Northfield Downtown Development Corporation

At our January General Membership meeting we are pleased to host the three newest members of city government. Mayor-elect and downtown business owner Lee Lansing and City Council members-elect Scott Davis and Arnie Nelson will have been sworn into office at the City Council meeting the previous evening. We’ve asked them to make some introductory remarks sharing their perspectives on downtown Northfield and then we’ll solicit questions from the audience for the remainder of the meeting.

The meeting will be held Tuesday, January 4 at the Archer House from 8-9:30 a.m. The public is welcome, and refreshments will be served. We hope you can attend.

I spoke with Anthony Stakston from Mn/DOT last week about the HWY 3 reconstruction project. He’s engineer who is the main contact for this project. I wanted to know when demolition would take place on the buildings that need to be removed for the highway work.

He told me that the contractor that won the bid is planning to start the week of January 3 weather permitting. At this point, weather doesn’t appear to be a factor. Anthony thought that the work would take about a week to complete.

There are seven buildings that will be coming down: the building on the southeast corner of 2nd and HWY 3 (formerly the home of the Byzantine restaurant), Bill’s Pizza Palace and the house to the east of it, the Exhaust Pros garage, Godfather’s Pizza, the Kump Lumber Store, and the Tom Thumb Market.

The work on the highway is still scheduled to begin in April 2005.

We’ve been spending some time this fall cruising the web for information about activities in downtowns throughout North America. There are a number of terrific websites promoting downtown districts, but until today, we thought we might have the only downtown web log.

The city of Rosemount, MN (just north on Highway 3 about 15 miles) has started a blog called Downtown Rosemount, focused primarily on economic development. We’ll keep an eye on it for news and ideas and just thought you’d like to know.

Breaking news from Heidi Hamiltion, Director of Public Works:

Rice County has hired Bolton & Menk to complete a County Transportation Plan. In an effort to gather public input, four public meetings have been scheduled in different areas of the County to discuss area-specific concerns. The meeting for the Northfield/Dundas area is scheduled as follows:

Wednesday, January 19, 2005
6 - 8 pm
Bridgewater Town Hall

Please help me spread the word to those who are interested. Notices will be put in the Northfield News too.

Thank you.

Perhaps it will be another opportunity to raise the concern about safe crossings for Highway 3…

The Just Food Co-op received their Certificate of Occupancy today and will be open for business tomorrow (Wednesday, December 15th) at 9:00 am. The store hours will be 9-9 Mon. through Sat. and 9-7 on Sun.

The NDDC has long championed the Co-op as an economic stimulus for downtown. We believe that the store will give folks yet another reason to come downtown.

Join us in celebrating their opening and welcoming them to downtown.