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Anoka County Uni'on Oct.- 9, 1998 City's incentives fil'l "', ' the Anoka Enterprise Park by Holly Broden Staff writer Four years after offering land 'as an incentive for com- panies to move to the Anbka 'Enterprise Park, the park is essentially filled with jobs and industry. "I' don't know if I could have predicted this success," said Robert Kirchner, com- munity development director for tb~e city of Anoka. The 380-acre park is locat- ed in:the northwestern section of t°Wn, north and west of Highway 10. The success was long in coming for enterprise park. Prior to 1985, according to Kirchner, Anoka didn't really have a plan for economic development. Anoka, to that point, had basically been a four-company town with Fed- eral Cartridge, Inc., Hoffman Engineering, Inc., Cornelius Companies and ThermoServ. · It's taken only four years Two of the companies were located in the .enterprise park. The city also had a' handful of other manufac- turing compa- nies that rounded out its industrial base. "In the 1980s, the four big companies were at risk," said Kirchner. ThermoServ moved to Texas, Cornelius Company was bought by a company in England, and in 1986-87 Fed- eral Cartridge, inc. and Hoff- man Engineering, Inc. were up for sale. In a nutshell, the city's economic base was in jeopardy. The chamber, of com- merce, the Anoka City Court- '.In the four years. Since the city of Anoka offered land as an *~ incentive, the Anoka Enterprise Park is essentially filled with businesses and jobs. cil and the eco- nomic devel- opment staff took a position that things needed to change. In 1982 Anoka passed an ordinance establishing an Economic Development Commission and began seek- ing "Star City" status. In 1985 Anoka became the 33rd Star City, which required a one- and five-year economic development plan as well as other marketing criteria. In 1988, the city set 'up a tax increment financing dis; trict (TIF) in two-thirds of the enterprise park, which not only allowed it to be cleaned up, btit als0. provided incen- tives for new and existing companies. "In 1988, we extended Thurston Avenue..'north, through the park and National Ag. Underwriters moved out to the park;' said Kirchner. The company .had been' locat- ed d(xwntown Ano. ka; but needed 'additional The city was alib~success- ful in retaining Minnesota Institute of Public Health and provided adjacent land fdr expansion. "We thought, boy -we've really got this thing going now," said Kirchner. Four or fivel, years passed . and the city '.still wasn't attracting new businesses and property owners near enter- prise park were continuing to rezone industrial property. "The property was private- ly owned, we couldn't put deals together. There wagn't a lot happening. There were Enterprise/Page 9