Access to broadband expands in Forest Lake area

More homes across southern Forest Lake are expected to receive more high-speed internet access in the coming years through Midco’s grant application efforts, while Scandia and Columbus are waiting to hear if their grants are approved.

Forest Lake’s expansion project broke ground on Wednesday, May 22, and will connect more than 300 homes across 8,500 acres between the Columbus and Scandia borders, south of Headwaters Parkway to broadband internet access.

“It’s about a third of the city that didn’t have reliable coverage,” said Forest Lake community development director Abbi Wittman.

According to a press release, the project will cost around $2.2 million. Midco will cover $1.2 million of that with the remaining cost falling on the city, and through the state’s Border-to-Border Broadband Grant. This project is scheduled to be completed by January 2025.

For Scandia and Columbus this year, Midco is pushing for grant funding that aims to inch each city closer to their goals of full broadband internet access. Both are hopeful that the grants to fund their expansion projects will be approved sometime this summer, with groundbreaking set for 2025 or 2026, depending on Midco’s construction schedule.

Before Scandia began working alongside Midco to apply for grants through the Department of Employment and Economic Development, only around 680 of the 1,800 homes in Scandia had high speed internet.

“If we get this grant we will be at a point where there are only about 125 homes that don’t have high speed internet,” said Scandia council member Steve Kronmiller.

Kronmiller is hopeful that Scandia will be awarded the grant, which will bring high speed access to around 165 addresses along the St. Croix River and northeast corner of the city in 2025 and 2026.

To bolster this year’s grant application, the city sought letters of support from community members, and received more than 70 in support of this next expansion.

“It’s a fabulous response from the community. We’ve got a couple of people who live in the area who really spearheaded efforts to reach out to their neighbors and encourage them to offer letters of support,” Kronmiller said.

When Scandia began exploring how to expand internet access in the city prior to 2020, Kronmiller said Midco originally was unsure it could achieve border-to-border access due to the topography.

“The terrain is difficult, access to it is difficult, but that’s kind of the advantage of this particular round of grants. The state is opening up an opportunity to specifically look at those very difficult areas to serve,” Kronmiller explained.

He added that the end goal is to continue pursuing grants to achieve broadband internet connections across the entire city.

“This is the right opportunity at the right time for us, and we’re all excited about the possibilities,” Kronmiller said.

Columbus City Council member Janet Hegland similarly had her sights set on achieving border-to-border internet access before there were state and federal funding options available.

“At the time I started working on this, these dollars weren’t available and the amount that it would cost for the city to try to pay for it was somewhere around $5 to $6 million. That’s a whole year’s budget for us,” Hegland said.

The transition to a work-from-home model at the start of the pandemic aided a national and statewide push to fund projects like this. The city seized the opportunity by using COVID-aid funds to further expand broadband.

The current application Columbus has on the table with the Anoka County Broadband Partnership grant program would connect around 120 homes with high-speed internet.

The project is estimated to cost around $2 million, with Midco covering $835,000 and Columbus covering $265,000, with the remainder covered by the grant.

If Columbus’ grant and project are approved, 90% of the city would have access to high-speed internet. The remaining 10% of residences can apply for line extension grants and can contact the city for more information about how to submit an application.

“The only other way that people used to be able to get that done was if they paid out of pocket for Midco to run the lines,” Hegland said, adding it could have cost homeowners between $10,000 to $15,000.

The line extension grants will be free of cost to homeowners and the city, if applications are accepted.

For Scandia residents, there is an interactive map online at tinyurl.com/Scandia-Internet to see what stage the project is at.