Pohlad-owned firm that makes rocket-building machines plans to expand by 40%

Par Systems' new $20 million laboratory and production facility in Shoreview has specific needs.

It needs 42-foot-high ceilings with cranes to work on its supersized machines, including ones used to make rocket boosters for NASA and mechanical claws that removed radioactive waste after the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters.

Yet it also needs clean rooms to develop the tiny machines that coat the thinnest of medical catheters.

Par — owned by the Pohlad family, which also owns the Twins — will build the 140,000-square-foot structure on land vacated when Deluxe Corp. moved its headquarters downtown.

It will be completed next fall, and will boost Par's factory capacity by 40%.

It's badly needed and will go a long way toward meeting the company's goal of also boosting revenue by 40% over the next five years, CEO Karla Leis said on Tuesday.

"We're hiring a lot and we're kind of squeezing people in. Even our engineers' desks are cramped and we're pretty much all here in person now so we definitely need the space," she said. "It will just be fantastic to have more innovative and versatile space for the team."

With the new facility, Par hopes to add 26 to 30 new workers in each of the next five years. Currently, the company employs 500 people, 260 of them in the 100,000-square-foot factory that sits just south of where the new facility will be.

The new facility will include a state-of-the-art clean room and three new process and development laboratories to meet the growing needs of customers in the aerospace, nuclear and medical device fields, the company said.

It's also an economic development win for the city of Shoreview, home of the former Deluxe complex, which has been razed.

Par's development is one of three buildings going up on the site, which has been renamed Seven Lakes. There also will be two 150,000-square-foot buildings, with one becoming a Fairview Health Services pharmaceuticals site, the city said.

"It's all part of a great employment center that we're reincarnating since Deluxe vacated Shoreview," said Tom Simonson, the city's community development director.

Construction of Par's building will be managed by R.J. Ryan Construction and is expected to create 300 construction jobs, the city said. Pope Design Group and commercial real estate development firm Scannell Properties are other partners in the project.

"It will be a fun project," said Nate Ryan, vice president of the Mendota Heights construction company. "This is a big win for the city of Shoreview."

The company must figure out how to work in the large overhead cranes that will flexibly handle various stages of production for the massive machinery Par makes.

"We tend to work on projects that a typical automation company wouldn't take on," Leis said. "So it's often a first-of-a-kind automation project we take on that others might say is not possible. We tend to find a way. This new facility will allow us to scale our operations to meet the evolving needs of our customers while continuing to push the boundaries of what's possible in automation."

The labs will focus on three key customer needs: robotics; the extra-strong friction-stir welding technology used to make NASA rocket boosters and airplane parts; and the complex cameras used to create "machine vision" in high-speed manufacturing equipment, Leis said.

The expansion is a second significant project for Leis since being named president of the company in 2021 and CEO in 2022.

Leis' first task was getting the company ready for the big sprint to growth by boosting employee retention and engagement and creating a culture that could support the expansion.

Now, the company needs space and updated technology to help customers "solve riddles" and get their products to market faster, Leis said.