Agenda - Economic Development Authority - 03/11/2002

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MEMO DATE: TO: FROM: RE: 3/8/02 Economic Development Authority (EDA) Sean Sullivan, TIF Specialist Staff Updates Morrell Trucking/Chies Property: The City was awarded a competitive Community Development Block Grant in the amount of $270,000 for the purchase and redevelopment of the Chics and Morrell properties. The EDA directed City Staff to enter into negotiations with those property owners and recognized the CDBG program as an excellent opportunity to facilitate the transaction. The grant carries some restrictions as to the type of redevelopment that must take place. Similar to the Business Subsidy Act there are job and wage goals that must be attained in order to retain the entire grant money. For each $35,000 in assistance there must be one job created. The job type has been defined as a "blue collar"job. Staffis researching for a clearer definition and will be sure to incorporate this into its redevelopment strategy. In addition to the job creation owners of the property must be willing sellers. At this poin,t one interested user would be St. Paul Terminals but the City will be actively seeking other users to redevelop these two lots. Available Vacant land/buildings: Staff has been attending the Work Force Assessment Task Force initiated by Anoka County for the past year. An assessment was done in Anoka County to determine the types and skills of workers that reside in Anoka County and their willingness to seek additional job training. A consensus was reached by those attending the sessions, that this information could also be used as a marketing tool for Anoka County. The county requested that the cities provide them with information pertaining to vacant Commercial and Industrial buildings and land. The county will then put this information into a GIS system and create a county wide map of available vacancies and undeveloped industrial land. The City has provided this information to the county and has prepared a map internally depicting the vacant buildings and land. Staff feels that this map and information extracted fi.om the work force assessment will be very helpful in marketing Ramsey in the future. Alloy Recovery: The city purchased the Alloy Recovery parcel on March 1, 2002 for $175,000. The city has two potential users for the site and is investigating the development plans for each. The parcel is located west of the public works building and lends itself to many development possibilities. Staff is actively marketing this property to ensure that the development that takes place will be an improvement from previous users.