Moorhead

hasmade a lot of investments into our downtown area to set the stage for the downtown revitalization,”she begins.“Back in the‘70s,Moorheadwas not unique in that we tookadvantage of urban renewal moneyand did a lot of renovations during that time period.And what that leads us to,today,is that our downtown area has a lot opportunities.We’ve got some diamonds in the rough–some historical buildings that are ripe for redevelopment that developers are looking at.We have some empty lots,but we also have some big suc- cesses currentlygoing on.One of those isThe Grove. Moorhead’s downtown area is former industrial,sowe do have some contamination issues.But wewere able to leverage both state and local resources,and,at the end of the day,we had themost contaminated indus- trial site in the heart of citynowbeing home to a $12 million,three phase development. “And,last summer,when the city started some road reconstruction projects,we purchased a gas station on our second busiest intersection.The city took that opportunity to demolish the gas station and redevel- op that site,whichwill soon be home to a $6million, four-story,mixed-use development with retail on the bottom,office on the second floor,and amodern, two-story loft on the remaining upper two floors.So, those dominoes are starting to fall and,as we get those successes,we havemore andmore developers who are saying,‘Howmanydowntowns have empty MOORHEAD, MINNESOTA blocks that are ripe for redevelopment?’Well,Moor- head has some of those andwe consider theman asset.” In order to spur that downtown development,Moor- head has a varietyof incentive programs in place.“We have one of the largest TIF (Tax Increment Financing) Districts in our downtown area,”Graffeo claims.“In addition,we have our Urban Progress Zone,which is a central core of our city that needs an extra little bit of love and attention.Businesses and redevelopment projects can qualify for extended property taxexemp- tions,above and beyondwhat are available in the other areas of the city.So,we have a varietyof tools in the toolbox. “Andwe also have incentives on the residential side,” Bode adds.“We havewhat we call the‘MakeMoorhead Home PropertyTaxRebate.’Anynewlyconstructed home receives a two-year rebate of property taxes paid-everything except special levies.So,the school district,county,and the citycooperate on that rebate program to help people get into a newhome.There’s nomaximumvalue,so if you build your million-dollar home inMoorhead,you get two years of free property taxes,and the communitygets the additional growth, long-term.That was a program that we developed as a competitive response becausewe knowthat we compete for residents as well as businesses.” Moorhead is equally serious about its sustainability initiatives.“Moorhead created a newrecycling program in July2017-single sort recycling,”Volkers reports. “We’ve got about 11,000 homes and 5,000 apart- ments,and it’s been a huge,huge success for the city.” “We’ve had a curbside recycling program for more than 20 years,”adds Bode,“but inmoving to single sort,and making it a littlemore simple for people and including multi-familyapartments,we’ve gone froma collection of about 45 tons amonth to over 200 tons amonth.” “We’ve got a solar garden andwe’ve got a couple of wind turbines,”saysMahli.“We’re aggressively seek- ing innovative strategies to support national energy independence,andwe’reworking hard to find energy savings through efficiency.”