Falls Fabricating ready to grow in Little Falls

Falls Fabricating is looking to expand.

Just two years after six employees purchased the business to ensure another company wouldn’t buy it and move jobs out of Little Falls, the new owners are hoping to add 40,000 square feet to their plant and add 20 new jobs.

“I’m really just impressed with the culture that they’re building and the work that they’re doing over there,” said Little Falls City Administrator Jon Radermacher. “It’s really encouraging to see that in a business that’s really been homegrown to do that. Those are the ones that we love to support.”

The business, which is located in Little Falls’ industrial park on the northwest side of town, is hoping to get some help from the city to facilitate that expansion. As such, the City Council voted unanimously, Monday, to call for public hearings to support applications for state funding and for the use of a tax increment financing (TIF) district to purchase additional land.

Both of those public hearings are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 20, at Little Falls City Hall.

Similar to what the city has done in the past for businesses such as Wabash, Barrett Petfood Innovations and Lakeshirts, Falls Fabricating will be asking for the city’s support in applications to the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). It will be going for funding in the form of a Minnesota Investment Fund (MIF) grant and a Job Creation Fund grant.

In order to do a 40,000 square foot expansion, Falls Fabricating would need to acquire adjacent parcels that are currently owned by the Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA).

“We went to their meeting tonight to get their blessing to move forward with that so that we could establish, as well, a public hearing for the sale of those properties, because they would likely additionally need those to go into a TIF district to support them and some resources to do the development on those properties,” Radermacher said.

He noted that there are different classifications of TIF districts. In this case, as an economic development district, it would have a shorter maximum timeframe for the TIF and would be more restricted on eligible uses of those funds.

Radermacher said Jason Murray from David Drown Associates is currently working on a development agreement.

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