Ulteig Engineers to Leave Fridley

Ulteig Engineers, Inc., will move from its Fridley office in the River Road Business Center to the Arden Hills Corporate Center in September, according to REjournals.com.

The relocation allows Ulteig to expand from its current 30,000-square-foot office to a 52,379-square-foot space, REjournals reported, with a new 2,000-square-foot garage to be built for the company's vans and other equipment.

Fridley Community Development Director Scott Hickok put the firm's move into the context of a soft commercial real estate market in an email Friday:

It is with mixed emotions that we see our friends at Ulteig move on to their new larger space in Arden Hills. Mixed emotions because on the bright side we always want to see our businesses be successful and to flourish. Ulteig Engineering is one of those companies that has done very well and we have been proud to have them in Fridley. Also, staying in the north metro is good for our northern metro region partners. It would be wonderful if we had had the place to see them grow further right here in Fridley, but the metro office market has been very soft and office development folks are not building office space on speculation, so choices are few. To accommodate the needs of Ultieg, there would need to have been the combination of space available and amenities to match their needs.

This is not uniquely a Fridley problem, to find the right combination of space and the business atmosphere companies have had to broaden their search and sadly but quite often leave the community where they have grown to find the space they need elsewhere. With a soft office market, cities don't have a large enough carrot to offer developers as incentive to build space that is not immediately occupied.

The soft business office development market and a stressed economy generally, has caused some businesses to close their doors and consequently leave their very nice office space sitting empty. Until those very nice, already built, empty spaces are occupied throughout the region, the incentive to speculatively build new office complexes will likely not be back. Simply put, there was currently not the combination of space and features that Ulteig needed in Fridley to keep them here in town. We wish for their continued growth and success and are very proud to say they started here!