Cottage Grove: Home Depot redevelopment on hold 

Cottage Grove: Home Depot redevelopment on hold

Nov 16, 2012 (Menafn - Pioneer Press - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --A plan to redevelop a former Home Depot store in Cottage Grove is dead, after the developer failed to meet a deadline.

But City Administrator Ryan Schroeder predicted that other developers will step in and complete the project, which may include a fitness club, a pet store and a Goodwill store.

The building, in a mall at 80th Street and U.S. 61, has been vacant for four years. Development company Stonehenge USA had planned to buy the 96,000-square-foot building and redevelop it.

But Schroeder said that Stonehenge was unable to get a purchase agreement from the Home Depot corporation. Stonehenge missed a deadline to get tax increment financing, which allows a city to subsidize development based on future anticipated tax revenue.

Stonehenge was counting on receiving about 1.8 million in city financing for the 10.8 million project. But on Nov. 13, the city's economic development authority voted not to give Stonehenge a deadline extension, effectively killing the project.

Schroeder isn't giving up, however.

"I know of at least three different interested parties," he said. He said the prospective developers would have to do without most of the tax increment money, so they might have to trim costs of the project.

But he said the same tenants still are interested.

"The challenge is to find a scenario that is bankable," Schroeder said.

"We are virtually certain that is going to happen. It seems like it will happen in the next few months."

Bob

Shaw can be reached at 651-228-5433. Follow him at twitter.com/BshawPP.

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