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FARGO, N.D. – “It’s getting increasingly easier to attract top talent here.”

“There is such an amazing vibe and so many young people in the downtown.”
“We’d have to say there is tremendous growth in the local economy.”
You know, we really ought to be used to this by now. But we’re still amazed to hear people talk that way about Fargo, the city whose name was a punchline when it appeared as a movie in 1996, but which in recent years has turned up on national Top 10 lists for its dynamism, sophistication and quality of life.
The population estimate in the headline is from the local Metropolitan Council of Governments. It represents a 41 percent boost from the current population of 234,000.
So, what has the Fargo-Moorhead area been doing right? And what challenges remain?
In late November, Prairie Business posed those questions to a group of 16 Fargo-Moorhead leaders who met at our invitation over lunch. Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney, the presidents of North Dakota State University, Minnesota State University Moorhead and Concordia College, and a dozen other presidents and vice presidents of area businesses and organizations started off by describing the metro area’s progress, which impressed them all.
It was Mayor Mahoney who said “we’d have to say there is tremendous growth in the local economy.
“We’ve had capital growth,” the mayor continued. “When we look at how much Fargo grows, it used to be a pace of $250 million a year, now we’re at about $450 to $500 million a year. That’s the Block 9 project downtown, the retail you’ll see growing on 45th Street South – new capital growth.”
Sales tax revenues are up, and the city’s two major medical centers are “doing fantastic, with more business than they know what to do with,” Mahoney said. He should know; Mahoney, a physician, works as a surgeon at Internal Medicine Associates in Fargo and Lake Region Healthcare in Fergus Falls, Minn.
“We have more people flying out of our airport,” said the mayor, a claim confirmed by Hector International Airport Executive Director Shawn Dobberstein, who was also at the meeting.
“And we’re expecting the diversion to go through; that will be a $2.5 billion project over the next few years. Which we think will have a positive impact on our economy as well.”
In the discussion of the city’s assets, two items stood out.

College Town
The first is the metro area’s strong mix of universities, four-year colleges, two-year colleges and branch campuses. To take just one example, “we have a really unusual partnership in the TriCollege University,” said William Craft, Concordia College president.
TCU is a cooperative agreement between Concordia, Minnesota State University Moorhead and North Dakota State University. Most recently, the partnership resulted in an agreement with Sanford Health to open a health-care simulation training center in Fargo, one of few such centers in the nation.
“It is not common to have that kind of alliance across not only private-college and publicuniversity lines, but across state lines,” Craft said. “And speaking for a college of about 2,100 students, I can say we would not be opening such a training center on our own. They are exceptionally costly, but because we’re working together, we have a chance to create this as a benefit for all of our students. It’s incredible.”
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