Altru Indoor Sports Complex progresses toward expected summer groundbreaking

GRAND FORKS – The design for the Altru Indoor Sports and Aquatics Complex will be finalized in the coming months as the city prepares for the facility’s planned groundbreaking in early summer.

“The next major action is working through January and February on design development,” Grand Forks City Administrator Todd Feland said. “We’re going to have a more refined design and working on a new cost estimate for that facility.”

The Grand Forks City Council has previously approved the schematic designs for the building, choosing what council leaders would like included in the final structure. This phase, which began in the fall of 2024, is working to

create a final design and cost estimates for the City Council ahead of its final decisions.

The facility will be located just south of the Alerus Center along 42nd Street South. Currently included in the plans are indoor turf, a 50-meter pool and instructional pool, and pickleball courts. What gets included in the final design will likely come down to how much the city can afford.

The latest estimates have the total project costing $110 million. The facility itself was estimated to be $101 million and the necessary street and water infrastructure site work around $10 million. The city’s finance department has said the city has the ability to take about $100 million in bonds for the project, with the site work coming out of enterprise funds.

The city has also received other gifts and is working on other opportunities for naming and sponsorship in the facility. For instance, Altru Health System gave

the city $10 million for the project, which also secured the naming rights.

The spring will likely be the time of decisions, according to Feland. That’s when the final design, construction documentation and the first rounds of bidding will be before the council.

“That’ll be a good moment of truth to know what our estimates were and how those bids came in,” Feland said. “Hopefully that’ll give us confidence that we really nailed the bids well and that we can move forward with the second round (of bids) that would really complete the entire facility.”

The city plans to bid out the construction of the facility in two parts. The first part, planned for the spring, will include the structure and underground components of the project. Later on, once construction is underway, will be a second bid window with the interior components of the project.

The city is using the construction manager at risk, often called CMAR, method of building the structure. Unlike the “design, bid, build” method, which the city uses for many other projects, the CMAR method allows for the construction manager to get involved right away. It can also offer more flexibility for ways for the project to be bid and also means that for these larger projects, the city is dealing with just a general contractor instead of acting potentially as the general contractor itself.

“(In design, bid, build), you really won’t know how things are tracking until you get the bids in,” Feland said. “So there’s a lot of risk and there’s not a lot of ability to break the project down into smaller, more meaningful components and provide more competition.”

Voigt covers government in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks.