FARGO - It will probably be another year and a half before you see land owned by Xcel Energy redeveloped on the western edge Fargo’s downtown, said Mark Nisbet, Xcel’s principal manager for North Dakota.

The 2-acre plot along NP Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets was the former site of Heartland Apartment Homes, 11 12th St. N.

Before that, it was the site of a manufactured gas plant, which used coal to make gas for lighting, heating and cooking from 1885 until 1960, when natural gas became widely available. Xcel’s subsidiary Northern State’s Power bought the plant around 1910. The plant was razed sometime after it was closed.

In 2018, Xcel purchased the land back from the Heartland Properties ownership group in order to remove components of the gas plant, including some foundation and pipes, as well as soil contaminated with coal tar and napthalene, Nisbet said. The 88-unit Heartland apartment complex, which had gone up in 1969, was torn down over the summer and fall.

All that remains now is an expanse of grass.

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“We still have some test wells on it that we’ll measure to see if we have achieved what we had hoped to with that cleanup. Then we’ll turn it over to the private sector,” Nisbet said Tuesday, July 2.

“It’s an exciting corridor there with the (Prairie Roots) Food Co-op and Wild Terra Cider, but we typically don’t get involved in development efforts. What we’re doing is holding on to it for probably another 18 months to make sure that our remediation work” is completed, Nisbet said.

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While a number of developers have shown interest in buying the property, Nisbet said the former owners have first right of refusal when Xcel is ready to sell.

When the manufactured gas plant was razed, the owners at the time believed the site was clean to the standards of the day. But standards have changed, Nisbet said.

“Clean-up methods have progressed since then. What might have been acceptable 50-some years ago” is not now, Nisbet said. “We didn’t feel comfortable not gaining control of the site going into that next level of cleanup.”



