Transportation and Mixed Use

In 2003, St. Louis Park city planners introduced 15-acre Excelsior and Grand, a $150 million development project that employed urban design principles and practices to help resuscitate an increasingly lifeless suburban commercial corridor. Situated on the corner of the heavily traveled intersecting avenues for which it’s named, Excelsior and Grand is a compact, vertically mixed-use development that features residential units—condominiums and apartments—over street-level retail and restaurants. To enhance the environment’s urban feel, the site features a well-manicured village green and adjacent open-air amphitheater, as well as store-front parking and wide, pedestrian-friendly sidewalks that accommodate outdoor dining.

The city’s goal was to create a downtown where none had previously existed. And though Excelsior and Grand’s success can’t yet be classified as resounding (the site’s accessibility and parking have been criticized by users, and a handful of commercial tenants have moved out), Excelsior and Grand has commanded the attention of city planners throughout the metro area.

The development opportunity has to be there, regardless of whether or not light rail is going to be running down University. There has to be an underlying market demand—a reason why the developer would be interested in that location.

“Everyone wants what St. Louis Park has,” says Whitney Peyton, senior managing director of CB Richard Ellis, a commercial real estate firm in Bloomington.

Indeed, several Twin Cities suburbs, including Apple Valley and Burnsville, are attempting to build Excelsior and Grand–style mixed-use developments. The most dramatic of this new breed of suburban centers is Bloomington Central Station, a still-in-progress, 50-acre “neighborhood” that, when completed, will blend office, retail, residential, and hotel uses, which will be fed largely by the Hiawatha light rail transit (LRT) station that bisects the site.

“[Mixed use] is sort of the love child right now,” says Charlie Nestor, principal at Minneapolis-based Master, a real estate development firm. “Every planner thinks they should have a high-density, mixed-use urban center.”

Understandably so, at least in theory. A mixed-use approach to development enables planners in urban areas to maximize the density of their already built-out landscape, and enhance their tax base, by building “up” with a complementary mixture of residential and commercial ingredients. In suburban areas, planners can transform previously unused green-acre sites into high-density, popular, destination-type developments.