St. Louis County starts construction on new central range transportation facility

A new road base in Balkan Township is meant to put 38 Public Works workers closer to the 700 miles of roads and bridges they patch, plow and inspect across Hibbing, Chisholm and the central Iron Range.

St. Louis County broke ground Thursday, May 7, on the Central Range Transportation Facility northeast of Hibbing, starting construction on a campus county leaders say will change how road and bridge maintenance is handled in the region. The project will serve crews stationed in the central Iron Range, where winter snow, freight traffic, school bus routes and emergency access all depend on fast-moving maintenance work.

The new campus will include more than 100,000 square feet of buildings and is being built for 38 Public Works employees, including 29 maintenance staff and nine bridge engineering staff. County officials say those crews are responsible for more than 700 miles of roads, and the new site will also house 19 tandem trucks, three graders and three excavators. The main building will feature 51,000 square feet of warm storage and 16,500 square feet of office space, along with repair bays, a welding shop, a tire shop, locker rooms, wellness rooms and a training center.

County leaders say the point is simple: better storage, better mechanics space and a more efficient work base should mean faster responses when roads fail, storms hit or maintenance piles up. The county also says the facility will improve security, save personnel time and help prolong equipment life. The old Hibbing public works space, built in the 1940s and shared with the City of Hibbing and the Minnesota Department of Transportation, had become too cramped for modern equipment.

The project is expected to cost more than $40 million and will be paid for with transportation sales tax revenue, not property taxes. St. Louis County’s transportation sales tax, adopted in April 2015, is a 0.5% sales tax paired with a $20 motor-vehicle excise tax. County records say those revenues support 3,000 miles of roads and 600 bridges.

Construction is expected to take 18 months, with move-in anticipated for fall 2027. Kraus Anderson is the contractor. The site is being designed with five double-loaded drive-through repair bays, bridge cranes, an automatic truck wash, in-floor heating powered by a geothermal field and roof reinforcement for possible future solar panels.

The move also reshapes the county’s footprint in Hibbing. County documents show St. Louis County agreed in principle to sell its space in the old building to the City of Hibbing for $1.3 million, clearing the way for the city’s planned public safety campus, which has been estimated at about $29.2 million. County Commissioner Mike Jugovich, who represents Hibbing, Chisholm and Balkan Township, called the arrangement a “win-win situation” for the city and county.

An environmental review for the project opened in October 2025 and ran through Nov. 13, 2025, clearing another step before Thursday’s groundbreaking. For central Iron Range residents, the payoff is expected to show up not in a ribbon-cutting photo, but in faster plowing, steadier road repairs and a better-equipped county crew when the next storm hits.