10.0. EDSR 02-14-1994 - Laserfiche WebLink

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CoPY • February 2, 1994 Members of the E.D.A's Business Park Task Force c/o Bill Rubin, Economic Development Coordinator City of Elk River P.O. Box 490 Elk River, MN 55330 Re: "Menards" and "Country Ridge Partnership" lands along Hwy. 10 west. Ladies & Gentlemen: I 'm now quite sorry that I missed the meeting on Jan. 12th. I have been told that Chairman Dwyer, at the Planning Commission meeting of Jan. 25th, said that our committee "unanimously" recommended that the above lands be a part of the business park. Which, in part, apparently led to the defeat of the above requests. If I had been at that meeting it would certainly not have been "unanimous" for the reasons that I will soon explain. First though, I have to tell you that our firm did do a boundary and topographic survey for the parcel Menards is intending to purchase. Said survey is now done and billed, and we have not been asked by Menards to do anything further to date. This firm also does do work for Country Ridge Partnership and Mr. Emmerich, and have been actively working on the Lakoduk property designing same as directed by Mr. Emmerich. You may choose, if you wish, to believe that that means that my personal judgement is "for sale" to clients. It is not. I would hope that my record of things that I've done for the betterment of this community (Associated Investors, Youth Hockey, Downtown Development, etc. ) would speak for itself and prove that I have the best interests of this community at heart. After all, clients come and go, but I continue to live, and work, here. I do not believe in "shooting myself in the foot" . The experience of working on the Industrial Park for E.R.A. I. gives me, and the others so involved in that effort, a (I believe) special insight into the "bumpy road" of industrial (and by extension: "business park" ) development. As an example, remember when I suggested that we "stage" any future industrial park so as to keep down the costs for utilities? This came from that experience. In the paper it said that Pat had a "vision" about a business park. I applaud that. However, it also needs a dose of reality too. 4 A business park, like an industrial park, is not a "Field Of Dreams" - this is "if we build it, they will come" . The hard reality is, is that fulfillment of that dream will likely take many, many years because every city around us has their "Field Of Dreams" too.