On March 14, the Hastings Economic Development & Redevelopment Authority (HEDRA) discussed the purchase and development agreement of Mint Development Company LLC.
Last month, the City of Hastings voted to transfer a 3.94-acre parcel of land to HEDRA, who subsequently met with Rob Barse of Mint Development. Barse is working with a real estate company who has a national retailer interested in the property. The property gifted to the city in 1968 was to be dedicated only for public use for 30 years. Since this agreement has long expired the parcel is available for private use. The current offer for the parcel is $850,000.
Community Development Director John Hinzman fielded questions about this purchase. HEDRA member Jen Fox asked, “Can you talk a little bit about the ponding area? We presently have stormwater drainage for the neighboring parcels, and they have to accommodate stormwater needs. I just want to acknowledge some feedback I've received from our community that the watershed might suffer by adding more paved developments and then there might be increased runoff, can you address that publicly?”
“Within the property itself, it's a low portion and it takes runoff from neighboring property. I believe there's culverts that come from the western end of it,” Hinzman answered. “Under stormwater rules, whenever a new property develops, it has to not only accommodate the stormwater that's on there presently, which includes the runoff from the properties that are disposing of water onto the property presently but also for any more runoff that would be generated by the new development. So, if the new development has a parking lot and building impervious surface, that's going to have its own need for stormwater generation, stormwater ponds. To sum it up, there's going to be a lot of stormwater ponding on this site, probably more than you would typically see for this site because it not only has to take care of what the development would put out there for stormwater needs but also for stormwater generated on the property and present.”
Rob Barse of Mint Development was asked why this parcel was chosen and not other vacant lots such as in Westfield Mall and land in front of Walmart.
“For our primary user that we're searching for, the land mentioned and that's available in front of Walmart, Nick Conzemius land, all that would be restricted for our user and too small for them specifically, so none of that land would work for them,” Barse stated. “Westview is probably the only potential alternative for development if there is an opportunity to acquire part of it and knock part of it down essentially so that the user can deploy their, you know, so called prototype that they like to have when they come into the new market. Those are the primary reasons that we pointed to the site and the green and stormwater will be our primary challenge to make the site viable for development. As John mentioned, there's a four-acre site, they currently take on about an acre, roughly, of stormwater. We'd be looking to try to manage to create about a two-and-a-half-acre minimum pad to develop on and then use the rest for green space and stormwater.”
Hearing no other questions or discussion, the meeting opened to a public hearing with no comments. To that end, the board approved moving forward with investigating the sale of this property.
