“Once we close that activity out, we’ll have a better understanding of where we’re at with the balance of that (NDR grant), and possibly start closing of that grant,” said Chris Plank, disaster recovery grant administrator in the city’s Office of Resilience.

The City of Minot received three federal Community Development Block Grants following the 2011 flood. The third grant came about through a nationwide competitive process and established Minot’s National Disaster Resilience program, which includes property acquisitions for the flood project, a homeless shelter, affordable housing, a center for technical education, relocation of city hall and various other resilience projects.

“Our resilience grants have done great things,” Plank said.

For example, as of February, the city had acquired 231 properties needed for the flood project, helping residents relocate out of the flood plain.

Madison Lehner credits the Homebuyer Resilience Program for her ability to become a homeowner and a pet owner, with a house and yard to accommodate a dog.

Of the 231 acquired properties, 91 were purchased largely using NDR-CDBG funds. Eight of those properties were partially funded by the State Water Commission, which also funded acquisition of the additional 140 properties, according to the city’s latest NDR update.

The city was on track to fully relocate about 60 households from Park View Mobile Home Park in southeast Minot at the end of March. Working with its consultant, CDM Smith, the city also is buying out properties in the path of the proposed Maple Diversion.

“It hasn’t always been easy. It’s a person’s life,” Plank said of the changes wrought by acquisitions. A sense of community can be lost and adapting has been a challenge for some, he said.

Another NDR project, the Resilient Homebuyer Program, provided financial assistance to help 76 flood-impacted residents purchase homes outside the flood plain. The program was developed with the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency and provided $60,000 toward a down payment for low to moderate income borrowers. The money is forgivable if the homeowner owns and lives in the house for at least 15 years.

Madison Lehner, the 76th homeowner in the program, said she would not have been able to purchase a home without the down payment help.

Jill Schramm/MDN A three bedroom unit in the new family shelter at Broadway Circle includes an open floor plan.

“It’s been awesome to just be able to own my own home,” said Lehner, 25. “It’s been good learning how to work on a house because I’ve been doing the renovations myself.”

The opportunity to get out of the 2011 flood zone and out of the potential federal flood plain map with its high flood insurance premiums also have been advantages.

“It helps kind of ease the mind in a way. I don’t have to worry about that,” she said of another flood. “Going through that with my parents, that was a lot to deal with and very hard, moving from place to place. We lived with my grandma for almost a year in her trailer. It was seven people, four dogs, very hectic.”

Her family also lived in a trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for about a year.

To address a shortage of affordable housing post-flood, NDR funds helped develop the Park South townhomes, Blu on Broadway and a 55 and older housing complex called Souris Heights.

Jill Schramm/MDN An apartment unit on the second floor of the housing complex under construction at Broadway Circle is nearly ready for occupancy on March 4. The closet at right is designed for an in-unit washer and dryer.

Plank said the housing study funded through NDR has been useful as a base for ongoing analysis of the market.

“We do know that, yes, we do need some more affordable housing in Minot,” Plank said, noting Minot Housing Authority is working on projects to address that. “We do know that there are other types of activities that we maybe could use that we just need to look at. One of the things would be assisting with infrastructure in any new mobile home parks.”

The housing study indicated the city will need to build nearly 300 housing units a year for the next 10 years to meet future demands and replace homes removed for flood protection, said Brian Billingsley, community and economic development director for the city.

He said the city has used the housing study as a guide in looking for ways to encourage more housing development. Recently designated to receive federal CDBG allocations directly rather than through the state, Minot can consider use of some of those funds to support housing development, he added.

Another component of the NDR plan was funding for a report produced by the International Economic Development Council in June 2018. The report’s findings were further developed by a local stakeholder’s group.

“We accomplished over half the items that they had recommended,” Billingsley said. One recommendation was to hire a city economic developer – a position Minot had in place for a time to implement many of those recommendations. Through that effort came programs that included Facade Improvement, Wayfinding and citywide branding,

The report is seven years old, which is a reason the city has a committee reexamining its economic development strategies for continued relevance, Billingsley said.

An early accomplishment within the NDR program was the development of a Souris River tool to assist in determining management scenarios for the river basin.

Ryan Ackerman, administrator for the Souris River Joint Board, said the planning tool was used early on in the evaluation of alternative reservoir operations during the plan of study by the International Joint Commission and International Souris River Board.

“What we found through that process was any modifications to the Canadian reservoirs that would affect the Canadian water supply would be very difficult to achieve,” Ackerman said. On the U.S. side, a 10-foot rise in water storage at Lake Darling would be required to influence downstream protection, and that level would have unacceptable impacts for residents in that area, he said.

The NDR program also funded renovation of more than 200 apartments at Milton Young Tower, conversion of a former downtown Trinity Health building into a Center for Technical Education operated by Dakota College at Bottineau, relocation of Minot’s city hall to a a renovated downtown building and development of Broadway Circle, which includes the six-unit family emergency shelter, 17 low-income apartments and space for the Lord’s Cupboard/The Welcome Table to operate its food pantry and soup kitchen. There also is commercial space, including a current restaurant, that helps support Broadway Circle’s nonprofit activities.

