A NEW ASSET

Theres a new jewel on the St. Paul landscape, a facility that helps further develop the health-care corridor north of downtown.

HealthPartners innovative neuroscience center joins its two other facilities on Phalen Boulevard, as well as nearby Regions Hospital.

Monday was opening day for the $75 million facility, believed to be the largest freestanding neuroscience center in the Upper Midwest. Its intended to serve 50,000 patients a year, providing a distinct advantage to St. Paul and the east metro in the face of an aging population and spiraling numbers living with Alzheimers disease and dementia.

It brings neuroscience specialties together in one place, one that includes soothing colors and meaningful artwork in a physical layout intended to make visits easier for patients and their caregivers.

We werepleased to get an earlylook at the 130,000-square-foot building that will serve people with a range of neurological conditions, including stroke, brain tumors, spinal injuries and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Features include a state-of-the-art rehabilitation department and a research laboratory that handles about 40 projects a year, many of them related to Alzheimers.

Among sustainability features at the building site of a community open house from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on May 13 is one called daylight harvesting, whereby lights automatically adjust depending on the amount of sunshine coming through the windows.

Garbage-gate ruffled feathers in St. Paul this week and made its point.

Erich Mische, a St. Paul resident who workedin previous mayoral administrations, organized cleanup of a trash heap at 10th and Wacouta streets. The downtown site where homeless people had camped is the states responsibility, but the city should have been more assertive in dealing with the situation, Ricardo Cervantes, St. Pauls director of safety and inspections, acknowledged in a Pioneer Press report. The clean-up and protest included delivering garbage bags cleared from the site to City Hall.

On Twitter, Mayor Chris Coleman thanked the vols who spent their Sunday cleaning up the garbage, including Erich Mische and acknowledged that the accumulation of trash was unacceptable.

We can all do better, he said in another tweet, reminding folks about the St. Paul Parks cleanup day on April 22. The event brings people together between 9 and 11:30 a.m. to help beautify the city. Details on eight kick-offsites around townand registration information are at stpaul.gov/news/register-now-citywide-cleanup-april-22.

Weveappreciated over the years the work of the Minnesota office of theInstituteforJustice, dedicated to protecting what it describes as foundational rights of the American Dream: property rights, free speech, educational choice and economic liberty.

It did so this week when Gov. Mark Dayton signed into law a bill that would give a Minnesotan a chance to keep his or her vehicle after someone else is convicted of driving it while intoxicated, according to a Pioneer Press report. It notes that existing law allowed the vehicle to be forfeited even if the owner was not the driver.

Lee McGrath, the institutes senior legislative counsel and managing attorney here, told us this is the fourth reform enacted since the institute began working on the matter in 2009.

Gov. Dayton and the Legislature have taken an important step to address every Minnesotans right to an appropriate legal process, McGrath told us. The next step is to end civil forfeiture and replace it with the appropriate process, which is criminal forfeiture.

We found some numbers worth noting in last weeks State of the City address by St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman:

Further, swiftly flow the years, Opinuendo sayeth not.

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Friday Opinuendo: On neuroscience, clean-up, property rights and more - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press