Bills proposed to aid Spring Grove recovery after fire

SPRING GROVE, Minn. (KTTC) – The small town of Spring Grove has been given some hope after a tragic fire downtown claimed a business and displaced eleven people in December.

Downtown is still a somber scene as the community has begun to sort through the rubble of what used to be a booming business.

Now, Senator Jeremy Miller has proposed two new bills aimed at providing much needed assistance to the community.

The community is brainstorming ways to rebuild downtown. City Clerk Janna Elton hopes the bills will kick start the process.

“It’s been a hard pill to swallow to be honest, and with the hardware store being gone, it was one of our biggest thriving businesses on Main Street, and still today, everyone forgets the store is gone,” Elton said.

The bills will provide a tax exemption for construction materials at the scene of the fire. Miller says the bills will go a long way to help rebuild.

“There has been a shortage of housing in that area, so it’s been a huge negative impact for the community because of the loss of housing, not to mention the families that were displaced as a result of the fire,” Miller said.

The bills will also provide $250,000 in remediation for disaster recovery, infrastructure, emergency personnel, and equipment costs.

“For us down here, it was a huge tragedy, but it’s nice to see to that people are noticing us at the state level and I think we’re all grateful and if we could get any help, we’d be grateful because everybody here wants to see our downtown rebuilt,” Elton said.

Elton said the town doesn’t have plans set in stone to rebuild yet but are planning on replacing the hardware store because so many local businesses relied on it.

“We’re at the relief, recovery, rebuild portion. We’ve helped people get through the fire and we’ve adjusted to it, we’ve had time to soak it all in and now we’re at the part here where we’re starting to clean it all up and we want to rebuild,” Elton said.

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