ABOVE: The Southern Minnesota Educational Campus (SMEC) Building was a topic of conversation on Monday as the Fairmont City Council discussed the potential of selling it.

FAIRMONT– The future of the Southern Minnesota Educational Campus (SMEC) building in Fairmont was discussed by the Fairmont City Council during its meeting on Monday.

For the majority of its long existence, the SMEC building has housed some kind of educational entity including both Central School and Presentation College. It’s still in line with that as it currently houses the Community Education and Recreation (CER) office which relocated there about four years ago.

Interim City Administrator, Jeff O’Neill, said that the building is moving to a potential where it could be vacant.

Speaking of some other tenants, he said, “STEP has moved out and UHD has potential of moving out as well. Under those circumstances, I thought I should give you an update to see if you want to look into the possibility of doing something different with the facility.”

He said at this point in time it made sense to gauge the council’s interest in what to do.

“Do you want to have this building for a public building in perpetuity or do you want to sell it?” he asked.

He listed a few potential possibilities, as well as some ideas that he didn’t think would work. One of the ideas was a city hall or police station, which has been discussed in the past.

“I don’t think there’s been a solid yes or no on that. I think there’s some impracticalities that come with a city hall,” O’Neill said.

Another option O’Neill mentioned was a community center, though he said he believed it currently lacked some flexibility and that a pool likely wouldn’t be able to be added.

“It’s great for a meeting space and great for a senior center. It’s great for maybe even daycare,” he said.

Speaking to expenses, O’Neill said that according to a study done a few years ago by Wold Architects and Engineers, it’s about $98,000 a year for ongoing maintenance and with STEP and UHD leaving there would be an operating deficit of about $85,000 a year.

“We need to make a decision quickly how hard we want to push for tenants or do we want to do something else with that building from an economic standpoint?” O’Neill asked.

He then shared that there has been some strong interest in the space from residential developers.

“If we were to go forward with this, if council was so inclined, we would do a Request for Proposal (RFP) process and work on a document that would identify what would be the conditions under which you would want to have the building reused,” O’Neill said.

He also stressed that the council would want to include a provision in the agreement that said if it was sold and nothing happened, the city would be able to get the building back.

Council Member Jay Maynard said, “I don’t know if we have a particular use for the building ourselves, especially not with the lack of current tenants. I think especially with some expressed interest, this is the ideal time to say, ‘okay, fine, what kind of proposals can we get?'”

Council Member Britney Kawecki noted that the senior center is also within the building currently, however she said she was in favor of multi-family housing.

“For me, I see the benefit of marketing it right for somebody to have that as an incentive to buy it,” Kawecki said.

She said she would like to see city staff bring forward more properties that are not of use to the council to consider other possibilities.

“I think that looking at getting rid of the SMEC building and any other properties would be a major benefit to the taxpayers of Fairmont,” she said.

Mayor Lee Baarts said the council should focus on the SMEC building for now but can consider other properties at a later date.

Council Member Randy Lubenow spoke up and said he didn’t think there was a good handle on what the needs of the community are.

“The county is not moving forward with a law enforcement center so what does that mean for our police department? The fire department has talked about having more space. What does that mean for the fire department? And city hall, I hear different viewpoints for how operational city hall is. I really wonder if we don’t need a work session to take tours or get a better idea of what we’re looking at,” Lubenow said.

He added that, as much as he’d like to see it, the city can’t afford to build everyone something new.

Kawecki expressed some frustration and said, “It seems like everything we talk about we say, ‘we’ll bring it back…’ and we don’t actually accomplish anything… Everything just keeps getting pushed instead of us accomplishing anything.”

Council Member James Kotewa made a motion to direct staff to put together a RFP to sell the SMEC building. The motion passed unanimously.

On Monday the council also considered some business with local engineering firm, Bolton & Menk, the first of which was approving a master agreement for city engineering services.

At its last meeting on April 14 the council considered three RFPs for engineering services and after a lengthy discussion, decided to go with Bolton & Menk, which it has been contracting with since 2022.

The council approved the agreement 4-1 with Kawecki opposed as she said she would prefer to go with a different firm, ISG.

When it came to approving task order 11A with Bolton & Menk for construction administration of the Gomsrud Park project, Kawecki had some questions.

Public Works Director, Matthew York, shared that the task order, in the amount of $65,672, is down from the original $70,000 cost.

As part of any construction project, the city either uses in-house or contracted staff on site during a project to ensure proper completion as well as ensure that the city only pays for materials used.

Around the same time as the Gomsrud Park project is being done, the Lake Avenue project is also going to be done, which Bolton & Menk is assisting the city with. Kawecki asked whether they were only charging for time and material. York said they were charging for time spent in the field.

“If Gomsrud ends before Lake Avenue starts, we won’t have to pay this?” she asked. “If the projects criss-cross and you have staff that can do one or the other, being as it’s based on time and material, it might not be $65,000, is that correct?”

York said that there is more staff work that needs to be done over the summer aside from those two projects but said if council wanted changes could be made.

After some more back and forth, O’Neill interjected and said concerns like this between city staff and council members are common.

“The worst thing you can do is hire someone and then not have work for them later. It’s usually better to have the work done by your engineering firm and try to manage it so if there’s some capacity we can insert additional staff to keep the cost as low as possible but let the project play out under the contract,” O’Neill said.

An earlier motion made to approve the task order passed unanimously.

In other action, the council:

–Appointed Shaina Scheppmann to the Police Commission and Jon Omvig to the Economic Development Authority.

— Approved a purchase order for Shamrock Recycling Inc in the amount of $90,000 for yard waste grinding at the tree site.

— Approved a contract with Brennan Construction of Minneapolis for the Sylvania Park Bandshell project in the amount of $250,000.