Springfield Market prepares to open: Grocery set to begin business in March in Richardton

• Springfield Market

Press Photo by Katherine Grandstrand Springfield Market will be opening in Richardton in March. The building just received a fresh coat of paint and crews were delivering equipment Monday. The grocer is much needed in the town of 500-plus residents where the nearest large supermarket is 23 miles away in Dickinson.

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RICHARDTON — This southwestern North Dakota city is getting a long-awaited grocery store this spring.

With an opening date sometime in March, Springfield Market in Richardton will fill an empty gap in a community of more than 500 with the nearest small grocer 15 miles away in Hebron and large grocer 23 miles away in Dickinson.

“It’s a great way to reconnect with the local community,” said Tanja Goellner, who grew up in the area but now resides in Fargo. “My dad, Ambrose (Hoff), has always been an entrepreneur and looking for new ideas and looking to fill the needs of the community.”

The 10,000 square foot grocery store will feature a deli and bakery with a sit-down area, she said.

SuperValu of Eden Prairie, Minn., will be the main grocery distributor.

The grocery store is being built as part of the 7th Calvary development just north of Cenex on Highway 8 just off of Interstate 94, Goellner said. It was originally a strip mall planned by her father, but is now separate buildings.

The name Springfield Market is inspired by Gen. Armstrong Custer, like the 7th Calvary development, she said. Springfield was the type of rifle used by that army division.

Because it’s a new construction, rather than renovation, everything is new and Goellner said she had a lot of fun picking out the equipment, especially the oven for the bakery.

“That’s my passion — baking and cooking,” she said.

The grocery store was made possible with a loan from the Bank of North Dakota Flex PACE program and help from Stark Development Corp. to buy down the interest.

The program allows municipalities and other entities to buy down interest on the loans, making it as low as 5 percent.

“The community decides where they want to use their dollars and what type of businesses they want to attract,” Senior Vice President of Lending for the Bank of North Dakota Bob Humann previously told The Press. “So in Richardton’s case, they’ve made the decision that they want to use their community dollars to be able to get a grocery store built in Richardton.”

PACE was created to help promote manufacturing jobs in the 1990s, he said. Traditional PACE funds would not be available to someone wanting to open a retail operation, so the Flex PACE program was created.

“It’s done a lot for the Class B towns to be able to help their retail people stay alive or to attract those types of businesses to those areas,” Humann said.

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