City Approves New “Bison Village” Zoning: Developer And Neighbors Come To Agreement

The controversy over the “Bison Village” apartment complex in north Fargo is simmering down.

Roers Development and neighbors have compromised with a new planning project.

There were more than 100 people at the meeting.

Neighbors have been aggressively meeting with the developers to come to an agreement.

Now it looks like all that hard work has paid off.

“All we wanted to do as a neighborhood is a fair compromise with Roers, and believe we have,” says neighborhood representative Doug Halverson.

Halverson spoke on the behalf of hundreds of north Fargo homeowners living near “Ponyland.”

He is part of a core group from the neighborhood that met consistently with Roers Development in hopes of seeing eye to eye.

A few changes made a big difference to the neighborhood.

“We’re okay with this. Negotiating is what we did,” says Halverson.

By switching up the layout and reducing the apartment size, both parties starting to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Neighbors and developers settled on having townhomes built on the eastside of the land and the apartments would be built on the west.

“By flipping it around, we took a lot of traffic out of the neighborhood and we focused most of it coming in from University Drive and not the neighborhood. And visually it’s more appealing too because it impacts the neighborhood less,” says Roers Vice President Larry Nygard.

For this NDSU student, he’s happy that there will be new housing available for college students and in close proximity.

“Yes, I know it’s not in the most favorable location but on campus there really isn’t a location to build more dorms and things like that,” says NDSU graduate student Kyle Roberts.

Developers are bringing down the number of apartments from 400 to less than 350, something they say they’re okay with.

“What we’ve agreed to is something that we can live with and something that we can accomplish our goals. But it also makes them a lot more satisfied with the end product,” says Nygard.

City leaders approved of this new zoning change.

Tonight’s decision only approves part of the zoning area which is still in the works.

Construction won’t start until August but work at the site could start within 30 to 45 days.