A flurry of construction activity in southwest Grand Forks has transformed a vacant parcel of land into the outline of Minnkota Power Cooperative's future headquarters.
"I think people are surprised when they go down 32nd Avenue and see how far we've come," Minnkota spokesman Kevin Fee said.
The construction site is located just west of Interstate 29 on the south side of 32nd Avenue South. It will be made up of two buildings totaling roughly 250,000 square feet, including a corporate offices, operations center, warehouse, equipment garage and maintenance facilities, Stacey Dahl, Minnkota's manager of external affairs, previously told the Herald.
Two structures already have been erected, and workers have started pouring the footings for the corporate center, Fee said.
Minnkota hopes to have construction finished in the fall of 2017.
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Fee said the company's current facilities on Mill Road in north Grand Forks are "not designed to meet the increasing number of security and compliance obligations" and added the new headquarters will allow them to be more efficient. The new facility will be its first new headquarters complex since the 1940s, according to Minnkota's annual report.
"Workplace efficiency, safety, security and equipment storage needs were among the many critical areas we focused on during the development of the building plan," Fee wrote in an email.
The lot where Minnkota is building its headquarters was purchased by the city of Grand Forks in November 1999 in an attempt to lure Internet retail giant Amazon to town to build a distribution center. That ultimately did not pan out, and Minnkota purchased the 70-acre site from the city last year for $2.25 million, according to meeting minutes.
Klaus Thiessen, president and CEO of the Grand Forks Region Economic Development Corp., called the Minnkota site a "highly visible development." He added it's important for Grand Forks that a large company such as Minnkota, which has 213 employees here, keeps its head office in town.
Minnkota, a wholesale electric generation and transmission cooperative, is owned by 11 member-owner distribution co-ops that serve eastern North Dakota and northwest Minnesota.
