A real estate developer wants to construct seven buildings totaling 2.4 million square feet in Cottage Grove’s business park, but who would ultimately move in remains a mystery.
The city council is meeting Wednesday to hear about the proposal, which includes a request that the city help pay for it through Tax Increment Financing.
Further details about the project are not known, or are only speculative. No proposal has been formally submitted to the city, said Economic Development Director Christine Costello.
“The meeting Wednesday is just an introductory meeting,” she said.
NorthPoint Development, a Kansas City, Mo.-based real estate company, is the face of the proposal, and Ehlers Public Finance Advisors is advising the city regarding the tax implications. The companies did not respond Monday to phone messages left by the Pioneer Press.
The developers are eyeing a site that is mostly farmland, south of 100th Street and west of Ideal Avenue. At 196 acres, it’s the size of Lake Phalen in St. Paul. The buildings themselves would cover about one-quarter of that land — an amount equivalent to 42 football fields.
The buildings would range in size from 207,000 to 541,000 square feet. For comparison, the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Shakopee, completed in 2016, is 860,000 square feet.
City officials say they don’t know who NorthPoint is working with or specifically what kind of business would be conducted on the site. According to city documents, it would be used for “office/warehouse/manufacturing/distribution space.”
The projected taxable value of the development is $144 million. That should generate some $4.8 million in taxes each year, including $716,000 for the city itself.
Road improvements surrounding the project could cost as much as $9.2 million, including work on 100th and 105th streets and Ideal and Hadley avenues. City fees for the project would be roughly $5 million.
The proposal calls for the developer to get back as much as $9.7 million over nine years through tax increment financing. Construction should take three to four years.