Human is scale would just mean being able to say to your child, “why don’t you ride your bike over and meet me for lunch at the building” as an extreme example of accessibility. Something one could easily do if you worked at MOM (allowing for crossing 19), or the current City Hall, or the old Hospital, or downtown.

So, I would encourage the Northfield News & others to not try to sensationalize any of the disputes as if this is another great divide in our community until it is crystal clear that that is the case (and I am not suggested they necessarily have at this point). Each of you commenting on this thread can also obviously, ask/comment away but since the future is no more clear to us today than it was about today just a short year ago, please don’t expect hard evidence on every question. The topic of keeping a sense of place was commented on by the TIP Consultants as an important element of our uniqueness so it seems like a sensible discussion to me but several of you are correct in my mind that this is a very subjective measure with a number of built in assumptions that are often hard to peel back and identify.

In summary, while I remain convinced we should look at this annexation possibilty as good for us and only the first step of many that will lead us to more available C/I land to offer to existing and future employers in Northfield, this is a good time to get a lot of the questions and concerns out on the table. Let’s not beat one another up for asking or assuming things or stating their views because it is through this open process we can hopefully reach a good decision for the community for the next couple decades.

I drove past the hospital yesterday. I do not understand how building a 320 acre business park (someday) on this land would interfere with Northfield’s ’sense of place’. It’s a corn field adjacent to a fairly generic hospital campus, that itself is seperated from any distinctive part of Northfield by quite a ways. Granted, St. Olaf’s campus is up on the hill in the distance…but let’s face it…aren’t those students living in the high rises already looking out on quite a bit of sprawl. And in any case they are by no means close by the prospective site.

Regarding preserving/protecting ’sense of place’ in a more general sense: It seems to me to be a rather hard to define concept. Everyplace has a ’sense’. And everyone has a different sense of those places. It’s a very personal idea. I prefer to think in terms of protecting and preserving the distinctive sense of a place. At least that is something about which an agreement or a consensus can be reached.

Northfield has a great downtown including the river area. The college campuses add to the attractiveness of the town. To me that’s it. That’s our distinctive ‘place’. The rest of the town has some nice places and some not so nice. We have what scores of other towns in SE Minnesota have. I agree with preserving our distinctive sense of place, but how can it be preserved where it doesn’t exist….particularly in an empty field.

I also don’t understand why a business park should be small…in keeping with Northfield’s ’scale’. What is the ’scale’ anyway? It seems to me that there are any number of ’scales’ in town. From huge warehouse complexes to tiny boutiques.

On the face of it, much of the opposition to this idea seems to be various planning agencies protecting their turf. This is well and good…that’s why they made their plans after all. But sometime new opportunities arise that force a new look at existing plans and quick action becomes essential.

The acquisition and annextion of this land seems like a good idea for Northfield. Worst case, pending development, maybe it can be rented out as crop land….

When the schools and the hospital built their sprawling, big box facilities, I don’t remember the citizens complaining about preserving the “sense of place”, and destroying our biggest asset - the “look and feel” of Northfield.

If anything public institutions should be held to a higher standard than private companies because the cost of the higher standards is borne more fairly.

A few years ago I went into visit with the Com. Dev. Director. I was trying to locate a site for a business. He showed me a three ring binder of available sites. As I flipped through the binder I came to my construction company site. He had colored the rear 3 acre parcel as ‘available’. I pointed out that the site was not available. He stated that since it was vacant land in a C/I zone he put it in the binder. There is a big difference between vacant land and available land. As I noted in an earlier post, many businesses have vacant land as part of their overall site to provide future expansion.

David, your comments about the schools point out one of Northfield’s other shortcomings….planning/process. I was on the school board when we started to plan for a new elementary school. The first thing we did was stop at city hall to meet with the planner and find out where the city would like us to locate a school. The reply was ‘you can put it anywhere you want because it can go in any zone with a conditional use permit’. We responded that ‘yes, we understood that, but wasn’t there a specific part of the city that city planners would like to see a new elementary school, and the associated utility work, located?’ The answer remained the same.
Some years ago we had already purchased 60 acres of land for a future Middle School. Without any city support we ended up deciding to take 15 acres of our Middle School site and use it for Bridgewater, and then purchase another 15 acres at the south end of the Middle School site to keep our required 60 acres. The problem here is the city shouldn’t have relied on the school board for city planning. I tried hard to get the city involved in our process, but they only wanted to react to our proposals, not advocate for any of their ideas. I never liked that as I thought a city planning should be less passive and more involved in true planning.

It is important to have a vision for Northfield and have the staff and supporting members promote that vision. When a school board comes forward and asks ‘where shall we locate a school’ there should be a happy, immediate, thoughtful response. Same for most business inquiries.

