North St. Paul is a town of 3.1 square miles, with a six block-long Main Street. A small industrial village turned first-ring suburb, North St. Paul embraces its small-town feel but also recognizes it is part of a larger region.
With 125 years of history, North St. Paul is a tight-knit community with bonds to the town atmosphere, its neighbors, and their shared past. But it is also a town that looks to the future, embracing technology and seeking new ways to capture the next wave of innovation and ingenuity to propel the community forward.
With an abundance of city parks, schools, churches, a quaint downtown district, and peaceful neighborhoods, North St. Paul is a town with a great quality of life. It is connected to a thriving metropolitan region, and appreciates how this enhances residents’ access to a diversity of jobs, cultural and recreational opportunities, quality health care, and higher education opportunities.
Although as a community North St. Paul seeks to become more “urban” by investing in progressive infrastructure improvements and more compact development, it will strive to preserve the small-town atmosphere by ensuring that future projects adhere to a quality design standard and aesthetic character.
The electric and water utilities were purchased from private investors in 1898. A single well and a small electric generator located on the south shore of Silver Lake served as a beginning for what today is a proud tradition of citizen owned and operated municipal utilities.
Today the City of North St. Paul and eleven other municipal utilities purchase wholesale power through the Minnesota Municipal Power Agency. North St. Paul provides electric, sewer and water services for all of the city and parts of Maplewood and Oakdale. North St. Paul Utilities services electric power to 5,685 residential customers and 525 commercial customers, and water and wastewater service to 4,579 customers.