform that we take all of our data into. We call it Ecolab 3D.' This cloud-based infrastructure turns real-world data into insights that drive customer value across sectors such as retail, hospitality and industrial water. Empowering the Front Lines with Intelligent Tools While customer-facing innovation remains central, Doyle emphasizes the importance of arming Ecolab's employees, especially the 28,000 in the field, with modern technologies. 'We're trying to take advantage of the latest trends in technology, [such as] artificial intelligence and some of these things that are more generative in nature,' he said. These tools aim to elevate how Ecolab personnel identify, deliver and quantify value in customer environments. Ecolab Chief Digital Officer Kevin Doyle Ecolab A major initiative involves using AI to share knowledge across the global field team. 'If you're in Southeast Asia or southeast Idaho and you've got a dairy plant that you're serving, you might have ideas that never cross paths,' he said. 'We're now surfacing those to people as opportunities to say, 'have you considered these things?' They've created value for customers in other places.' This approach transforms siloed knowledge into scalable insights, helping the field organization make smarter, faster decisions on the ground. Monetizing Digital with Subscriptions and Scalable Services Doyle and his team have also developed new ways to monetize Ecolab's digital assets. 'We really built a strategy around not only our connected devices but the applications and the services that we're deploying,' he said. This includes subscription-based offerings that integrate software, hardware and support services, creating a new revenue stream for the company. The model goes beyond device installation to include consumption-based pricing and value-based outcomes. 'Much like our cloud providers charge us for the amount of compute that we use, we're doing similar things for our customers,' Doyle said. The approach reinforces Ecolab's commitment to delivering measurable impact, whether through water conservation, energy efficiency or operational downtime. '[We are] coming to them in a different way through insights than maybe in the historic sense of purely chemicals or equipment,' he added. Digitizing the Supply Chain and Harnessing AI Ecolab's internal operations have also been transformed through digitization, particularly in the supply chain. Doyle's team is rethinking how ERP, transportation and quality systems can be enhanced with data and artificial intelligence. 'We're doing design sessions at the operations levels to understand processes that we might improve quality through vision control or vision AI,' he said. The company applies many of the same innovations it develops for customers to its own facilities. 'A lot of those things that we're delivering for customers are custom applications that we're developing based on the hundred years of experience that Ecolab has,' Doyle underscored with pride. From predictive maintenance to real-time plant optimization, the internal digitization strategy mirrors the external, allowing Ecolab to 'validate the offering is going to create the value we expect' before going to market. Innovation as a Collaborative Cross-Functional Engine At the heart of Ecolab's innovation strategy is a highly collaborative model. Doyle's team brings together engineers, developers, AI specialists and user-experience designers with subject matter experts from across the business. 'Bring me someone from R&D, from the field, from marketing, from finance,' Doyle said. 'Then generally we use some form of design thinking process or session where we're getting a cross-functional group together, collaborating in a highly engaging, highly energized environment.' The group operates in pods that rapidly prototype new solutions. 'You can't PowerPoint people to death in the digital space,' Doyle emphasized. 'A lot of people can create pretty PowerPoints, but can you turn that into technology that's going to be valuable?' With the help of generative and agentic AI, Doyle's team now launches apps in days instead of months. 'Our innovation program is really about how do we leverage AI, how do we take the data and insights, what problems are we trying to solve for customers,' he said. 'And then we do a rapid iteration.' This blend of heritage and agility, leveraging a century of domain expertise while adopting cutting-edge technology, defines Doyle's digital playbook. In his hands, innovation is not just about novelty but about continuously renewing how Ecolab serves its customers and employees in a fast-changing world. Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written three bestselling books, including his latest Getting to Nimble. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
Washington Post
a day ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Hundreds gather to remember prominent Minnesota lawmaker and husband slain in their home
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Hundreds of people, some clutching candles or carrying flowers to lay in front of a memorial, gathered outside Minnesota's Capitol on Wednesday evening for a vigil to remember a prominent state lawmaker and her husband who were gunned down at their home . As a brass quintet from the Minnesota Orchestra played, Gov. Tim Walz wiped away tears and comforted attendees at the gathering for former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were killed early Saturday in the northern Minneapolis suburbs. Colin Hortman, the Hortmans' son, embraced Walz and lay a photo of his parents on the memorial. The memorial, which sprang up outside the Capitol after the killings, features flowers, American flags, photos and sticky notes with such messages as, 'Thank you for always believing in me and in Minnesota' and 'We got this from here. Thank you for everything.' Wednesday's vigil also included a Native American drum circle, a string quartet and the crowd singing 'Amazing Grace.' Around the gathering, there was a heavy police presence, with law enforcement blocking off streets leading up to the Capitol and state troopers standing guard. The event didn't include a speaking program and attendees were instructed not to bring signs of any kind. The man charged in federal and state court with killing the Hortmans, Vance Boelter , is also accused of shooting another Democratic lawmaker, Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, at their home a few miles away in Champlin. They survived and are recovering. Federal prosecutors have declined to speculate about a motive. Boelter's attorneys have declined to comment on the charges. Hortman had served as the top House Democratic leader since 2017, and six years as speaker, starting in 2019. Under a power-sharing deal after the 2024 election left the House tied, her title became speaker emerita and Republican Rep. Lisa Demuth became speaker. Walz has described Hortman as his closest political ally and 'the most consequential Speaker in state history.' The Hortmans were alumni of the University of Minnesota, which held a midday memorial gathering on the Minneapolis campus. Rebecca Cunningham, the university's president, spoke during the event about the grief and outrage people are grappling with along with questions about how things got to this point. 'I don't have the answers to these questions but I know that finding answers starts with the coming together in community as we are today,' she said. Funeral information for the Hortmans has not been announced. ___ Golden reported from Seattle. Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
Associated Press
a day ago
- Politics
- Associated Press
Photos of candlelight vigil honoring slain Minnesota lawmaker and her husband
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Hundreds gathered outside Minnesota's Capitol for a candlelight vigil honoring former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were fatally shot at their home. Governor Tim Walz, visibly moved, comforted mourners as the couple's son, Colin, placed a photo of his parents at a growing memorial filled with flowers, flags and heartfelt messages. ___ This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.
