Fridley, Minnesota

bridge will make access to the Market easier, spurring economic development in the area. “There’s a development on the other side of the bridge that has 450 new jobs scheduled to move in,” he adds. “Those employees would love nothing more than to have a walking bridge, or a quick drive over the railroad tracks, to get to the commercial area, since, right now, they have to get on the highway and back off the highway to get there.” Recently, Fridley completed development of a 122-acre, former superfund site that once was home to a Naval Industrial Ordnance Plant. “It had a two-million-square-foot building on it and developers would tell us, ‘the land is prime, it’s in a beautiful location,’ but if I got it for free, the demolition of a two-million-square- foot building and the cleanup of a superfund site would still make it too expensive for us to do,” Hickok relates. Luckily, the Fridley Housing & Redevelopment Authority, the State of Minnesota’s Department of Employment &