Minnesota DEED approves grants to help keep Intek expansion in Hastings

By John McLoone

If you only have a dollar, you’ll have to use it for a can of pop and not an acre of land.

The Hastings Economic Development and Redevelopment voted at its Aug. 11 meeting to get rid of its industrial Land for a Dollar program.

With a dwindling supply of industrial land available for sale and not many takers to the program in recent years, it will channel its efforts instead into other incentive tools to attract businesses when needed.

In its inventory of industrial land, Director of Community Development Director John Hinzman told HEDRA include one large 55acre parcel, one at 3.5 acres “and we have a handful of 2, 2.5 acre” sites, he said.

The Land for a Dollar program served the community well in its early years.

“The project had a lot of great yields out there,” said Hinzman. “A number of projects have gone through. It was really, really prevalent back before 2007. Since that time, we’ve not had as many of them.”

HEDRA contracted with a Minneapolis real estate firm to try to sell the 55acre parcel, with hopes that a large development will occur there.

Hinzman said the project worked well for growing local companies but may have run its course.

“The major market for this, the small Hastingsgrown developers, we don’t have as much of that,” he said.

In trying to market industrial land, firms don’t seem to have an in-EYENIQUE See HEDRA, Page 7