The Crookston Housing and Economic Development Authority met on Tuesday morning inside Valley Technology Park. Community Development Director Kari Kirschbaum was absent from the meeting.
HOUSING REPORT
After approving the Consent Agenda, the board heard from Crookston Housing & EDA Staff Member Theresa Tahran on the Public Housing Report. “Our main highlights right now are that we are seeing some turnover. Some are moving out, and others are making transitions,” said Tahran. “We are trying to get the community back together out at Oak Court, so we are doing different events to try and bring people together. With our workforce housing, we will know more once the snow melts, and then with Section 8 we have quite a few clients leased up and roughly ten looking for housing at this time.”
OLD BUSINESS
The board then heard updates on Industrial Park, and Pirate Drive from City Administrator Corky Reynolds. “What I mentioned to the board is that out at Industrial Park were moving ahead with construction of the 10-ton road for the Ag Innovation Campus,” said Reynolds. That is something the city is committed to doing and we are starting that process. We are still pursuing grants to help with the construction process, and we believe that looks favorable, but we won’t know until we get the acknowledgement on those. Either way the construction will go ahead.”
Reynolds also mentioned there wasn’t much of an update on Pirate Drive other than the water modeling can now begin once the snow is gone.
There was then an update of the redevelopment of the B3 Grant program given by Kaymee Denault. They are looking to change the name and redefine the criteria. “Right now, we are still waiting for the surveys we sent out to the downtown businesses to come back to us,” said Denault. Once we get those back, we will better understand their needs and how to best serve them. With this change, we are looking at rename this the “Crookston Storefront Revitalization Loan”. The purpose of the program is for businesses to be able to revitalize their storefronts especially with the Highway 2 corridor coming into play.”
If you are a business owner and need a new survey you can contact City Hall at 218-281-1232.
MAIN AGENDA
The first item on the main agenda was updating the board on a Federal Disaster Declaration. Polk County has been declared eligible for the Federal Disaster funding once again this year meaning the Crookston Housing & EDA may be eligible to receive funding for infrastructure that can help with flooding. There are a few more meetings that will take place before the Housing & EDA knows what they are eligible to receive.
The second and only other item on the main agenda was talking about marketing in Crookston. The University of Minnesota Crookston has had some students engaged this second semester in coming up with a marketing plan for the city of Crookston. The students have worked with surveys and course materials and will be presenting to Kari Kirschbaum and Corky Reynolds next week on their thoughts of the best way to market Crookston.
OTHER BUSINESS
Kaymee Denault ending the meeting by going over the following grant opportunities the Crookston Housing & EDA has on their radar for the future. They are listed below.
- Safe Routes for All Grant (For Safe Roadways)
- Small Cities Grant (For citizens to apply for who need work on their homes)
- Communities Development Block Grant (No information on this one yet)
- Redevelopment Grant (Ties together with Demolition Loan Grant)
- Demolition Loan Grant (Ties together with Redevelopment Grant)
