Puposky facility closed

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.

Aug. 30, 1996

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

Three months after purchasing a Cold Weather Testing Facility located near Puposky, Bosch Braking Systems announced that it will not be re-opening the facility this fall as planned.

Because the company already has made substantial investments in a cold weather testing facility in Baudette, which it has operated for several years, it is not viable to operate the second facility near Puposky, a Bosch news release stated.

According to C. Robert Danielson, engineering director for Bosch's automotive proving grounds in New Carlisle, Ind., the company has not made a final decision regarding the future of the site. However, the company will continue to operate and lease a facility in Bemidji's industrial park from which it conducts mileage-accumulation testing.

Paul Nevanon, president of the International Falls-based Minnesota Cold Weather Resource Center board, said he hopes Bosch will sell the facility to another cold weather testing company. Most importantly, he said, he remains optimistic about the chances of the testing facility being purchased because it is a first-class facility.

"We were going to help showcase that facility and fill it up for Bosch," Nevanon said. "However, we would certainly work with whoever would purchase it if it was sold."

Nevanon said the Cold Weather Resource Center had wished Bosch would operate the facility for at least a couple of seasons just to see what kind of interest there was in the testing grounds.

Bosch acquired the Puposky facility in April when it completed a purchase of Allied Signal's worldwide hydraulic braking and antilock breaking systems businesses. At that time, the company announced it was going to use the site differently than the former owner had. In June, Danielson said the site was going to be used to test outside contracted products and little of Bosch's products.

The facility was constructed in 1989 on a 117-acre tract east of the Puposky Lake, about 16 miles north of Bemidji. A test building is surrounded on three sides by an asphalt testing track and, on the lake side, by a 1,400-foot-long, 400-foot-wide, perfectly level gravel track that is iced in winter for use as a skid pad.

The facility also makes use of the lake by conducting winter automotive brake testing on a 3,000-by-400-foot stretch of the lake. About 20 people were employed on two shifts at the Puposky site.

Bosch Braking Systems Corp., is a subsidiary of Bosch Group, an international company headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a Bosch news release, in 1995, the company employed 154,000 people.