Twin Cities, Chapter 31

1. Introduction

Shortly after Remington Rand bought out ERA in 1952, a new engineering, manufacturing, and management building was built along the Mississippi across the river from historic Ft. Snelling.  As the new St. Paul corporate headquarters it was labeled Plant 1, Sperry Park while the facility on Minnehaha was re-labeled Plant 2. Business was growing so a Plant 3 manufacturing facility was leased on Prior Avenue three blocks south of Plant 2, the original ERA facility (See the 1961 illustration at the right.)
     The local commercial operations grew out of the Plant 1 facility so in 1961 the company began leasing buildings in the suburb of Roseville - called Plant 4. Those were noted as buildings 1, 2, and 3.  The last of these buildings (#3) was occupied by UNISYS until June 23, 2017 when they merged operations in Eagan.  Building 3 was the site of many of the VIP Club meetings from 1986 through 2016.
     In the late '50s even more engineering space was needed so a large building just South of Plant 2 on Prior avenue was rented to become Plant 5.  Yet more space was needed in the early '60s, a 1961 illustration at the right. A small building along side the Mississippi just North of the Ford plant became a training facility and document storage building - Plant 6. Another small building alongside Hwy 280 just north of East Hennepin Ave. was rented, Plant 7, was close to Plant 4. The old Northwest Airlines office building on University Avenue was leased and called Plant 8.  There is some controversy in that some VIP Club members recall that the Northwest Airlines building was also called Plant 6 because the original Plant 6 was no longer being leased.  Plants 2, 3, 5, and original plant 8 were within walking distance of each other.  

Lunch breaks, dinner breaks for evening workers, and occasional project parties all took place at Eslinger's on University Avenue, half-way between plants 5 and 3.  A few napkin designs over a cold brew often led to problem solutions thus "Slinger's" was occasionally called plant 9, albeit tongue-in-cheek.

     In 1967 a new headquarters facility in Eagan opened, named Plant 8 because the University Ave. plant 8 site was closed. In 1987, shortly after Burroughs bought Sperry to form UNISYS, the corporation occupied 28 facilities in the Twin Cities area, as listed in the table below. 

A 1986 Sperry newsletter has a brief description of the local buildings then - and pictures too. This was submitted to the Legacy by Paul Dickson. 

In the 80's Unisys, Roseville had rented space in the Water's Edge building at the intersection of Hwy 36 and Snelling Avenue.

Note that the original ERA buildings are discussed in the Locations Chapter 30 [lab]

2. 1987 Twin Cities Facilities

All twenty eight of these buildings were occupied by UNISYS personnel in January, 1987 shortly after Burroughs had purchased Sperry to form UNiversal Information SYStems.

Name	Street	MN City	ZIP	Notes
Building 1	2276 Highcrest Road	Roseville	55113	Plant 4 & Credit Union
Building 2	2391 Walnut Street	Roseville	55113	Plant 4
Building 3	2470 Highcrest Road	Roseville	55113	Plant 4
Building 4	1301 Industrial Blvd.	Minneapolis	55413	An old post office
Waters Edge	1500 W. Co. Rd. B-2	Roseville	55113	Mn/DOT since 1995
Midway	1902 Minnehaha Ave. W.	St. Paul	55104	Plant 2
Shepard Road	2751 Shepard Road	St. Paul	55116	Plant 1
Sperry Park	3333 Pilot Knob Road	Eagan	55121	Plant 8 - Lockheed Martin MS2
Semiconductor Operations	1500 Tower View Road	Eagan	55121	Defense Systems
Consolidated Facilities	3199 Pilot Knob Road	Eagan	55121	MACS Building
Materials Management Ctr.	1200 Trapp Road	Eagan	55121	?
Eagandale Business Campus	1301 Corporate Center Dr.	Eagan	55121	Defense Systems
Eagandale Business Campus	1270 Eagan Industrial Rd	Eagan	55121	Defense Systems
Eagandale Business Campus	1285 Corporate Center Dr.	Eagan	55121	Defense Systems
Eagandale Center	1305 Corporate Center Dr	Eagan	55121	Defense Systems
Federal Information Systems	2535 Pilot Knob Road	Mendota Heights	55121	was Burroughs
Reconditioning Center	2465 So. Lexington	Mendota Heights	55120	was Burroughs
Education Center	2001 Killebrew Drive	Bloomington	55420	was Burroughs
Metro	3001 Metro Drive	Bloomington	55420	?
Corporate Square C	3110 Neil Armstrong Blvd.	Eagan	55121	Defense Systems
Corporate Square D	3140 Neil Armstrong Blvd.	Eagan	55121	Defense Systems
Corporate Square E	990 Apollo Road	Eagan	55121	Defense Systems
Yankee Square 4	3459 Washington Drive	Eagan	55122	Defense Systems
ARTS III Test	6301 34th Ave. S	Minneapolis	55450	Defense Systems (at airport)
Regional CSE	5215 Edina Industrial Blvd	Edina	55435	was Burroughs
CSE Parts	5259 Edina Industrial Blvd	Edina	55435	was Burroughs
Branch Marketing	251 Lafayette Road	St. Paul	55107	was Burroughs
Branch Marketing	6130 Blue Circle Drive	Minnetonka	55343	was Burroughs

