First District Association, U of Minnesota Pursue Expansion

By Camelia Bulea, Associate Editor

A $32 million expansion is under way at First District Association’s headquarters and manufacturing plant in Litchfield. The project will add 50,000 square feet to the dairy producer’s 198,000-square-foot facility there, reported Finance & Commerce, a Twin Cities-area business newspaper. The expansion is expected to boost production to 5 million pounds of milk per day. Completion is scheduled for a year from now. St. Cloud-based Strack Cos. is the general contractor.

The project is the most recent in a $53.5 million capital program First District announced in 2008. The projects are intended to help the company compete with such Minnesota dairy products producers as Land O’ Lakes, Associated Milk Producers and Davisco Foods. One of First District’s claim to fame is that it provides the cheddar for McDonald’s cheeseburgers. All told, about 144 million pounds of cheese are shipped out of the plant annually.

Expansion of a different is in the pipeline at the University of Minnesota’s campus in Downtown Minneapolis. The university issued a request for proposals to provide pre-design services for a four-story addition to Amundson Hall, a science building near the proposed route of the Central Corridor light rail line. Projected to cost $20 million, the project will include create additional lab and office space.