Clay County Board of Commissioners
Dan Haglund
CEO Jim Roers of Roers Construction delivered a comprehensive status report on the Moorhead Center Mall redevelopment project to the Clay County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday in Moorhead.
Roers was hired three years ago by the City of Moorhead to be a pre-development partner of the massive redevelopment project, which has been estimated at a cost of $200 to $250 million. It includes buying out myriad mall tenants and setting plans for the downtown site.
The current mall and parking lots were first developed about 50 years ago by razing numerous Center Avenue buildings.
“We have acquired about 97 percent of the ownership of all the property in that 18-acre tract of land,” said Roers. “Now that we’re at that point, some of the other things that we’ve been discussing over the past two-and-a-half/three years have started to percolate, and are at a point where they are ready to become a reality.
Roers said the items he is alluding to are the library and community center.
“A bond issue was passed, money has been allocated and we now have hired the final architectural team to do the final assessments with the community to determine what it’s going to look like, and where it should be, and when it’s going to be built,” Roers said. “The when is going to be next year.”
Roers said he’s been working with other developers in the community, including Kevin Bartram, president of Mutchler Bartram Architects. Roers says Bartram is also ready to break ground in the spring.
Roers says he is now in the phase of the development process where he needs to acquire the last few parcels.
“The law is very clear about how we need to go about and do that as it relates to a condominium association that is no longer functioning properly, and needs to be converted. And so we have done that. We are following what the state statute tells us to do, and we have served notices on not only the tenants but primarily the last six owners about what our intentions are.”
Roers also says progress is being made to finish the last remaining parcels.
“Of those last six parcels, one of them has already signed an agreement and said OK, real truth is that we want to retire,” Roers said. “Of the last five, four of them are now in communication with us” toward final agreements.
“I’m quite confident we will accomplish this mission (of acquiring all parcels) by approximately January 1.”
Roers says he’s been diligently working with the Motor Vehicle Department, one of the long-term mall tenants. The other two long-term tenants have found other options.
“The Motor Vehicle people, we are constantly communicating with them, we have no intentions of putting them out on the street. We are going to work with you (board) as long as it takes.”
Roers said the long-term vision of the Motor Vehicle division has been expressed to him, and that it would include a facility with greater truck traffic access.
“We are just about complete with our preliminary design phase (for the DMV),” said Kevin Campbell, Dist. 4 commissioner. “And we’ve looked at multiple locations within the city, and we have one that’s a real front-runner for us. One of the things we aren’t interested in doing is moving into a temporary location. That would just not be right for that business and our customers around the county. It takes them awhile to get educated on where we are, and then to go some place else, and move again, we don’t want that.”
“We’re working at it as fast a pace as we can to get our own facility,” Campbell said. “We’re doing due diligence on our part to move on.”
In closing, Roers, who has run his company for more than 45 years, left the board with a few personal thoughts on the project.
“Every time we meet with somebody we find another challenge, but we also find another solution,” said Roers. “I look forward to the day I can come here and we are generating about ten times more tax revenue for the county.”