The Stone Meadow apartment complex being built near the former Shopko building in Marshall was one example of developments underway this year in the city, Marshall EDA Director Lauren Deutz said Wednesday.

MARSHALL — The past year in Marshall has been marked by some big projects – and ongoing challenges – in areas like retail and housing. As a tour bus headed down East College Drive on Wednesday morning, it was hard for Marshall Economic Development Authority Director Lauren Deutz to keep up with all the changes and updates to local businesses.

“East College Drive did get a grant of $644,000, that helps with a lot of these projects,” Deutz told the tour group.

On Wednesday, local residents had a chance to learn more about developments in Marshall on a series of EDA bus tours. On the first tour of the day, Deutz and Marshall Mayor Bob Byrnes went over infrastructure projects, business developments and more.

Deutz said Marshall’s downtown was “thriving,” and there were several new and updated businesses along East College Drive. Some of the new additions included restaurants like the La Michoacana Elite ice cream shop and Sazon Catracho. The Scooter’s Coffee chain is also building a Marshall drive-through location on East College Drive.

Other businesses had updated their facilities.

“Slumberland was purchased, and has had some improvements done there,” Deutz said. “At Lockwood Motors, there’s a huge renovation happening there. They are more than doubling the size of their existing facilities. They’re adding a new service drive, quick service pits, a new Chevy showroom, and they’re anticipated to have that done next spring.”

“With that project, they’re bringing six to eight new service techs on board,” Deutz said. “It’s about a 19,000 square-foot addition, and it’s about $3.2 million project.”

Other College Drive businesses had closed up or been demolished. A former State Farm building was torn down for future development. The lot hasn’t been sold yet, but Western Mental Health Center has taken part of it for additional parking, Deutz said. The former AB Vacuum Center building on East College Drive was recently lifted off its foundations and moved to Willmar. There aren’t currently plans for any new developments on that lot, Deutz said.

Deutz said it might take a while before anything new could be done with the former Taco John’s lot on East College Drive.

“That was a foreclosure sale, that was purchased on auction by the bank, so it does need to sit in a one-year redemption period,” Deutz said. “Nothing can really happen in that building until next summer, but we’ve had a lot of interest in it from a few different types of businesses.”

Another Marshall restaurant, Hardee’s, also closed its location this summer.

“The building was sold,” Deutz said. “We knew the building was for sale, and the Hardee’s franchise was still intact on the land sale. But we have not gotten confirmation from the new building owner that that is their plan.” Deutz said franchise restaurants have often changed hands in Marshall.

Factors like rising construction costs were a hurdle for some business developments, Deutz said on the tour. For example, she said they were still looking for a third tenant for the former Shopko building where Marshalls and Harbor Freight are now.

“We’ve had a lot of interest in the building. The challenge we run into is . . . we need to put another storefront on. Storefronts are extremely expensive,” she said. “When Marshalls put theirs on, it was probably $250,000 to $300,000. It’s going to be higher now.”

Deutz gave an update on another proposed project, construction of an 84-room Hampton Inn near the Red Baron Arena and Expo. The city has been working with developers Rebound Partners, based out of the Northfield area.

“They’ve been in the process now for about three years,” Deutz said. Rebound Partners purchased the land for the project, and the city of Marshall had supported a tax abatement and some additional funding for infrastructure, she said. “So, the challenge we have is, we are going to give them a little bit of a timeline. We’d like to see this project go, but if it’s not going to, then we need to kind of move on to the next step.”

Deutz said Rebound Partners had a couple more months to find out if they could get enough investment to make the project go.

“The Red Baron Arena is a big generator of (hotel) room stays, so having a hotel directly adjacent to the Arena would be a big benefit,” Deutz said. “The developer does own the land, so that’s another piece of the puzzle. We know that if they aren’t able to get the project built themselves, in order for them to re-sell that land, it becomes much more expensive.”

Deutz said the hotel project had an estimated cost of about $16 million, or likely closer to $17 million with inflation. “At this point, the project obviously gets more expensive the more years we go without getting it into the ground.”

Housing needs

Housing was another area that saw both some big developments and challenges over the past year, Deutz said.

“We are excited to see Stone Meadows (apartments) coming together,” Deutz said. The apartment complex is currently under construction near the Marshalls and Harbor Freight locations in Marshall.

“Stone Meadows is a market-rate apartment complex,” she said. “Actually, we didn’t find out about the project until they were trying to work with Walmart on the land for it. . . It’s three separate buildings, 104 units of apartments. The first ones will come online, I believe in January.”

Deutz said the units would have garages, and the complex would have amenities like a fitness center, community room and playground.

At the same time, Deutz said, Marshall still needed a variety of housing.

“We just haven’t seen new homes come online as quickly as we need them to do,” she said. “We had a study completed back in 2021, and our demand through 2030 for single family homes was about 140 homes. To date, and without this year’s numbers, we’ve only put 37 on.”

Factors like building costs were part of the reason for a lack of single family housing development, Deutz said. “We are seeing more duplexes, condos, that type of building going up.”

Deutz said the Marshall EDA was working with a developer who wanted to build an affordable housing apartment project on land near Channel Parkway. The project would be 60 units of affordable housing, with reduce rent rates.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been working with the state to get funding to give the project that last push, and we received notice that we did not get it again this year,” Deutz said. “So now, we are sitting on probably a year for an application for that, and to try and get creative to see if we can do anything else to boost our support.”