MASON CITY – City Hall in Mason City confirmed Thursday that a large department store – and possibly more – is headed to the city’s west side Indianhead shopping district.
A Marshall’s department store is slated to be completed in 2014 and will be located west of Kohl’s department store in the Willow Creek Crossing Development. The store will be about 22,000 square feet in size and cost $2 million to build.
The developer, North Iowa Growth, LLC, will receive economic development grants of tax increment (TIF) – totaling $480,000 over 7 years – for increases in property value associated only with the 22,000 square foot building.
Willow Creek Crossing Development already is home to Kohl’s Petco, MC Sports and Best Buy, among others.
City Hall believes that the Marshall’s store will be a “catalyst” for the rest of the shopping center, “which will stabilize the current retail mix and draw new retailers to the center as well as new restaurants to the lots fronting Highway 122.”
City Hall claims to “have evidence that Marshall’s is attracting new investment to the shopping center.” Plans have been submitted, City Hall officials say, that show the new 22,000 square foot Marshall’s store flanked by two other leasable spaces: a 5,400 square foot store and an 18,000 square foot store.
move the current mall tenants into the new retail center of town (west side). one good casino down town would solve a lot. oh yea, I forgot, our citizens fought tooth and nail to keep a casino out of the county. I haven’t seen ANY of the predicted out of control crime and trouble around diamond jo worth. they generate so much voluntarily paid money that they have to think of ways to give out grants, not to mention putting up billboards to rub our noses in it.
Peter L. is on to something when he says, ” What makes a community cool is when businesses offer interesting, useful, and cutting edge products and services to spark our senses and imagination, as well as satisfy utilitarian needs”.
I was in Mankato, Minnesota the other day and my wife and I both commented on how much Mankato has grown and well laid out and easy to get around their booming town. They obviously want and did grow, and don’t try and control wages!
It seems they were on the same wave length as Peter L.
You can have all the stores you want but without jobs that actually can support a family MC will continue to shrink. The only people coming to town now are hospital employees and big city welfare families taking advantage of Iowas free housing program and the drug trade.
YOu must not shop very much!!! Marshall’s and Kohl’s have little in common when it comes to price. This is why Marshall’s, TJ Maxx, Gordmans and Tuesday Mornings are popular. They have name brand merchandise that is sold at Kohl’s, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, etc… for usually 40-60% off their prices…. That is why they are popular. They are not Walmart, Shopko or Target. Higher end merchandise for awesome prices…
If u look at the current census and see that in Mason City the majority of households with a family of 4 make a median salary of 32k or less…. Less than 10 % with a family of four make over $ 75,000.
So, when we are looking at shopping– the lower the price the better…
I agree. More big boxes and for what. By the way our downtown mall is dead. This is insane.
Matt: Could you find out the following information: 1) How many will the store employ?
2) What the pay scale will be for the workers?
3) What kind of benefits will the workers get i.e.
insurance, vacation, 401k plan? From your article, it appears the rich get richer, and, oh well.
I have been saying this for years!!! We need the next level up in discount shopping… I was hoping it would go downtown to anchor the south end….
Stores like Marshall’s, TJ Maxx and Gordman’s and Tuesday Mornings draw people for miles…. The ladies of leisure here in Mason City, go out of town every week to shop these places… I hope maybe they will shop here and use some of their rich husbands money locally and help drive our economy!! I hear them talk at coffee shops about all the shopping in Rochester MN and other places that have these stores….
I am excited…..
These tax credit gifts are done as competition between cities and town to atract a tax payer base….and of course bring in jobs. While not the highest paying these jobs will aid in paying the heat bill this winter and also fill some medicine bottles when combined with pension checks.
s far as the McNider family goes, they have done more for this community than anyone can imangine.
Recently there was a huge outcry because of the micro enterprise program giving the roller rink money to buy candy and other product to sell. People were upset and angry our city council did this and thought it unfair.
Well folks the city council did themselves one better! Giving Marshalls and the developers 480,000 in taxpayer money. How do we know this money is going to build a building or other infrastructure…or is going to be used to buy stock for the store….480,000 dollars worth of stock. Yes clothes and accessories, not candy but it is the same.
Basically this is the micro enterprise program on a much larger and detrimental scale. Marshalls has deep enough pockets and lines of credit why do they have to stick their hands in our pockets?
