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At Bobcat, they use the word acceleration – not in the traditional sense, but in a catchy way that touts the company’s forward-thinking direction.

The Bobcat Acceleration Center is where the company tests equipment in an environment that replicates real-world applications. As our reporter notes in a story in this month’s edition of Prairie Business, it’s akin to a sandbox – but for adults. The massive facility allows engineers and others to see machinery tested in a controlled environment.

The Acceleration Center, which opened in 2014 as part of a $28 million expansion at the Bismarck facility, allows advanced product development, streamlining the process and helping Bobcat strengthen its position as an industry leader.

In Fargo, the downtown skyline is seeing a new addition that will serve as the corporate offices for R.D. Offutt Co., along with offering additional office, hotel and residential space. It’s part of the ongoing development of Fargo’s downtown, which has been transformed from a sleepy neighborhood a few decades ago to a bustling business district today.

Block 9 – being developed via the partnership of R.D. Offutt Co. and Kilbourne Group – takes that impressive transformation to a new level, both literally (the building is 18 stories tall) and figuratively.

“We want to have an ‘18-hour city,’ which means downtown, you can get a cup of coffee early in the morning, have a drink or late dinner in the evening, and it’s energetic and bustling and lots of people all day and all evening long,” Keith Leir, vice president of development and construction for Kilbourne Group, told Prairie Business earlier this year.

In Grand Forks, there’s a new hospital rising in the heart of the city. Groundbreaking on the new Altru Health System facility began in June, starting in earnest a project that will see a new seven-story, 528,000-square-foot health center in Grand Forks.

Expected to be completed in 2022, Altru is constructing the facility based on its “Hospital in the Park” concept. Gone will be the boxy hospital of the past, replaced with a center that will better take advantage of the area’s park-like setting, with natural light employed throughout. The $305 million project will expand surgical and medical services and bring the hospital’s technology up to date. It will be a healthcare game-changer in Greater Grand Forks and throughout the northern Red River Valley.

Each October, Prairie Business highlights a particular construction project in the Dakotas and western Minnesota. This month, we tell readers about the Bobcat Acceleration Center, but the feature story could have included so many impactful and important projects that are underway throughout our region. All of the communities within our footprint likely have their own great construction story to tell.

In Grand Forks, it’s a $305 million hospital. In Fargo, it’s the $117 million Block 9 project. In Bismarck, it might be the new six-story First International Bank & Trust building.

And in the dozens upon dozens of smaller towns throughout the region, the projects might be smaller – a new school, or community center, for instance –but on a per-capita basis, they are equally impactful nonetheless.

The point is that construction is progress, and progress is happening in so many of the places covered by Prairie Business.

To borrow the word used so well by Bobcat, it’s more than progress. It’s acceleration.

PU b LISH er KORRIE WENZEL

AD DI re CT or STACI LORD e DIT or SYDNEY MOOK

CI r CULATI o N m ANAG er BETH BOHLMAN

LAY o UT D e SIGN SARA SLABY

ACC o UNT m ANAG er S NICHOLE ERTMAN

Prairie Business magazine is published monthly by the Grand Forks Herald and Forum Communications Company with offices at 375 2nd Avenue North, Grand Forks, ND 58203. Subscriptions are available free of charge. Back issue quantities are limited and subject to availability ($2/copy prepaid). The opinions of writers featured in Prairie Business are their own. Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, artwork are encouraged but will not be returned without a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

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