February 8th, 2006

NORTHFIELD — Last week at this time, the building on the west corner of Second Street and Minnesota Highway 3 wasn’t completed.

The interior was half complete, but showing promise of a future reality in Northfield.

This Saturday, however, the model home for “The Crossing,” the redevelopment project spearheaded by Mendota Homes will open to the public, giving people a glimpse of what a condominium in the project will look like.

Using the company PROCON Construction of Faribault, Mendota Homes uses the model home “so people can see the finished product while we’re under construction. And that’s really unique, usually people have to wait a long time to see the finished product,” said Mike Jordan, project manager for The Crossing.

According to Jason Sellars, realtor with Mendota Homes, the model represents what a two-bedroom condo would look like.

The model will be open from noon until 6 p.m. Saturday. For the next several weeks, personnel will be on hand from noon until 6 p.m. at the model on Wednesdays through Sundays.

Last week, construction personnel from Mendota Homes — a Little Canada-based company started by developer John Mathern — were in town to meet with Northfield city officials to have a pre-construction meeting.

This week, Mendota Homes parked a construction trailer on the 7-acre site that will eventually host two condominium buildings and 35,000 square feet of commercial, office and restaurant space spread over a number of commercial buildings.

The foundation for the first condominium may be laid sometime this month, Jordan said.

New faces
Although Mathern became a staple at the city meetings which proceeded last year’s sale of the city property to Mendota Homes, there is a new group of faces that hope to become known in the community.

Mershawn Pikus is director of construction for the development company. Lyle Steele is the general superintendent of construction for the company.

Last week, Jordan, Pikus and Steele sat down to talk about the future construction on the project. One common theme they all shared was that the wealth of experience they’ve gained from working with each other would translate well to the project at hand.

“First and foremost, we’re a team,” Pikus said. “We work very well as a team and we work well with each other.”

Currently, geopiers are being installed in the site to correct the soil. In this process, compacted gravel fills holes that are drilled along the site. Ultimately “the building sits on these pillars of gravel,” Jordan said.

Implementing geopiers has less impact on the soil in the long run and enables the company to do soil correction without disrupting the flow of groundwater.

Crews also are working to relocate utilities including power and phone lines.

Mendota Homes is also in the process of getting permits for an eight-unit office condominium.

“As soon as the permit process from the city is complete, we will start construction,” Jordan said.

The restaurant building that is slated for the site is currently going through the design process.

“By the time spring comes, three buildings will be under construction on that site,” Steele said. “… I think people will be really surprised come middle of summer how active that site is going to be.”

Although there is much work ahead of the Mendota Homes crew, the sense from Steele, Pikus and Jordan is that the fun is starting to begin for them.

“We get to do the fun part now,” Jordan said. “We’re going to take it from the ground to something physical.”
– Michelle Kubitz can be reached at 645-1115 or mkubitz@northfieldnews.com.