Eden Prairie’s Asia Mall, which has turned an empty Gander Mountain building into a retail success story, will now tackle its parking problem, with a remedy approved this week by city and watershed district officials.
A project is set to begin soon that will add 122 parking spaces at 12160 Technology Drive, primarily where a stormwater pond currently sits on the east end of the property. An underground stormwater management system will replace the pond beneath the new parking area. This system will drain into nearby Lake Idlewild.
Suspecting a future parking shortage, the city council, in its 2021 approval of the project, required the Asia Mall to return to the council if parking problems developed. Indeed, on occasion, the parking lot has filled. City staff say customers have been observed parking at adjacent private properties and crossing Technology Drive, causing safety concerns for both pedestrians and motorists.
“We need more parking,” confirmed Amor Zhao, co-owner of the food hall, which opened in November 2022.
The project, outlined Tuesday to the Eden Prairie City Council and Wednesday to the Riley Purgatory Bluff Creek Watershed District, will raise the number of Asia Mall parking spaces to 424. According to the owners, that’s well beyond the mall’s peak needs measured over the past two weekends: 247 stalls on April 27-28 and 252 stalls on May 4-5.
Officials hope the additional parking, though still short of city code requirements by 21 spaces, will be sufficient for the long term.
“Is this a permanent fix?” Council Member Mark Freiberg asked at Tuesday’s meeting.
“The building is nearly 100 percent built out,” responded Wayde Johnson of Amcon Construction, representing the Asia Mall’s owners. “I think the numbers we’re seeing have enough bounce in them that it would more than accommodate what comes up in the future.”
The council approved the project on a 4-0 vote. No public testimony was offered at Tuesday’s hearing.
The watershed district subsequently OK’d a permit for the work, with conditions, on Wednesday. Watershed officials concluded that if all of their requirements are followed, the new stormwater management system should work better than what exists now in terms of flood control and the quality of water eventually flowing to Lake Idlewild.
The Asia Mall won a 2022 award from the Real Estate Journal for best retail project, and received a special visit from Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff and U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Isabella Guzman one year ago.
Business owners connected to the mall also recently announced the purchase of a 100,000-square-foot building connected to Northtown Mall in Blaine, where they will construct a similar project called Asia Village. They noted there will be more than 1,500 parking spaces at the new location.
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