Lake George Neighbors Meet With Tech Developers

Residents in the Lake George neighborhood had a chance to meet with the folks who will most likely be responsible for the renovation of the current St. Cloud Technical High School.

Eric Vollen and his husband are relative newcomers to the neighborhood having moved there in June of 2017. He says they chose it because of the vibe and the diversity of the neighborhood.

We wanted to be in the city.  We love the neighborhood, we were living in Sauk Rapids, and we like the urban neighborhood and urban life.

Representatives of Dominium met with residents like Vollen and others at the school Tuesday night for a meet and greet. Vice President of Development Nick Andersen says the project is attractive to them because they have a lot of expertise with historic preservation.

We’ve done the historic renovation of a brewery, we’ve done a historic renovation of the Pillsbury A-Mill Flour Mill near downtown Minneapolis, I’ve personally worked on an old industrial building that was historic and converted it into housing.

Andersen says the very preliminary concept is to convert the most historic parts of the Tech building in 80 apartment units and then build a new senior housing apartment building as well as townhomes.  The total project is expected to have between 250 and 300 affordable rental housing units.

Rent is expected to range from $800 to $1,100 a month.

Andersen says so far the feedback has been generally positive.There’s a lot of residents who have walked up to me and expressed their support and expressed about how excited they are that we’re here and working on this.  With any redevelopment or new development proposal, there’s definitely some concerns and worries out there as well.

There’s a lot of residents who have walked up to me and expressed their support and expressed about how excited they are that we’re here and working on this.  With any redevelopment or new development proposal, there’s definitely some concerns and worries out there as well.

Andersen says they do want to be thoughtful on concerns about things like density and the proper fit for the neighborhood.

He says they are a housing development company, not a retailer, so there won’t be any commercial space in their project. However, Dominium is only redeveloping the Tech site, not the media center, so there still could be commercial space there.

Because the project is dependent on state and federal funding, the process to get started could take up to a year, with the first renters moving-in in about three years.

Click to read more in WJON-AM