This chart data was provided by Bernie Jansen

3.  Facility Descriptions

3.1 Plant 1

 Plant 1 opened about September of 1956 according to Jim Hyslop who was hired in December 1956. The 'freeway' road at the top of the picture is West 7^th Street. West 7^th to the right leads to down town St. Paul. To the left crosses the Mississippi River to Ft. Snelling, Minneapolis, and the airport. The roadway along the front of the UNIVAC building ended at the parking lot. Near the top center along the frontage road was Gannon's restaurant, the site of the first 'First Friday' luncheon meetings.

The rectangle in the picture's center behind Plant 1 shows the footings for a 1965 plant expansion - to become a 35,000 sq. ft. area for manufacturing the Nike-Zeus computer's film memory. Later this facility housed the first automated back-panel wire-wrap machines brought on board for the CP-901, UYK-7, ..., manufacturing.

Today, this road is an expressway following the river (Shepard Road) to downtown St. Paul.  This second UNIVAC photo shows an addition on the east side with a finished freeway like Shepard Road along the Mississippi river.

3.2 Plant 3,

Awaiting inputs for this section. In 1965, the Defense Systems Division¹ announced the acquisition of 11,000 sq. ft of existing floor space at Plant 3. This plant was walking distance from Plant 5, Plant 2, and Esslinger's Restaurant.

3.3 Plant 4

       In 1961 near the intersection of Highways 36 and 280, the company¹ became the first 'Space Center' tenet as they leased 130.000 square feet of space [Building 1] from the owners, St. Paul Terminal Warehouse Co. The Univac Data Processing Division continued to grow, adding 23,700 sq. ft. in 1962 in Building 2, 25,000 in 1963, 24.300 sq. ft. in 1964, then an additional 182,640 square feet in 1965 as they opened building 3, the current Plant 4. {Editor's note: Building 3 was vacated on 23 June 2017 as Roseville operations were combined with the UNISYS Eagan operations. [lab]   

During our LEGACY, the commercial operations transitioned to independence from the defense operations during the 60s. Through the late 50s to the late 60s, Plant 1 housed a military computer center and a commercial computer center with an 1107 across the hall from each other. During the 70s and 80s the two organizations held annual joint technology exchange forums at Craguns' Resort in Northern Minnesota.   

  Another aspect of the LEGACY was the almost free transfer of talented managers and engineers between defense and commercial as projects started or waned. Glen Kregness, Bob Oulicky, and Tom Soller are three that immediately come to mind. Brothers Tom Petschauer worked at Plant 8 while Dick Petschauer worked at Plant 4 - both in engineering management. [lab]

In 2009 Buildings 1 and 2 were razed to make space for re-development. At the right is building 1 as photographed in June by Bruce Hyslop - UNISYS employee and son of Jim Hyslop who is a UNIVAC retiree.  

At the left is building 2 as photographed by UNISYS employee Gary Rist in July 2009.

     ^1. UNIVAC NEWS TWIN CITIES SECTION June-July, 1965 

3.5 Plant 5

Plant 5 was located on Prior Avenue adjacent to the plant 2 facility.  I, Lowell, was first in this plant in 1962 when the Automatic Antenna Coupler (ACC) design department and ACC manufacturing management departments were moved there from plant 1.  I do not recall which other departments were in the building.  The front of the building on Prior Avenue had two stories, the second had offices of engineering directors; George Raymond, Jay Kershaw, et al'.  The ACC engineering dept. had an electronics laboratory in which development testing took place.  The field service engineers (under Bob Brown) were in that lab and the ACC draftsmen played 'Washers' during lunch breaks. Chuck Donahue, Paul Dietzler, Oscar Hayman, et al'.   Plant 5 was also a small technical writing department there, reporting to Don Anderson.  I was in that group for ~6 weeks the spring of 1963 as an editor after the ACC departments were being transition to Sperry Marine in SC.

