Northfield Downtown Development Corporation

NDDC Board Member Keith Covey takes a shift at the table for Carleton’s Family and Parent weekend. The NDDC has distibuted hundreds of Downtown Welcome Bags at both St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges over the past two weeks to support the schools’ hospitality and to let the visitors know about opportunities in Downtown Northfield.

Over two dozen volunteers supported this effort, doing things like filling the bags, delivering the bags, and greeting visitors with a gift of a bag. The response from the families and parents has made it all worthwhile. They’ve told us that the town is making them feel welcome and they feel good about having their kids attend a school here in Northfield.

How could you not feel welcomed by a guy like Keith…

I have been meaning to share a concept with you for some time…in fact, since I read the January edition of Mainstreet News. It’s about the 16:62 Design Zone. It’s located in a funky old neighborhood of Pittsburgh. They had some cool historic buildings in need of a little investment and a community that wanted a certain kind of economic development

The business leaders believed that this combination of assets had real potential. They decided to promote the area to a specific market niche – businesses that focused on arts and design. The business owners got together to look at branding the district through a shared vision and to promote the neighborhood’s assets to attract similar businesses and, ultimately, bring more customers to the area for everyone.

The local non-profit community development corporation helped to bring the businesses together. They were more focused on getting the business owners’ support than asking them for funding. The branding strategy didn’t cost much because they were basically repackaging what already existed. The CDC just asked local business owners to go visit with their neighbors and get the word out and bring back ideas. Sound familiar Block Heads?

Since the program started in 2000, the effort has attracted 51 new businesses to the area, 30 of which have an arts and design focus. The area now is recognized throughout the region as the place to go for these types of goods and services. They call what they did “Building the Buzz”.

In my first blog about getting recognition as an Art Town, I noted that we have attracted a number of creative industries: arts and design, architecture and engineering, graphics and words. I suggested that they might be assets on which we could build as part of achieving the Art Town recognition. Perhaps there is more than one possibility for leveraging these assets, perhaps branding our downtown district would provide a synergistic boost for economic development.

I think it’s an idea that merits further consideration. Check it out at: 16:62 Design Zone.

As downtown Northfielders are probably aware, there is concern about potential real estate tax increases in 2006.

A number of downtown building and business owners have spoken with the NDDC about this issue recently. The statements of property valuations for the purposes of determining real estate taxes arrived last week and they include valuation increases from 2004 to 2005 ranging from 27% to 159%.

The increase in the valuation does not necessarily directly translate into an increase in your tax bill. However, an accountant and an appraiser that are friends of the NDDC are building some models of potential tax scenarios. If you would like to have your information included in this model, give it to Joe Grundhoefer at The RuebNStein. We will post this information after it’s been compiled.

There is an “Open Book” Meeting scheduled for Wednesday, April 27th, 10 am to 1 pm, at the Northfield City Hall on this topic. Anyone can attend this meeting and speak with the County Appraiser.

There is also a County Board of Appeal and Equalization Meeting scheduled for Tuesday, June 14, 8:30 am at the Rice County Government Service Building.

The Northfield Community Investment Fund, a $1.5 million pool intended to assist development and redevelopment projects in Northfield, is up and running. The final signing of the documents is taking place two floors over my head at this very moment.

The Fund was originally the brain-child of the NDDC. Founders Brett Reese, Bardwell Smith and Jim Braucher, along with long-time supporter Dixon Bond, knocked on a few doors several years ago with the vision of spurring investment and redevelopment in downtown. The potential participants preferred a community-wide approach and the baton was passed to the Northfield Enterprise Center (NEC) about two years ago.

The fund participants are Carleton College, St. Olaf College, First National Bank of Northfield and Community National Bank. Each entity has contributed capital to create a community-oriented investment fund.

Seated at the table from left to right: Dave Shumway, First National Bank of Northfield; Alan Norton, St. Olaf College; Lynda Grady, NEC; Don Kuenhast, Community National Bank; Steve Meyer, Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly; Fred Rogers, Carleton College; Joe Hargis, NEC.

Although the fund is now community-wide, the type of challenging projects that it will support, those sometimes difficult community-building projects that push the typical bank’s envelope, are often located in downtown. The NDDC is excited about the potential for this new fund.

We thank Carleton College, Community National Bank, First National Bank of Northfield and St. Olaf College for their creativity and courage.

Last Wednesday, February 9th, the NDDC hosted one of their increasingly regular (must be the bran muffins) Block Head Gatherings. As is our practice, it was held at Joe Grundhoefer’s Rueb-N-Stein at 8 am.

Our special guest was Heidi Hamilton, Director of Public Works for the City of Northfield. She brought Joel Walinski, the City’s new Operations Manager to the meeting.

We asked Heidi to join us in a discussion about our interest in having a “Lick and a Promise Cleaning” of downtown before the Community Day of Service on April 30th and a substantial “Spring Cleaning” before the Northfield High School and St. Olaf College Graduations on May 29th. We also voiced our interest in working with the City to get the river railings painted by citizen volunteers. Heidi listened to and clearly understood our wishes and indicated that she would see what she could do to to accomodate them.
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