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Williston could get a big time convention center, with mostly private money.
Quote:
The 16-story complex, which wouldn't open until 2016 at the earliest and still needs funding and approval from city officials, would have more than 600,000 square feet of space, including indoor and outdoor exhibition areas, a Ruth's Chris Steak House, retail shops, office space, underground parking and a 300-room hotel.
This is a development any town or city would kill for. You have an investor who will develop a $110-125 million project and the city of Williston only has to build the convention center. ( Williston has been planning and working on a possible convention center anyway) This is the perfect chance to get a top notch development as part of the convention center complex. They would be fools to pass this up.
It seems out of place for a heavily blue collar town that has relatively little white collar element. Who's going to want to host a convention there?
There's Bakken conventions all over, like Bismarck, Regina, Grand Forks, Denver, Houston, but never in Williston.
The conventions have been worth millions to those cities, and have often resulted in related businesses opening a branch there. There's been conferences on retail development, pipelines, housing, medical, etc in addition to oil.
Williston companies are always training, but no first class place to hold day classes. If Ruth's Chris Steak House will agree to locate there, they wouldn't put their money in a place if they didn't think it had promise.
Williston has been passed over many times for some of the state and regional conventions, because the city doesn't have the facilities to host them. Williston has been planning on the possibility of using part of the city hospitality tax to fund a new convention center and parking garage for the downtown area. I don't think there are really any "white collar" towns or cities in North Dakota or surrounding states (outside of Minneapolis or Omaha).Considering the upper Midwest is pretty much agriculture and oil. But towns like Jamestown, Bismarck, Minot, Billings, Havre, Bemidji, etc... tend to attract conventions to their communities. Even bigger towns like Fargo, Billings, Rapid City, Grand Forks, etc.. are not really "white collar" either, when you think about it. With the number of engineers, architects, expanding medical, law offices, etc... moving into Williston, Williston could be on par with the likes of Bismarck, Minot, Grand Forks and Fargo when it comes to the number of professional white collars working out of Williston.
The plan for the 12-14 story office building attached to this project, along with a couple more 5-6 floor multi story office buildings in the planning stages, would suggest there will be more and more "white collar" jobs to compliment the "blue collar" jobs in this region.
Like fourwinds said, if Ruth's Chris Steak House is interested in coming to Williston, and these established developers out of Chicago are willing to invest 120 million of their own money for the office, retail and hotel part of this project...I think they know more what's coming our way, than what we do. Time will tell I guess.
On a different note on large projects coming to the Williston area. I am very interested in what Turtle Mountain band has planned for the Trenton area. I read in Indian Country Magazine, that they plan on developing a 30-35 million casino and hotel for Trenton (a few miles outside of Williston) to replace the small 1500 foot casino currently located in Trenton. They were hoping to open a casino and hotel in Grand Forks, but the state and Feds were not willing to work with or allow off reservation gambling. They indicated they are now moving this project to the Trenton area, which falls under TISA, so they can build there without approval from state and feds. It said they were hoping to cash in on all the money being generated and spent by the workers in western ND. It would be nice to see a full service casino in northwest ND.
Is the promoter of this convention center Skywatch Inn?
I remember there's a hotel and convention center being constructed close to Williston. Wondering
if this is the one.
Skywatch Inn is under construction in Ray. Just as you drive in from the west, it is on the south side of the highway. I don't think Skywatch Inn is a convention center though. Maybe it originally was going to be, but Bidlerk said it was a 2 story hotel with underground parking. But they are moving dirt and have it fenced off with a big sign and image of the new hotel in Ray.
It seems out of place for a heavily blue collar town that has relatively little white collar element. Who's going to want to host a convention there?
Perhaps there's enough working class and middle class jobs in the area to start developing a stable professional class. The Williston airport is busy, or so I hear and there are lots of people starting businesses there and hey, people gotta manage and own the ones already there. Plus there's lots of high tech behind the scenes, especially in engineering, geology, GIS, and fields directly or indirectly related to pumping oil out of the ground.
Not sure how good an idea a convention center is for a city of that size. They are tax burdens for cities much, much larger than Williston, and many go relatively unused given the space within, if they even get used at all half of the days in a given year.
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