is the center of our communities Downtown Pushes for new development are transforming the Red River Valley

By Sam Easter

Kevin Ritterman, president of Dakota Commercial, remembers the early days of the pandemic like everyone else does — though with the added twist that he’d just wrapped up a new development project in downtown Grand Forks.

“Of course, the worst timing ever — we finished it, and the next month they shut the city down,” he joked.

Ritterman and his company have been a staple of major development in Grand Forks for years. He was behind Selkirk on Fourth, the condo development which, in a contentious fight over the city’s future, was built on top of Arbor Park. Dakota Commercial was also behind Pure North, the mixed-use building along DeMers Avenue that brought a Hugo’s grocery store downtown.

But the pandemic brought an unexpected change to the march of downtown progress. Across the country, workers fled offices, streams of walk-in customers ran dry and suddenly urban cores faced a not-so-certain economic future. The effect was especially pronounced in major cities, where empty office towers and shuttered storefronts created a crisis of confidence in an urban future (“New York is Dead. Long Live New York,” one headline teased). Ritterman points out that government stimulus was key in saving balance books.

The result was a functional stress-test of urban cores, many of which have seen a resurgence in investment. In recent decades — with notable success since the Great Recession — many cities started focusing intensely on walkability, boosting the charm and the vibrancy of downtown centers, aided by programs like North Dakota’s “Renaissance Zone” system, which often offers steep tax incentives for developers in downtown areas.