Jane: I wasn’t being sarcastic about looking for land in Dundas. The Chamber is the Nfld AREA CoC. The Chamber decided to add Highway 1to its transportation priorities so we could support our members in Dundas and southern Northfield. I think it makes sense to have Dundas and Northfield coordinate their activities on a business park. So, if Dundas has some ideas on a business park, let the Chamber know.

Since I missed last Tuesday’s meeting, I can’t say whether anyone from the News was actually present; the statement is so bizarre it makes me think either they were not, or perhaps the News rep has narcolepsy and missed every other sentence in the discussion.

At no time over the past several months, in any of our discussions of the Comp Plan or in working with the EDA on the business park concept, have I EVER heard anyone on the Planning Commission express concern that “commercial growth could hurt the city”. On the contrary, I believe I have heard each member of the Planning Commission at one time or another talk about the importance of working to ameliorate the problems created by unbalanced residential growth over the past couple of decades.

The best possible construction I could put on it is that the News rep may have woken up and tuned in to part of a discussion about the importance of HOW growth occurs. Otherwise, there’s no way to account for this statement which on its face is simply false.

What is wrong with the more conservative position of NOT annexing, but DESIGNATING land for industrial development , on the Future Land Use Map, and then retaining the control of the use of that land when a concept plan comes in with the annexation request?

This seems to me to be the position to be in; why would those that favor annexation not want to have MORE control ,rather than less?

Please explain…….

What’s that open area between your company and ARTech? I’ve often wondered why no one has developed there. Seems large enough for a business about the size of yours, maybe larger. Is that tied up for some reason? Just curious. Thanks.

Most of the jobs that we grow today are service related. When the area at the south edge of town was developed for businesses, the developer wisely worked with the city to create a ‘commerical/industrial’ park. The majority of the businesses there today are not really industrial and are more serivce related….such as my construction company shop. There is even a school located there now.

Over the years when business owners have come to me to help them expand their business I find that Dundas or other communities that have land available are where the business expands. This is now true even for service related businesses. Examples are Lonsdale Painting/Trimcote and Pumper Plumbing….both ending up in Dundas. College City Beverage is a more recent example. When Astral Technology and Northfield Auto Body wanted to build their facility I worked very hard to break off a piece of land from other owners to keep them in Northfield. It took a lot more time and work but was successful. However, that only works if you have an owner that wants to wait and is willing to front some upfront costs to get the site. Now we really don’t have that option any longer as all sites are pretty much used up.

I think it would be smart for Northfield and Dundas to work together to establish available industrial land in both cities (through annexation as needed) and to expand their cooperation to the surrounding townships and work with the county to get more industrial property. (The ideal location for the MOM warehouse would have been at the intersection of 35W and county 1, but that seems to be beyond the capacity of local planners.)

That said, I have to weigh in on the property tax discussion. Scientific studies show that C/I property is a net gain for municipalities, even if some city officials want to believe otherwise. People use municipal services, complain to their city council, write letters to the editor, have domestic disputes, use drugs, drive drunk, have load parties, and fall asleep with burning candles that set their homes on fire. Corporations abide with strict building codes that include sprinklers to suppress fire, often are closed at night, and generally are law-abiding. AND they can’t vote.

One of the basis for state-wide property tax reform during the Ventura adventure was to address this disproportionate business tax and shift the tax back on the people who vote–and the result has since been an uproar as the state cut LGA to make up for the cut in business property taxes–if we have to pay for it ourselves, we can hardly stand it.

Before the reform, when the city council raised the local levy, it went disproportionately to business, and they couldn’t vote. Now, even though the burden is still skewed against business, we are unable to afford out municipal costs. (There is another side to the reform–Ventura had proposed an increase in Sales tax to make up for the decrease in property tax–but that never happened so the entire burden shifted to the schools and municipalities–one billion dollars a year–a loss we try to replace with local referendums.)

So, we need to expand our tax base in C/I if we really want to get ahead–for every dollar of Commercial property we have a net gain, while for every dollar in residential property value (based on new residential, not existing) we have a net loss as we need to hire more police and provide more services when our population increases. Usually that goes hand-in-hand–when we increase our commercial/industrial, there is an increase in residential due to job opportunities–we just need a good balance so we don’t tax the businesses to death.

David Ludescher said that we should look to Dundas, and I kinda think he was not sincere (maybe he was being sarcastic even if that is against the rules-Griff?) However, HE IS RIGHT. Northfield and Dundas should be working together as it is in their best interest to keep C/I in the Northfield School District and not argue about which city it ends up in–we really blew it with MOM by not anticipating that need.

If there is a general consensus that we (the Northfield area) need more business land, then we should annex now, and decide the design later. Annexation is more about making it possible to have more land, not about what it will look like.

Malt-O-Meal’s decision last week to build a warehouse outside of Faribault without even having looked at Northfield, where it already has a facility, should’ve given city leaders pause. We can no longer afford to let such obvious opportunities to draw in business pass us by.