Star Tribune
Bloomington offers more subsidies to German tech company
German tech company SICK is building new Bloomington offices, with millions in help from the city and Port Authority.
The Bloomington Port Authority has agreed to offer the company more than $12.1 million in subsidies for its growing campus near the Mall of America. Bloomington will pay half the cost of building a parking ramp, and is giving the company a huge discount on city-owned land. City and port officials say the subsidies make sense because SICK and other tech companies are pivotal to making Bloomington’s local economy less dependent on the megamall and surrounding hotels.
“I appreciate the port’s focus and the [City] Council’s focus on a strategy of supporting our hospitality industry — and diversifying our economy,” Council Member Shawn Nelson said before both bodies voted unanimously to approve the subsidies this week. “This is an exact project that does that.”
SICK — short for the company’s full name, Sick Vertriebs-GmbH — is a German company that makes sensors, some of which are used for autonomous vehicles. The company has had Minnesota offices in Savage and west Bloomington, but will consolidate staff at the new office.
The company is slowly building a campus in Bloomington’s South Loop district, beginning with a logistics and production building that opened in the fall of 2022. The city and the company agreed in early 2021 on four phases of possible development and up to $30.4 million in city subsidies.
Part of the subsidy is the markdown on city-owned land.
Bloomington will sell the land for SICK’s office building, about 3½ acres, for $1.2 million. That’s just more than a third of what the port authority deemed the land’s value to be.
Bloomington bought the land in 2010 in part for the construction of Lindau Lane near the Mall of America, and as part of the port’s commonly used strategy of buying land and holding out for an optimal development proposal.
The port authority will use tax increment financing left over from older projects in the area to pay for half the cost of building a 550-stall parking ramp, estimated to cost between $20 million and $25 million. SICK will pay the other half.
Bloomington will own the ramp, and has agreed lease it to SICK during the day for $1 per year for the next 50 years.
The parking ramp will be reserved for SICK employees between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. and open to the public overnight until 6 a.m. The port authority has subsidized other parking ramps in Bloomington, said Jason Schmidt, assistant port authority administrator, but those ramps have been open to the public at all hours.
The office and parking ramp are expected to open in mid-2026, at which point SICK will move about 170 employees from its current office in west Bloomington to the new office. SICK expects to bring about 75 other North American staff to the Bloomington office in years to come.
To get the subsidies, SICK has to pay those workers no less than $38,000 per year. SICK has told Bloomington median pay for the office workers is about $94,500.
Looking for ways to stay warm and active this winter? U.S. Bank has announced the return of a popular program that allows runners and inline skaters access to stadium facilities on some cold winter nights.
The Winter Warm-Up begins Tuesday, Dec. 3. It will be offered on most Tuesday and Thursday evenings in December and January from 5-9 p.m., according to a news release from U.S. Bank Stadium.
Inline skating takes place on the stadium’s main concourse and indoor running on the stadium’s upper concourse. The program is all ages, with a required waiver.
Skaters must provide their own skates, helmet and other safety gear, with no equipment rental available. Runners must wear proper footwear.
Winter Warm-Up tickets are $15 and must be purchased on ticketmaster.com. Participants should enter via the skyway entrance at 740 S 4th Street.
The boom of yet another car crash was as jarring as it was familiar, reverberating in Albert Padilla’s townhouse one afternoon this year as he watched T.V.
“Instantly,” he recalled, “I knew something had happened.”
He rushed outside, running without shoes toward the heavily trafficked intersection of Biscayne Avenue and County Road 42 in southwestern Rosemount, where a car appeared to have spun out, he said. Inside, a woman lay pinned between airbags and the driver-side door.
Padilla and his wife live in a townhome development on a corner of this busy intersection. Residents and local officials agree something needs to be done to boost safety in the area. The node, not far from a gym, numerous single-family homes and a soon-to-be-constructed middle school, is a hotspot for collisions: 56 incidents have occurred since January 2019 where Biscayne Avenue crosses County Road 42, also known in that area as 150th St. W., according to Rosemount Police Department data.
That’s about 11 crashes a year over a roughly five-year span. And although none have been fatal, data shows 30% of all incidents resulted in injuries.
“As we continue to grow, it’s going to get more and more busy,” said Padilla, who works in Shakopee and navigates the corner on his morning and evening commutes. “More and more accidents are going to happen.”
A traffic light is slated for the area in coordination with a new middle school coming to the southeastern corner of the intersection. Officials will also realign part of Biscayne Avenue to reduce its skewed orientation, which impedes visibility. But that light installation and realignment won’t be complete until 2027, frustrating residents who say the node needs a makeover — now.
A man shot to death last weekend in Rochester has been identified.
Rochester Police said they responded about 1 a.m. Saturday to a home in the 4100 block of Manor Woods Drive NW. where they found a man shot to death. Family has since identified the victim as Demetrious Tankhamvang, 28, of Rochester.
One person was taken into custody Saturday, but there has been no further word on that individual’s role in the death or how the shooting came about.
“Demetrious’ parents, Christina, Sam, and Shane, are now grappling with the unimaginable pain of losing their firstborn son,” Samantha Prak wrote in an online fundraising campaign she started on behalf of the family. “Demetrious also leaves behind two beautiful daughters, who will forever carry his love in their hearts.”
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