Members of the Crookston Housing and Economic Development Authority Board and Crookston City Council toured the new Selkirk on 4th building in Grand Forks Monday night and heard a pitch from the development team to build a similar facility in downtown Crookston. The building is designed by JLG Architects, who completed the recent downtown plan for Crookston, Community Contractors, and Dakota Commercial.
The proposed building would be located along Ash Street between Robert and Fletcher Street with a multi-use building on the corner of Fletcher and Ash and a new town square developed by the contractor and purchased by the city on the corner of Robert and Ash where the old American Legion building sits. The town square would feature a bandshell, a city advertisement board, and room for several hundred spectators explained Craig Tweten, President of Community Contractors. “The market (town square) will be a nice area for the public to go to events,” said Tweten. “There would be a band stage there, a lot of sitting area for potential summer activities. There would be winter activities there also. There’d be restrooms to use. That would be right off the corner. There would be a large screen outside (the square) showing events for the community.”
The multi-use building which could hold a community center if the City of Crookston wanted to use it or a business and apartments would be located south of the square on the parking lot currently owned by the city. Tweten said residents would have underground parking available via a small ramp and garage door off Ash Street. “Next door, we’d do a multi-use building that would have approximately 38 units of housing,” said Tweten. “The first floor would be approximately 8,000 square feet of a multi-use space the city would work with. Using it for senior development, it could be all sorts of activities, weddings, the list goes on and on. Then there will be underground parking for all the housing units. And then, we’d also have a rooftop terrace for the people in the housing area. It would be upscale, nice housing and I think for downtown Crookston it would make a difference. I think even for retired individuals who want to move to town, live downtown, doctors, nurses, college students. I just think it will be a really nice space in town.”
If approved the entire project including the city’s share for a new town square would cost approximately $9.5 million said, Tweten. “It would be a P3, public, private partnership,” said Tweten. “There is approximately $8 million for the housing, approximately $1.5 for the town square that the city would actually own. We’d develop the whole project including design and everything all the way through. And we try to work as much as we can with all local trades.”
Tweten said they’ve already talked to utility providers about service and have a purchase agreement for the American Legion and demolition bids should the project be approved by the City of Crookston. He said the city would pay for the town square and the financing for the building would be through a TIF and loans by the developers. “We do have a contract on that temporarily, which has to be extended,” said Tweten. “But then we’d just pass that on to the city. The city would maybe do a bond for that portion of the project. And then we’d get a TIF on our building and for the rest financially, we’d be getting loans for that.”
Under the plan, Ash Street would need to be reconstructed, however, Tweten said during the tour that Rich Clauson, Crookston’s City Engineer with Widseth, had suggested he thought the reconstruction work would likely be eligible to be funded through a state grant minimizing or even eliminating the cost for Crookston.
City Councilman Bobby Baird said he was excited about the project. “I’m really excited about this,” said Baird. “There was a lot of talk about the different things we could do with that building. Overlooking the river, underground parking, it’s going to be a big plus coming into Crookston. I’m pretty excited about it if we can make something work here.”
Baird also said he thought a new, more visible town square would be a plus for Crookston. “I think that will give that a lot of visibility to the people putting on the farmer’s market and just the options,” said Baird. “We can do movies and things there. People coming into town will see it and stop. The bad thing where it’s at now is visibility and stuff. I think it’s a big plus. We can use that green space for that. We’re trying to get multi-use out of it. That’s what we want. That will be a plus.”
If approved by the city, construction would be scheduled to start in spring 2021 with completion in 2022.
[embeddoc url=”https://kroxam.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Crookston-Mixed-Use-Building.pdf”]
