Val Martin began as Battle Lake’s City Clerk in 2015. That was the year she started dreaming about the redevelopment of this block of Henning Street. She tells the story of The Hatchery–its current reincarnation but also the place chicks and eggs had in our history.

The Hatchery is an upscale three-story development with commercial space, high-end apartments and underground parking. It houses Edward Jones, Total Body Fitness and Therapy, Blondie’s Beauty Bar, Communicating for America Exchange Program, Espresso, and residents of 13 apartments.

The project took eight years to complete and involved buying out owners, cleaning up the property, conducting a visioning study, and retaining a developer. Good Neighbors Inc. transformed the property from three dilapidated buildings and the remains of an old gas station into the development you see here. The city received grant funding from several sources to help make the project viable.

But in the early days Henning Street was not an eyesore but thriving as home to Battle Lake’s industry. This block contained at various times a blacksmith shop, veterinary, Park Region Feed Mill, Stan’s Auto Body Shop, Bendickson’s Gas Station and most notably, the Park Region Hatchery. It was one of the most up to date hatcheries in Minnesota. Its large incubators produced 47,000 eggs about every two weeks, 1/3 of them hatching every 4 days. In 1942 it was Minnesota’s second largest accredited hatchery, its eggs shipped all over the United States.

But The Hatchery wasn’t the only egg business in town. Japanese-Americans, Shig and Mitzi Nakagaki also had poultry. Born in Stockton, California, Shig at 20 years old was sent to Japanese internment camps during World War Two. Even so, fate smiled on him; he was assigned to work as an orderly at the same location as student nurse Mitzi. They parted but he kept in touch. Meanwhile, Shig received a letter of acceptance to a chicken sexing school learning to separate day-old chicks according to sex. In 1945, Shig moved to Battle Lake to work sexing-chickens with the Satos. They serviced hatcheries including this one in every town and village within a hundred miles.

In 1948, Mitzi joined Shig here. Eventually, their chicken-sexing business diversified into turkey farming and then egg farming with 16,000 laying hens where they handled more than 12,000 eggs a day. Their business ended in1988 when Shig’s health failed.