By Chloe Kucera, Faribault Daily News June 23, 2025 Lack of affordable housing and homelessness…
City Council approves conditional use permit for 2 emergency and affordable housing structures near downtown
By CHLOE KUCERA, Faribault Daily News
March 14, 2025
On Tuesday night, the Faribault City Council approved a conditional use permit for two emergency and affordable housing structures to be built near the downtown in Faribault on the corner of First Avenue and First Street.
The development is called Ridgeview Heights and is a project by the Community Action Center (CAC), which provides resources and support for those in need. The CAC focuses on issues like food access and housing.
CAC Executive Director Scott Wopata spoke about the housing development project during the Housing and Homelessness in Rice County panel Feb. 24.
“This is a project I’m really excited about,” he said. “We’ll be breaking ground in Faribault. It’ll be a net zero energy housing development, and it will have two units of emergency housing stitched together with six other workforce housing units. So we have a unit development at the intersection of First Street and First Avenue Northwest, just like a block north of the Faribault library, and we’re really close to finalizing the financing on this with our hope to break ground around June 1.”
The project will be like Hillcrest Village in Northfield, which the CAC built in 2023, but on a smaller scale. Hillcrest Village has 17 units, whereas Ridgeview Heights will have eight. The development of Hillcrest Village also includes emergency and workforce housing and is net-zero. This means that the energy demands of the buildings are met by on-site renewable energy.
According to the CAC website, “Hillcrest Village is a first-in-the-nation Net Zero Energy emergency shelter and supportive housing development where 100% of utilities are supplied by on-site solar panels. Designed, funded, and built by the community, Hillcrest Village represents local solutions to climate change.”
After seeing success with Hillcrest Village, the CAC wanted to bring that housing model to Faribault to meet the community’s needs.
Due to the location of the property being in the Central Business District zoning and the Heritage Preservation District of the city, the project needs a conditional use permit to build.
Community and Economic Director David Wanberg, presented the conditional use permit resolution to the council. He spoke about how the CAC and the City have been working together to find a space for a development.
“Over the last several years, we have been looking for a variety of sites that they could begin to provide housing for our residents that are in need with workforce and emergency shelter housing,” he said. “We’ve explored a number of them over the years, but ultimately, the former property that the city owned at First Avenue and First Street that was a site that received some funding. They worked with our City Administrator, Jessica Kinser, to get some grant funding to develop that site for the housing that you see before us.”
The map shows outlined in yellow where the Ridgeview Heights structures will be constructed. (Photo courtesy of the City of Faribault)
Wanberg walked the council through the approvals that the permit has been through so far.
“This proposal has gone through our Development Review Committee,” he said. “Development Review Committee felt that it was a good project and met the requirements of the conditional use permit findings. It also went to the Planning Commission. Planning Commission recommended approval of this as well. Because this is in the historic Heritage Preservation District, it does require that it get a certificate of appropriateness from the Heritage Preservation Commission, which was brought there, and they issued a certificate of appropriateness for this development. So it has met the ordinance as required in terms of the conditional use.”
Wopata was present at the meeting to answer any questions the council had.
Council member Chuck Thiele thanked the CAC for their work on the housing development.
“I just commend the CAC,” he said. “This is a really well-thought-out project. This is something that the community needs, especially the units for the emergency shelter.”
The City Council passed the resolution for the conditional use permit.
LEARN MORE
For more information about Ridgeview Heights, visit the CAC website: communityactioncenter.org/ridgeview-heights.
Related Posts
