Moorhead council approves Center Mall repairs, signs
By
Ellen Crawford
The Forum - 11/14/2000
The Moorhead City Council awarded contracts Monday for signs and ceiling repairs at the Moorhead Center Mall despite one council member’s objections that the mall already has received more than its share of money from the city.
The council selected A-Shur Sign of Moorhead to install three exterior signs for its low bid of $83,594 and Ceilings Inc. of Fargo to do the ceiling work at a cost of $48,340. The total of the two projects is $131,934.
The mall association agreed to contribute $125,000 to the project. The rest will come from the city’s tax increment financing budget.
Council member Nancy Otto said she couldn’t support the expenditure since the city already has put almost $3.5 million in tax increment financing into the mall.
“It’s a lot more than we have done for any other area,” she said.
Council member Brian Dentinger said the council has little choice, especially on the ceiling.
“Since we own the hallways, I don’t know what else to do,” he said.
Not true, Otto said. She noted that the city isn’t legally obligated to make repairs; an agreement between the city and those who own space in the mall is clear that the owners are responsible for maintenance.
In an informal council meeting later, Otto questioned whether the city wants to continue owning the hallways or can give them to businesses that own space in the mall. City Attorney Brian Neugebauer said the city can’t give the hallways to mall owners if they don’t want them. The mall owners have said they don’t.
In other business, the council approved a plan for spending $631,558 in community development block grant funds for housing and community development needs, including community policing efforts in which police provide landlords with central intelligence database reports on prospective tenants.
Duke Schempp of the People Escaping Poverty Project told the council last week that some landlords have denied people housing based on those reports. He said those reports aren’t true background checks because they list any contact a person has had with police, such as a call for help to a complaint, as well as criminal convictions.
Council members asked Schempp to provide information on specific cases where people were denied housing, but he hadn’t done so as of Monday.
“We have asked and begged and pleaded repeatedly for substantiation of those allegations,” council member John Rowell said. “These were serious allegations. But we have received no substantiation whatsoever.”
Meeting informally later, the council explored the possibility of putting the former American Legion building on the National Registry of Historic Sites.
Developer Roger Erickson is leasing the building and turning it into a restaurant and bar.
Rowell suggested Erickson meet with Mark Peihl, archivist at the Clay County Historical Society, Paul Harris, a history professor at Minnesota State University, and Steve Martens, an associate architecture professor at North Dakota State University, to discuss the idea.