Progress is being made on the Fournet Building not only on the demolition front but on the tenant front as well. The Ninth District Public Defenders Crookston Branch is set to move from the Polk County Justice Center into the former Four Seasons part of the building this summer and will eventually take larger office space on the third floor said developer Jeff Evers.
Initially, the plan was to demolition the third-floor in the current phase but not fully renovate it until a second phase of the redevelopment project began. But with the Public Defenders moving in the renovations will be completed within the initial phase of the project. Evers said the addition of the third-floor tenant will get the building moving along by speeding up the remodeling process. “It’s really going to help the building to move along, get the remodeling going faster,” said Evers. “It will really fill up the atrium area. It’s good to be moving the project in the right direction.”
The second floor has been demolished and work on the third floor is expected to begin Tuesday morning. The only part of the upper two floors that will look like the building historically did is the atrium, including the banister staircase. “The demo is going good,” said Evers. “The second floor is pretty much swept. We are moving the small tractor up to the third-floor tomorrow morning and going hard at that. I would hope that the third floor would be demoed during the month of May. We’re still working on the main floor and kind of doing all the remodels at the same time. We’re going from the third floor maybe down to the first floor for a bit then back up to the third floor. We’re able to keep all the demo to the west side of the building, which is basically the back of the building so that is nice. People in front maybe don’t know that anything major is happening unless they are maybe seeing all the electricians.”
Evers said he hopes to have his two primary tenants moved into their new homes sometime this fall or winter but acknowledged it may take until spring. “That’s the million-dollar question,” said Evers. “I don’t know would probably be the fairest or honest answer. There are a couple of things in this project I’m not used to like the elevator and the skylights. If everything else moves along I think fall to winter would be the idea. I hope that we’re not still here in the spring, but we may be. The public defenders will be on the main floor and they’ll move up whenever. And Tri-Valley has been really good to work with as far as the timeline, being really flexible. I’m really shooting for fall to winter.”
