News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Sunday September 6th 2026
A New Chapter at Abbott Northwestern Hospital: Built with the Community, for the Community
By WHITNEY JOHNSON, Vice President, Hospital Operations, Allina Health
Care teams at Allina Health’s new Richard M. Schulze Surgical and Critical Care Center will welcome their first patients on August 29. This 620,000-square-foot facility is the centerpiece of the Abbott Northwestern Hospital campus revitalization project, which also included upgrades to 10th Avenue, an energy-efficient Central Utility Plant (CUP) and the Purple Ramp. None of this would be possible without the support of the Phillips community and the generous donors of the Allina Health Foundation.
“We’ve been here for more than 140 years, and this is the next step in providing healthcare to this community and being a good neighbor to this community for another century,” said Tony LaCroix-Dalluhn, vice president, Facilities Management, Allina Health.
The 10-floor center includes 30 operating rooms designed to enhance safety and support advanced technology, including an intraoperative magnetic resonance imaging (iMRI) system that can move between two surgery suites. There are 190 single-occupancy patient rooms, each equipped with a ceiling lift and space for accessibility equipment. Rooms also include a pullout couch so families can stay comfortably with their loved ones.… Read the rest “A New Chapter at Abbott Northwestern Hospital: Built with the Community, for the Community”
No Escaping the Heat
249th from Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery…
By SUE HUNTER WEIR
born in Christiana (now Oslo) Norway in 1871. She died from
heatstroke on July 17, 1901. She was 30 years old. Anna
Johnson was buried in the same lot in 1911. Their relationship is
uncertain. PHOTO: Tim McCall
It’s only August and this already feels like a too-long summer. Prolonged temperatures in the nineties. Records being broken. Although the scope and scale are bigger, this isn’t a recent phenomenon. Recorded deaths in Minneapolis due to heat and sunstroke date back to the 1860s and there were undoubtedly many more that went unrecorded before that. The Cemetery’s recorded death due to heatstroke was that of an “unknown German man” on July 16, 1866. Nothing else was known about him.
While conventional wisdom claims that it is the very young and the elderly who are most susceptible to the effects of heat, this was not the case for the twenty-one people whose cause of death was recorded as “sunstroke” or “heatstroke.” Only two of them were in their sixties. Eight were in their forties, and another five were in their thirties.… Read the rest “No Escaping the Heat”
Keep citizen journalism alive!
Damage Done
from the series Something I Said…
By DWIGHT HOBBES
ICE, the curse that keeps on giving. Operation Metro Surge was ostensibly called off, though as of June, hundreds of agents stayed, keeping a lower profile than committing outright assault and cold blooded murder. The damage is still done. On top of lousing up immigrant lives, actually dragging people away from work and worse, ICE cost Minnesotans somewhere around 5,700 hospitality jobs and 4,400 construction jobs from December of last year to this February alone. This is verified by federal data. North Star Policy Action researcher Aaron Rosenthal told The Minnesota Reformer early estimates for the same period were $46 million and $106 million in lost wages across Minneapolis and St. Paul.
This is not just about dollars and doesn’t make the first bit of common sense. Nor does Minnesota GOP lawmakers refusing state aid to compensate Minneapolis’ revenue losses. They cited DFL pro-immigrant policies for Operation Metro Surge being there in the first place. With the Minnesota House of Representatives reporting East Lake Street businesses along what’s dubbed “Little Mexico” experiencing 80% to 100% losses, this passing the buck sounds suspiciously like color coding and amounts to blaming victims for Democrats being socially progressive.… Read the rest “Damage Done”