Dan Haglund 

Clay County administrator Stephen Larson presented a point-by-point progress overview of the Department of Motor Vehicle Project to the Clay County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday in Moorhead.

First, Larson went over the timeline and brief history of the recent location changes.

The DMV is currently located in the Moorhead Center Mall, and has a lease which runs through Nov. 30, 2025. But that portion of the mall is set be razed as part of the massive $250+ million Moorhead Center Mall revitalization.

On March 7, Klein McCarthy Architects was approved to conduct the pre-design of space needs for both the county and state testing.

Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak in March 2020, the county and state testing operations were co-located in one building.

While the state drivers license is contracted in its current lease through 2026, they have stated in a letter their desire to co-locate once their lease expires.

The commission also asked the DMV committee to look at any viable commercial spaces that met both the square footage needs as well as adequate parking, with the ability to have a minimum of two semis to get in and out of that area.

“While we are in a current lease in our DMV location, it has been the board’s position that the best use of tax dollars is to utilize or purchase the property,” said Larson.

The current lease was funded through C.A.R.E.S dollars in 2020 as a response to Covid, and no local dollars were used.

“In exploring the available commercial space to purchase over a number months, we found it very challenging to find a building that provided the square footage needs but also the parking spaces that were mentioned,” Larson said.

Larson said he, Joe Olson and Lori Johnson explored some other lease options in the city, but said they didn’t find any acceptable property based on the predetermined needs that such a facility would require.

Through multiple planning meetings, Klein McCarthy has provided preliminary design in the construction of a new project.

Larson said the committee also looked at other properties as well, including the space to the east of the storage unit in the industrial park in south Moorhead, which was not large enough.

The committee also looked at a spot west of the government center, where there is already a parking lot, but the building space was likely too small, and there may have been access issues as well, Larson said.

A third option was a facility at the highway department, which cooperatively owned by the city, county and state highway department. Larson said it would be too challenging to split that property out given the preset timeline.

The fourth option was to build a new facility on the southwest corner of the 20-acre plot that the Resource Recovery facility and Withdrawal Management Detox facility is being built. This area is just a few blocks north and west of the Dilworth Walmart.

“Through the development of those two projects, there was a great deal of planning that went into potential uses for that remaining property in regards to infrastructure, electrical, gas lines and water retention,” Larson said. “We fell that it gave us an opportunity to save funds.”

Along with no additional land costs, adding another building to the county land would also keep county maintenance workers in a more centralized location, Larson added.

The committee felt the location was a plus, with easy access to 34th street from Highway 10, as well as from I-94, and coming off Highway 75 from 15th avenue north. It will be a mile-and-a-half directly east of the former Moorhead location.

Larson noted that the DMV averages between 150 to 300 transactions per day, so the committee also felt that the location could be an economic catalyst for the immediate area.

“The state can’t bring money into the construction, but even what they’re paying per square foot in their current location, it’s a significant value once they do come in,” said Commissioner Kevin Campbell, Dist. 4. “We’re kind of looking at this very similar to when we build the law enforcement center and we have a long-term lease with the city.”

Campbell said another really important point in this new location will be the licensing piece.

“A lot of our Clay County people are constantly having to leave Clay County to go get testing for their kids for their licenses,” Campbell said. “If we are co-located and we’ve designed this thing to allow for additional testing to be done within the site … it’s kind of an embarrassment for Clay County, the largest county in northwest Minnesota, to have to have their people go out of county to have testing done.”

Campbell feels the new facility will help solve this issue.