On a Minnesota soybean field, a town center grows

It began with an idea from planning consultant Brad Scheib of Hoisington Koegler Group in 1998: Why not build a mixed-use development in Ramsey, a growing suburb 20 miles northwest of downtown Minneapolis? “Mostly the reaction was ‘we can’t do that — we’re just Ramsey,’” says Patrick Trudgeon, community development director of the bedroom community of 22,000. But Jim Norman, the city administrator, later explored the idea with the Metropolitan Design Center at the University of Minnesota. And when Minnesotans started talking about establishing a commuter rail line that would run 82 miles — from Minneapolis through Ramsey to St. Cloud — the concept was further developed, thanks to a “Smart Growth Opportunity Site” planning grant from the Metropolitan Council. The grant brought in Tim Rood of Calthorpe Associates to conduct a charrette in 2001 showing how a mixed-use development could emerge around a train station. In 2002, developer John Feges purchased 322 acres around the possible transit site and began working with the city on a much denser and more detailed plan that his firm, Ramsey Town Center LLC, would carry out. The result: Rising on a soybean field is a $1.1 billion town center whose core will include public buildings, an anticipated transit node, and housing with densities of up to 70 units an acre. The municipality started erecting a city hall this May. A charter school for 500 students opened last year. Construction of an 800-space municipal parking garage is to begin this July. Forty-three-thousand square feet of offices have been constructed, and the first 150 housing units will reach completion this fall. More than 250 additional housing units, including 150 units of senior housing, are to start construction this fall. The overall plan envisions approximately 2,500 units of mid- to high-density housing (the densest being loft-style condominiums), 700,000 square feet of retail, and 460,000 square feet of office, medical, and civic uses. “This comes from a community that a few years ago didn’t have a density of more than three units an acre,” Trudgeon says. “The community has embraced the town center,” he says. “They hunger for a town center. A citizens’ task force shepherded us through. We tried to use regular people to figure out how far people were willing to walk, what kinds of uses to include.” There will be parks, including wetlands that classes can use to study nature, but much of the emphasis will be on creating a lively, pedestrian-scale, 30-acre “urban core.” A delegation from Ramsey toured four transit-oriented developments in Illinois — in Arlington Heights, Deerfield, Lincolnshire, and Highland Park — to gather ideas and convince themselves that Ramsey could make a major departure from the sprawling, automobile-oriented pattern of development that has been spreading up the Highway 10 corridor from the Twin Cities. Minneapolis-based ESG Architects, where Feges had been a construction administrator, produced the overall plan in conjunction with Close Landscape Architecture. ESG is designing many of the buildings. When the national homebuilder D.R. Horton decided to build in the town center, ESG produced a prototype of “Main Street” rowhouses, the first of which will be ready for occupancy by October, says Pete Keely, vice president at ESG. “There will be a minimum of 15 dwelling units an acre in parts of the core,” Trudgeon says. The outlying, lowest-density parts of the development will have 5 to 6 units an acre. He believes there is a pent-up demand for town center living — among young people looking for excitement, empty nesters ready to leave houses they bought in the 1970s, and others who grew up in the area and would return if there was a more urbanized environment. ready for transit “The plan is designed to be transit ready, but works and functions as a new model for growth independent of mass transit,” says a summary on the developer’s website, www.ramsey towncenter.com. The official proposal for the Northstar commuter rail line currently lacks a commitment to establishing a station in the town center. However, government leaders are optimistic that as the town center comes into being, Ramsey will be added to the schedule of rail stops. This spring the state allocated $37.5 million as its share of the start-up funds for Northstar, on tracks already carrying Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight trains. Service would start with about nine round-trip trains each weekday from the Warehouse District in Minneapolis to the City of Big Lake, 40 miles to the northwest, carrying about 5,600 riders daily. Advocates would eventually like the line to extend twice as far, to St. Cloud. Northstar would presumably help to relieve traffic on congested Highway 10 and lend support to mixed-use development not only in Ramsey but also in Anoka, the next municipality in toward Minneapolis. “We’re trying to figure out how to use this rail village to bring new life to the heart of Anoka,” Bjorn Skogquist, mayor of the long-established, 18,000-population City of Anoka, said during an April 29 panel discussion at the University of Minnesota, moderated by New Urban News Senior Editor Philip Langdon. Skogquist said relatively dense mixed-use development would be concentrated around the Anoka station, and structured parking would be made inconspicuous. If it is fully funded, Northstar could start rolling in 2008. By that time, Ramsey Town Center will have shops, residents, office workers, public amenities, and possibly its centerpiece element — a large indoor Winter Garden. Keely, at ESG, anticipates that by 2010 or 2011 the town center will be 90 percent complete. u