Business View Magazine | March 2018

156 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’vegot 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 we were 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