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City council wants hand shakes on gathering place by Aug. 30

File photo People gather last September at 1.Oh!, a demonstration of what might take place at a downtown gathering place in Minot.

Agreement must be reached on property purchases for a downtown gathering place by Aug. 30 or alternate sites will be considered, the Minot City Council decided Monday.

The city is up against a September 2022 deadline to complete the project and spend the $6 million in National Disaster Resilience funding. Council members are concerned drawn-out negotiations that ultimately fail could leave no time to pursue alternate sites.

“We’ve made a little bit of progress. However, we still have a significant distance on at least one or more properties,” Mayor Shaun Sipma said. “We also have to come to the realization that our time frame is ticking away on this gathering space.”

The city has been formally negotiating since February. Two of the nine properties needed are city-owned. The others are in various states of negotiation, from tentative agreements to far apart.

The council adopted Lisa Olson’s motion for an Aug. 30 negotiation deadline on a 5-2 vote.

Council members Shannon Straight and Josh Wolsky opposed a deadline. Wolsky said his preference if negotiations fail is to revise the project to fit inside the footprints the city can acquire.

“The degree to which the public supported this location was so overwhelmingly yes,” he said. “I’m just not comfortable changing that particular direction and going to another location.”

Sipma responded that revising the gathering place might require a substantial amendment to the NDR plan, which entails Department of Housing and Urban Development review and approval. That process could be lengthy, he said. A major amendment also could result in HUD re-scoring the application and removing money, City Manager Tom Barry added.

Straight questioned whether the city should shift some demolition money to acquisition because certain buildings might be useful for indoor space. He also voiced frustration over the project’s circumstances.

“I think it would be in our best interest to either go all-in on this site, go to bat for the public and for what we are wanting, even if it costs us a little more to acquire the properties, or we walk away,” he said. “Let’s give the money back and recognize that it’s just too much work.”

Council member Paul Pitner supported a deadline.

“Entering any negotiations on any deal, if you’re not willing to walk away, you’re going to get taken to the cleaners,” Pitner said.

The site selected is a mid-town property located in the block north of First Avenue Southeast and south of Central Avenue, with First Street Southeast on the west and railroad tracks running diagonally on the east. The city has two other sites that went through public input. The next highest rated is a Trinity parking lot abutting Broadway and south of Second Avenue Southwest. The third site is a property north of the Canadian Pacific railroad tracks on the east side of Third Street Southeast.

Sipma said the gathering place was a lower rated project in HUD scoring of the city’s NDR application. Barry added that HUD representatives have encouraged reallocating money away from the gathering space and city hall projects to acquisitions of properties that relocate people from flood danger.

“However, I think all of us have made a commitment to substantially vet and work through this process to fruition and get the gathering space built in our downtown area,” Sipma said.

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