While I agree with 4ever49, I would like to add some additional thoughts on his/her suggestion:
Here is the way we stop this BS.
Both at the Federal and State level we need to elect people that will pass legislation that eliminates PUBLIC PRIVATE VENTURES!
Public Private Ventures occurs when the taxpayers give money to a business to locate or expand in a community. They were created by our State and Federal Government with legislation to take tax dollars and give that money to business all in the name of jobs. It was and is a ruse!
America needs to return to an earlier time when only banks loaned money to business to compete and do business. That alone helped keep prices down and reduced inflation.
We need to stop all tax dollars to be allowed for any kind of incentive. Giving tax dollars as incentive only drives down wages and destroys our economic base. I call it a form of REVERSE PROTECTIONISM that harms us all. It inhibits competition too.
All the elitists/socialists/communist/Democrats/and RINO’s (Republican in Name Only) will come out against this concept and tell us we will not be able to create jobs. Baloney!
That is another crock of BS.
Jobs will be created when there is DEMAND. Wages go up when there is a demand for labor. Competition raises quality and lowers prices to us all. Free Enterprise built this country and Public Private Ventures have been destroying it.
Wake up folks, America has to get away from this left wing agenda that promotes socialism where we lose our freedom!
Hey bro, lots of 80’s chicks needed the mall open downtown back then. It was all about providing shopping for the MCHS chicks back then. Daughters were crying to parents, ya dig man.
All In All It’s Just Another Brick In The Mall.
When the mall falls, maybe they can remodel it into their event center. Plenty of parking in the area. Or maybe Mercy will buy it for more space. Personally, I’d like to see Federal Avenue go right through the middle of it again.
This is what happens when local governments are allowed to play the EDC game. When every local government competes against its neighbor then promoters become quite adept at playing them off against each other. Recall the competition between MC and Cedar Falls over the Target distribution center. Cedar Falls won out in part to their ownership of the utility provider and was able to add that to the pot of goodies being offered – which MC did not have.
The real question is why do we allow government at any level to enter into this game? I don’t think local administrators or politicians are clairvoyant as to the prospects of ventures, nor should we expect them to be.
If we truly want this stopped something needs to happen at the national level.
You know, when you get right to it, the taxpayers have allowed politicians (by law) to play Monopoly with OUR tax dollars.
All in the name of Junk Progress!
sorry for the typo
You know, when you get right to it, the taxpayers have allowed politicians (by law) to play Monopoly with out tax dollars.
All in the name of Junk Progress!!
Just what we don’t need. Why would we need another low wage retail store and more fast food restaurants? By the way, it was Jolas and Kew that pushed the damn mall. We were in the mall last week and if it wasn’t for the people that work there there wouldn’t have been anyone there. This was not a one time deal. If not for the workers and walkers it would be empty.
wow another retail store that pays min wage.Marshall stores arent that impressive so do not get that excited.
WOW!
Spreading the wealth!! Up!!!
Let’s see here, MacNider pushed the downtown Mall which is a joke that cost the Mason City taxpayers millions of dollars. The Southbridge rip off became a failure. It was supposed to make Mason City grow. We are smaller now then we were before that boondoggle.
MacNider got paid for his old Penny’s store and came out smelling like a rose.
Then MacNider goes out west builds Indianhead and takes stores that was in the Mall and relocates them to Indianhead development, making more money. Now we see a new department store that Southbrigde was supposed to lure downtown, building out at the MacNider Indianhead development. Make some more money, yea for MacNider.
Marshalls Department store builds a 2 million dollar building and the taxpayers of Mason City give them $480,000 dollars (that is about 1/4th of the building) without even being asked for the money from the taxpayers. Do you see a loss of freedom here folks?
Oh they will tell us this will be “progress”. What a crock!
Isn’t this spreading the wealth up to the rich great folks? Don’t ya just love this Communist/Socialist/Democrats way of spreading the wealth? The rich get richer and poor get poorer.
Some dam fool will blame the Republicans but remember it was RINO’s (Republicans In Name Only) and Democrats that pushed for the laws that let the government give our money away. They are all just Communist/Socialist/left wing/ pukes!
When will the foolish voters/taxpayers WAKEUP? Or have we lost all control of our Communist/Socialist government?