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City to pursue new gathering place location

Jill Schramm/MDN A Trinity Health parking lot at the corner of Broadway and Third Avenue Southwest, shown last Friday, is back in consideration for a downtown gathering space.

In moving on to a new gathering place location, the City of Minot plans to approach Trinity Health about potential purchase of a parking lot next to Broadway.

The Minot City Council voted 5-2 to pursue a new site after negotiations fell through with the seven property owners at another downtown location near the Parker Center. Negotiations stalled with two owners, and two others declined to sell, according to the city.

“I think we just hit a roadblock or hurdle that we can’t overcome as a city with the restrictions that we have,” council member Paul Pitner said. “The cost-reasonableness dilemma seems to be the big sticking point.”

The city made offers totaling around $890,000, and counter offers came to $1.78 million, which is beyond what the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development would accept as reasonable in comparison to the cost of other potential gathering sites.

An estimated assessed value on the Trinity property is $830,000. The property currently is not taxed or assessed.

The city’s next step is to see if Trinity is interested in selling. If so, the city would do an environmental assessment on the property.

Council member Josh Wolsky said the location raises concern because it formerly housed a laundromat and dry cleaners. He also voiced concern that the $6 million in National Disaster Resilience grant money from HUD will not be enough to develop the gathering space.

One of the property owners at Site 2, Ryan and Jessica Ackerman, had appeared before the council previously to suggest swapping the gathering place money with sales tax dollars for flood protection property acquisition. The NDR money could be used for additional acquisitions while the city would proceed to use sales tax to develop a gathering space without NDR constraints. Wolsky questioned whether this option has been considered.

John Zakian, resilience program manager, said he believes $6 million is adequate for the project.

“Until we truly have a site that will then allow us to do a design, we actually don’t know what the ultimate costs are going to be,” he said. However, he mentioned other gathering spaces in the country built for $6 million to $8 million.

“As we stand here today, I am not uncomfortable that we have sufficient money to do the gathering space that the public deserves and wants,” he said.

As for the alternate funding plan, Zakian said the benefits to the acquisition program would be insignificant but the risk of needing another time-consuming substantial amendment to the NDR plan exists. He added a change also could negatively affect the percentage of the project benefiting low- to moderate-income residents. The project is currently at 60% but changes could cause it to go below the required 51%, he said.

Mayor Shaun Sipma cautioned against moving sales tax dollars to a gathering place. Legislators watch the local allocation to flood protection when they decide on state assistance, he said.

“If we start diverting money from our need of flood control, it is going to set a very, very, very bad precedent for us politically,” Sipma said.

Wolsky also raised concern that use of the Trinity parking lot for a gathering place keeps prime development property off the tax rolls. A similar piece of property along Broadway generates about $116,000 a year in taxes, he said. In addition, he said, moving to another site dampens the entrepreneurial spirit flourishing downtown.

“It can kind of be like a cold bucket of water in some respects,” he said. “I am concerned that this move to this other location is going to have some unintended and some very difficult to gauge consequences.”

Wolsky suggested there may be ways to reduce the footprint of the gathering space from the proposed two acres to 1.5 acres, preserve some of the buildings and meet HUD requirements.

Council member Shannon Straight said the public isn’t interested in Site 1. He urged pushing forward with Site 2 because the question of what is cost reasonable hasn’t been answered.

“I really just don’t want any more egg on the city’s face because we don’t have all these answers fleshed out,” he said. “I don’t necessarily feel we are learning anything from the process. We are just quickly moving on.”

“I don’t think the city has to be embarrassed by this,” council member Stephan Podrygula said. “If there’s any egg, it’s on the federal government and the complexity of the HUD guidelines and the inflexibility of the government. … It’s turning out to be much more challenging and much more complicated than anybody ever expected.”

Wolsky and Straight voted against moving to a new site. Voting for the change in site were Pitner, Podrygula, Sipma, Lisa Olson and Mark Jantzer. Jantzer and Straight participated in the meeting remotely.

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