   The back of the building had a mezzanine, in 1973 I had a desk there as a supervisor of 1616 & UYK-15 continuation engineering reporting to manager Bob Oulicky.  Also there was the CP-890 support engineering group under the direction of supervisor, Ray Dombeck.  I recall that Bob Jablonski came into the group as we did the 1616 design conversion into the 3760 communications processor.  The unique thing about the 3760 was that we developed an 8-bit parallel daisy chain interface feature so that the unit could operate with IBM hardware.  Don Shore did most of the mechanical design for that unit.  This group had a 'once a month' bridge evening with 8 people - I, Lowell, was an occasional substitute with them.  AND, most were avid fishermen -  Shown here are Al Keding and Bob Oulicky with a walleye from Lake Mille Lacs suring a February ice fishing outing.  [lab]

3.6 Plant 6.

Chuck Homan told me [LABenson] that he'd worked in Plant 6 across from the Ford plant when UNIVAC first leased it.  They called it the Micro-Tone building because that was the previous tenant.  This building was the training site for a period of time, both programmers and field service engineers.  The snapshot at the left shows a card punch, a magnetic tape unit, and a computer along with an instructor and two students using an oscilloscope. I think that Dan Newton is on the left and Hal Rogers on the right.

3.7 Plant 6, the second.

Many people are familiar with the old Northwest Airlines building located on University Avenue in St. Paul, just East of Prior Avenue. This was originally identified as plant 8 although a few knew it as the second Plant 6.

3.8 Plant 7.

This building was along the west side of Highway 280 between Hennepin Avenue and Broadway. For awhile during the early '60s there was an old airplane shell underneath some of the adjacent power line stanchions.  These has long since been razed and been replaced with a truck servicing operation.

3.9 Plant 8.

The Eagan home of Lockheed Martin MS2 was built in the 60s, [see the Sept. 6, 1967 news, right] expanded in the 70s and has been modernized a few times since then.  Note the newspaper clipping proudly states that this is the "Twin Cities' 8th". 

Shortly after opening, the Military Computer Test Center was moved into the basement from its former location behind the visitor's entrance of plant 1. 

Below is a 2013 snapshot of the Eagan plant 8 facility razing before the ground was bared for development of a shopping center.

 

3.10 MACS Building 

Shown here, just to the North of Plant 8 is the 'MACS' building, a UNISYS commercial systems support building.  This building was erected in 1987 to consolidate the various Burroughs facilities that had been in several places around the cities. The north facing visitor's entrance is the VIP Club's meeting entrance when scheduled with management. In 2017, the Roseville operations will be moving into the building wing at the right of the flags.  

During 2025 the Unisys operations will be transitioning to Woodbury as Corporate Unisys sold this area in 2024 - the last site owned by the corporation. All other operational sites are at leased facilities. [lab]

3.11 Semiconductor Operations

The original semiconductor research and manufacturing facility was in the basement of the west wing of the plant 8 facility. They later expanded and constructed a separate new semiconductor facility at the NW corner of the Eagan property, circa 1968. The center of the building was separately isolated on air cushions to isolate it from ground vibrations which might have compromised the photolithography steps during semiconductor processing. [LDBolton] 

Early products of this semi-conductor facility included MNOS memory chips for an Air Force project and custom VLSI devices for the UYK-43 and UYK-44 projects.  It was also the site for research into radiation hardened CMOS technology under Dr. Wells.   [lab]

In 2013 we posted Our Stories 182, July:  Semiconductors at UNIVAC  by Bernard 'Mike' Svendsen.

In 2019 we posted Our Stories Nov:Micro-1100, Carl Johnson has donated two displays to the Lawshe Memorial Museum to exhibit the 1980's development of this VLSI chip set that became the core of the UNISYS 2200 product line.

45 1/2 years later (March 2013) the facility was razed to make way for new business developments. Most of the defense industry projects have been phased out or transferred to other facilities around the US since November 2011 when LMCO made their 'facility closing' announcement.

3.12 Others

The Air Traffic Management (ATM) engineering group and a small 'think tank' group of engineers continued an LMCO presence in Minnesota in 2013 at a leased facility on Quarry Road, which intersects with Pilot Knob Road. A very small group of engineer/scientists reporting to the LMCO Advance Technology Department remains.

This ATM group was spun off into the Liedos corporation in 2016.   [lab]