Boom times a’ comin’ to the Iron Range. That’s the story and I mostly believe it. There will be jobs created here in the next few years, mostly because steel is selling high and our local iron mining operations are much more competitive in the global economy.
If big new plants like the ones proposed for Minnesota Steel near Nashwauk or Polymet over on the East Range are built, there will be thousands of permanent and temporary jobs created and a demand for housing. From Tuesday’s Duluth News Tribune:
The Iron Range will need an additional 722 to 2,712 housing units by the end of 2013 to accommodate growth specifically caused by proposed or pending development projects, according to a study released Tuesday.
“Iron Range Housing: Planning for Growth” was prepared by the St. Paul-based engineering and planning firm Bonestroo for the Range Readiness Initiative’s housing team.
“We’re taking the first important step of looking at the condition of our existing housing stock and what we might need for new housing,” housing team chairwoman Mary Ives said. “It’s going to give us the hard data we need in making critical decisions.”
The hard data does not tell leaders how to address the needs. The tone of the quotes in the story implies that we can either try to retrofit and update our current aging housing stock or encourage the building of new developments. This brings me to an important point, one that everyone involved in Range government or politics should note.
We must not let developers run the show at this point in Iron Range history. Developers will tell us that we need to build vast housing tracts on the edges of our towns or massive new apartment buildings. Those are the things that developers suggest because they make the most money for developers, especially when they get subsidies from cities, counties and other units of government. We must address the aging housing stock and infrastructure of our Range towns FIRST or we never will. Our towns will age in the middle and overbuild on the edges, causing all kinds of financial problems for our local governments, citizens and overall economy. Suburbs have gotten away with this kind of development (even though it’s unsustainable and bad) because they have raw population growth and massive amounts of money moving through the real estate markets. We don’t have either of those things on the Iron Range. We need to be smart with our big shot at stabilizing our famously unstable economy by addressing the very unsexy problem of old, unsellable homes in downtown Name of Range Town. This will mean spending money on repairs and restoration instead of hot, sexy new developments with soap opera names like “Misty Meadows” and “Lilies Dancing on the Fields of Freaking Huge Mortgages.”
You know that developers get the same Google Alerts I get. They see stories like this and smell an opportunity. I see news like this and see the responsibility of Iron Range leaders to do what’s right in the long run. Don’t be fooled by fancy talk.
Amen! Amen!