By Logan Wells, News Director | Logan@kymnradio.net
Some of the different organizations in the Northfield Community Resource Building (NCRC).
For the last several months, the City of Northfield has been looking to renegotiate the lease on the Community Resource Building or the NCRC. The NCRC is owned by the City of Northfield and serves as a home for many critical community nonprofits and organizations including: FiftyNorth Senior Center, the Community Action Center, Three Rivers Community Action, Rice County United Way, and a satellite office of Rice County. The only city operated service in the building is the Library Oasis. Here is Northfield City Administrator Ben Martig on KYMN in February:
“The idea was if the city gets involved to be the main owner of it that regardless if the expenses are passed on for the cost by us being in that role it’s going to reduce the cost it will in effect be a lower than market rate versus if it was privately owned for these users.” – Ben Martig, Northfield City Administrator on the KYMN Morning Show
The city has been working to standardize the rent across the building and to build a fund to pay for some of the needed maintenance costs of the building. Here’s Martig to the City Council in November:
“So the goal is ultimately to have. Facilities that are well managed, well taken care of in good stewards of taxpayer dollars to take care of the buildings. Also being sensitive to try and keeping those costs as down as much as possible.” – Ben Martig, Northfield City Administrator, at the 11/19/2024 City Council Meeting
For years, the building has been complicated with a variety of different agreements between the city and tenants, and who was responsible for maintaining the building. While the total debt on the building was paid off in 2016, the deferred maintenance on the building, including HVAC and Pool System, along with operating costs, means that the NCRC is the highest subsidized city building/operation, more than either the pool or ice arena.
According to the city, in 2024, the rent per square foot ranged from $7.20 to $11.10 in the building. This is well below the market rate, which is closer to $20 per square foot for office space and $30 to $35 a per square foot for the fitness center with pool, which FiftyNorth has.
City leaders have indicated their belief in the important work of the organizations located in the NCRC and finding a way for the city to continue to support them with subsidized space, here Martig on KYMN in January:
“The users out there are really important. As you said, community partners provide healthy, nourishing food for people challenged financially with the Community Action center’s food shelf, we have workforce programming. It’s a really important partners that we have and so we wanted to bring them along and It was well received, I think, by the partners recognizing that we had some challenges with kind of keeping up on some of the updates.” – Ben Martig, Northfield City Administrator, on the KYMN Morning Show
The issue was discussed during the city’s budgeting process this past fall, hoping to find a resolution by the end of 2025. Several proposals were discussed at the time regarding how much the city should contribute to the building. We will have a report on the different options in today’s news.
Two of the options proposed regarding the NCRC Building to the Northfield City Council. These are not final proposals, just examples of what is being discussed.
The agenda for tomorrow’s City Council meeting is to approve a 9-month lease agreement between FiftyNorth and the City from April until the end of 2025. City leadership has previously indicated that they would like to reach an agreement with all of the tenants and sign a more long-term deal by the end of the year.
Find the full slideshow from November with some of the different options discussed about the NCRC.
Find the proposed lease agreement with FiftyNorth here.
Will keep you updated with any details about this story as they happen.
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