Housing Market Feasibility Study

The City of Pine City participated in the regional housing needs analysis, conducted by Maxfield Research for the East Central Regional Housing Collaborative in 2014. The 2014 analysis showed that there was a pent-up demand for rental housing (40+ units through 2020 and nearly 80 units through 2025) as well as nearly 350 units of senior housing.

In 2018, the City, working with a senior housing developer and Viewpoint Consulting conducted an initial demand assessment for senior housing and found that the total unmet demand through 2023 was for 152 market rate units and 109 elderly waiver units.

 

Also in 2018, the City began cleaning-up the former Pine City Feed Mill site and formed an ad-hoc "Mill Site Redevelopment Committee" which gathered a diverse group of community members to help guide the future use of this site. Housing surfaced as a high priority and need within the community so in 2019, the City solicited proposals to conduct a housing market feasibility study for rental housing, commercial retail and permanent supportive housing in the downtown area of Pine City.

 

Maxfield Research conducted the study for the City, in collaboration with the Pine City Housing Redevelopment Authority and Minnesota Housing Partnership. The study assessed the demographic and economic characteristics of the primary draw area, analyzed the competitive market situation for market rate rental housing and quantified the demand for market rate rental units that could be captured by the former Pine City Feed Mill site.

 

The study's findings revealed that there is a demand for 20 units of market rate rental housing, 15 units of deep-subsidy housing, 13 units of permanent supportive and approximately 2,100 square feet of commercial retail space. The full, 92 page study can be viewed and downloaded here.