The Crookston Housing and Economic Development Authority (CHEDA) Board met on Tuesday morning and voted to sell parcel #82.03751.00 located directly north of B & E Meats to Total Lawn Care. Morgan Terpstra, the owner of Total Lawn Care, told the board they plan to begin work on the property this spring with completion by summer 2021. “This spring we’ll do all the groundwork and put in the gravel road to get around on the property,” said Terpstra. “In the summer we’ll put up the building and get the main stuff put up. In the fall we’ll do the earthwork provided we have time do it ourselves. In the winter we’ll do the inside of the building completed with tin in the showroom, breakroom, offices and upstairs breakroom for the guys during winter storms. Next spring (2021) we’ll do some hardscaping outside with some water features and irrigation on the grounds and next summer we’ll do all the finishing touches we can.”
Terpstra said the building will include a showroom, offices, and shop. “We’re going to put up a shop that holds all of our equipment in one spot,” said Terpstra. “And then have a salesroom upfront. We’re going to sell like landscape lighting and salt material for residential and businesses. And a showroom we can provide for the community.”
The board also received a report from Adam Wagner, owner of Vertical Malt, on his plans to break ground on a new malt house this summer including cutting square feet to reduce capital outlay and increase the efficiency of space. “One of the things that was driving the cost was we had a lot of square footage originally,” said Wagner. “It’s nice to have extra elbow room but the reality was we didn’t need that extra space. We were able to carve out quite a bit of additional square footage in the building and that’s going to help drive a lot of those costs down. That’s going to make the whole thing a lot more feasible. When we looked at it, it’s a lot more efficient use of space. As far as groundbreaking we’re targeting summer of this year. There is quite a bit of homework that needs to be done between now and then but its something we think is possible to move forward this year. If we break ground this summer, we’re hoping that by this time next year we’re able to be producing malt.”
The production side of the facility design is complete while the final design elements deal with some of the fit and finish type aspects of the facility said, Wagner. “We’re getting really close on a lot of things,” said Wagner. “We’re waiting on some final price tags from some of the contractors, but the design elements are all in place. We know, generally, what the plant is going to look like. There is little fit and finish things that, there is always question marks around that stuff. That’s almost trivial at this point. None of that is the process by any means so doesn’t really impact the performance of the plant. It’s just a matter of how much money I want to spend.”
Wagner said the Briess Malt (in Chilton, Wisconsin) is probably the malt house he’d most like to emulate with Vertical Malt. According to Wagner, Briess is one of the smallest of the large malt houses with approximately 60-ton batches. Vertical Malt’s new facility would produce 25-ton batches.
Last week Executive Director Craig Hoiseth said that if the Crookston City Council released the mortgage on the Crookston Inn property that CHEDA would likely follow suit the next morning. However, the CHEDA board announced Tuesday morning that they were going to take some additional time to review the language of the loan. It should be mentioned, in full-disclosure, that one of the board members is an investor in Cobblestone Hotel in Crookston. Board President Kurt Helstab said the board will likely have a special meeting within the next two weeks to discuss what they find out. “We’re slowing down the process,” said Heldstab. “The UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) filing that CHEDA has, we have to spend some time investigating how that is written. Is the filing with Crookston Inn or Jacobson Hospitality. Once we know that we’ll have a meeting in the next one to two weeks with that information and move forward on that, so we can feel comfortable with whatever decision we make.”
The board also held a closed-door session for Hoiseth’s annual review. Heldstab provided a summary of the review after its conclusion. “A lot of information,” said Helstab. “I have a list of some objectives. We also reviewed Craig’s comments to the 2019 objectives he had. We’ll have a list of other objectives for 2020 and visit with him. We did give him a $1,500 salary increase, about one percent over what he is getting right now. I’m going to emphasize that the total salary for Craig is split about 60/40 between Economic Development Authority and Housing. We gave him a raise going forward from there. I’ll have a little longer letter out to my board verifying what we discussed and then I can give it to Craig for his review.”
The board also approved a change to the B3 grant program to have all invoices submitted to CHEDA for payment rather than a payout to the grantee, and they asked Hoiseth to continue a review of the type of maintenance businesses in Crookston felt would be beneficial as part of the program. Hoiseth also told the board that the Oak Court Project is about 10 days behind schedule, but would be advancing to phase three sometime throughout the day Tuesday.
