article by: Chris Giesen
In the final weeks of 2019, the Harmony EDA purchased approximately 8.2 acres of land to expand their existing industrial park to accommodate a prospective expansion of an operations and warehousing facility owned by Dairyland Power Cooperative of La Crosse Wisconsin. “We’ve been working with Dairyland for some time now to build a facility in Harmony and the EDA felt this was the right time to proactively step forward and purchase additional land.” Said Chris Giesen, Harmony’s CEDA representative and CEDA Vice President. “The growth of our industrial park will not only assist with the prospective Dairyland project, but it will also create up to 6 additional 1 plus acre lots for additional business growth. We are still working through the final details of the project with Dairyland but this is a big project for Harmony.” Dairyland’s proposed project would build a 23,000 square foot building, is estimated to create $2.3 million in new tax base, and bring 4 new FTE jobs into Harmony.
In conjunction with this proposed project, Giesen applied for and secured a $74,537 Greater Minnesota Business Development Public Infrastructure (BDPI) grant from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) and a 0% interest, $84,082.50 loan from MiEnergy Cooperative. Both the grant and loan will fund the necessary public infrastructure improvements to serve the proposed Dairyland project in the Harmony Industrial Park. Over the 10 year term of the loan from MiEnergy, the 0% interest rate is estimated to save Harmony taxpayers about $13,000.