Parking lot plans detailed

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

Oct. 20, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

The face of downtown Bemidji will continue to be reshaped this week, as work continues on the parking lot under construction adjacent to the unfinished Beltrami County Human Services Center.

According to City Engineer Mike Metso, construction crews will continue to remove the houses which sat on the 700 block of America and Irvine avenues -- a portion of the project which should be finished "soon."

The $215,000 bid for the construction of the parking lot was awarded to J.D. Hansen and Sons, a Bemidji construction company, at the Oct. 6 City Council meeting. The city engineer's estimate for construction of the project was more than $272,000.

After the final houses are removed from the area slated for the parking lot, J.D. Hansen and Sons is contracted to finish grading and laying gravel on the eastern half of the parking lot before Nov. 15. The city's plans call for the company to finish grading and adding gravel to the rest of the parking lot next spring. Then the company will construct the curbs, gutters and sidewalks, and finally will pave the parking lot.

In addition, there are two other projects associated with the construction of the parking lot that are progressing as well, Metso said.

J.D. Hansen and Sons is also contracted to rebuild America Avenue from Fifth to Seventh streets to accommodate angle parking, which provides more parking spaces than parallel parking, for the Human Services Center. And the third project, being completed by Christiansen Industrial Developers of Bemidji, is the storm water drainage system in the parking lot and a storm water retention pond at the end of Seventh Street, west of Mississippi Avenue.

All of the projects could see work after freezing this winter, Metso said, but the storm drainage project is contracted to be finished this year. And the goal is to have the parking lot completed by the opening of the Human Services Center in late May.

"They (J.D. Hansen and Sons) can choose to work later than that and complete more, but by contract they have to finish the eastern half by Nov. 15," he said. "Of course, the more they can do this fall, the further ahead we'll be this spring."

The total project will cost about $1.5 million, with more than $800,00 of that attributed to acquiring the 18 properties on the site. The properties had been assessed at a total value of $542,800, and the city paid $558,000 to obtain them. In addition, renters, landlords and homeowners in the area shared about $275,000 worth of relocation expenses.

The city will recover the cost of building the parking lot in the future, when Beltrami County sells the remainder of the former fairgrounds location south of Target on the northwest end of Bemidji. The deal between the city and county was struck when placement of the Human Services Center was a concern earlier this year.

The Downtown Development authority objected to the county building the massive project at the old fairgrounds, fearing the economic impact of the loss of jobs downtown and the decrease in automotive traffic for the area. To help convince the county to build the parking lot for a portion of the proceeds gained from a future sale of the old fairgrounds.

"We're making every effort to have it finished when the Human Services Center opens in the end of May," Metso said Friday in a telephone interview. "However, the weather will have to cooperate. When will it be done? Can you tell me when spring will come?"