The layout of the Family Shelter includes a congregate room at the entrance. Two offices and a meeting room are part of the design, although the future operator will determine how the rooms are used. Plank said the space would be suitable for partner agencies to provide services, such as public health visits or job search assistance.

The shelter includes two handicapped, unisex restrooms. There are four three-bedroom and two two-bedroom units, including a handicapped accessible unit. On-site laundry facilities, energy efficient appliances and motion activated unit lighting are part of the modern facility.

The apartment complex includes efficiency units and one and two bedroom units with walk-in closets, dishwashers and washers and dryers. Eligibility is based on earning 80% or less of the Ward County average household income, based on family size.

The completion of the apartment complex this month will finish the work at Broadway Circle. The family shelter was completed last December. The city has been seeking an entity to operate the complex.

The City of Minot allocated $1.37 million from its reserves to augment NDR funds for Broadway Circle.

“What we’re hoping is that once we do find a new subrecipient to manage the property, that we can reclaim some of that money and repay the citizens,” Plank said.

“There’s been challenges,” Plank admitted regarding Broadway Circle. “With every project, there’s challenges. With this one being such a public project, sometimes those are exacerbated a little more, but it’s a reality that we’ve had to overcome with support of the council as well as support of the community. Whether individuals were in favor of it or not, I respect both sides of that, but the end product, I think, is going to be a great, great thing.”

Meanwhile, the new CTE, funded in part with nearly $3.5 million in NDR funds, began training its first class of dental assistants in August 2024 and will start a class for dental hygiene this fall. In addition, the center space accommodates computer information technology, pre-nursing, medical coding and medical administration classes.

Plank said a restriction on the use of NDR and other CDBG funds is that money not be used for government facilities. Minot is the only city to receive a waiver from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which enabled it to acquire its current city hall and move emergency dispatch services to the lower level, he said. City employees began transitioning to the new city hall in April 2023.

A public gathering space was originally part of the city’s NDR program but was abandoned due to difficulty in finding a suitable downtown space and the availability of other parks.

Minot has the opportunity to create public green spaces around the flood project. Building restrictions exist to mitigate damage in any future flood, Plank said, but there is potential for soccer, softball, pickleball, playgrounds if there can be a plan developed for long-term maintenance.

Plank said the NDR program, which has a September 2029 deadline for completion, still has property acquisition money remaining. He said the money will be used in the MI-4 (Maple Diversion) buyouts and in the MI-8 and MI-9 phases moving southeast from the zoo. There’s also administrative funds remaining.

Jason Sorenson, the city’s flood protection lead as Public Works Utilities director, said the city is much more resilient already because of the flood protection construction that’s been completed and the property acquisitions that have occurred.

In terms of readiness, Sorenson said, “We’re way further along than we were in 2011. What we have on the ground may not provide full FEMA-certified flood protection but it puts us in a way better position than we were in 2011.”

Through NDR, the flood project bought out Leite Brekke Subdivision, the area between the Minot Water Plant and Moose Lodge and the Ben’s Tavern area east of downtown.

“There’s potentially hundreds of homes there that are no longer at risk of being flooded,” Sorenson said.

Sorenson said the city soon will come to the end of the $21 million budgeted through NDR for acquisitions, demolitions and relocations, requiring a shift to city sales tax dollars to continue future purchases.

The number of acquisitions left will depend on the look of yet-to-be designed flood protection in southeast Minot.

“The Souris River Joint Board is tasked with building flood protection for residential properties,” said Sorenson, who serves on the board. “What we’re finding is there’s some segments that we are analyzing that building flood protection is way more expensive than acquiring. But then, some of these acquisitions have the potential just to completely eliminate rural subdivisions. So, that doesn’t seem like a great approach either. There’s more work to be done on the Souris River Joint Board’s side to determine how we navigate those last steps.”

The city used much of the money from its first two CDBG-Disaster Resilience grants for acquisitions and infrastructure improvements.

Grant dollars also were used to support low to moderate housing, such as Cook’s Court for senior residents.

Some money from the first allocation went to forgivable loans through a rehabilitation and reconstruction program for low to moderate income homeowners and for owners of small rental housing who experienced damages from the flood. The program rehabilitated 86 homes and reconstructed 31. Five rental properties were reconstructed and seven rehabilitated.

Liens were in place for five years to ensure requirements of the program were met during that time. The city continues to work with two recipients in the homeowner program and two in the rental program to finalize compliance status before closing out the program, Plank said.

Even as disaster recovery activities near an end, efforts to become more resilient are expected to continue.

“My office is trying to help organizations become more resilient in providing services for their clientele and what it can do to assist them so they can be prepared and they can be resilient, because resiliency starts at the bottom up,” Plank said. “So, if and when anything happens, we’ll be ready. And I think we’re on the right track.”

There’s many aspects of resilience that the city can work toward, but the top priority is to avoid another flood, Billingsley said.

“Right now, the primary focus should be wrapping up flood control,” Billingsley said. “That’s probably the best thing we can do for our community.”