Crookston Could See New Housing Development

Tonight the Crookston School board sold land around the old Lincoln School to the Northwest Minnesota Housing Cooperative.

They already have plans in the works that could put up to 25 new homes on that now empty land.

This now empty land near the old Lincoln school could look a lot like this in the coming years. The Northwest Minnesota Housing Cooperation has plans to buy it from the school district and put a housing development here.

Jeff Fagerstrom: "There's a continual demand as you know Crookston is in a flood diversion project, they have a flood buy out program so there are quite a few displaced families specifically because of the diversion that is going through town."

This is the second time the lots been up for sale. The district wants to sell it because they have no use for the land and are combating a more than 1-million dollar deficit.

Wayne Gilman: "With all the reductions we thought we'd try to sell it again in light of tight budgets so we advertised and had two offers and come to the 50-thousand - 5-hundred dollar price."

These are the preliminary plans. The development would look a lot like this neighborhood just finished by the cooperation.

The plan is to put a paved road right through the middle of this lot and build up to twenty-five new homes which will be for middle income families.

Jeff Fagerstrom: "Our definition of mid level income is people who can pay the mortgage right now, but often don't have a lot of cash savings in their back pocket."

Wayne Gilman: "It's the only thing that makes sense, it's in the middle of a residential area and not zoned for anything else."

The hope is it will attract new families into town, increase the population and bring more kids into the school system..

The Northwest Minnesota Housing Cooperative has built more than 150-homes in Northwest Minnesota in the past 12 years about 45 of those in Crookston.

Tags: steve bodakowski, news, crookston