Met Council gives out $5.7M in grants

The Metropolitan Council has announced $5.7 million in community development grants to six cities including Minneapolis, Champlin and Maple Plain.

Met Council President Sue Haigh said the money will help cities buy or clean up land to promote development along transit corridors.

"What's exciting to me, though, is that these awards really go to help with jobs, both certainly construction jobs, where we anticipate about 1,200 construction jobs, and then permanement jobs," she said. "So just under 400 permanent jobs and just under 400 units of affordable housing, and another 200 units of market-rate housing."

Nine projects in the six cities will receive grants. The largest grant will go to Minneapolis to redevelop an industrial site near the Franklin LRT station.

Haigh added that the grants will spur more private investment.

"There is a lot of market interest in development around light rail, around bus rapid transit station areas," she said, "but there are also pieces of property that are blighted, that need additional resources to get cleaned up before market resources will come in and be attractive for those particular sites."

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