The haunted night calls of barred owls in the Summerhill Drive neighborhood were joined early Friday evening, Oct. 29, by costumed kids and their parents. Halloween falls on Sunday this year, but the families on this north-central Eden Prairie street were not waiting. They called their block party a “Neighborhood Halloween Bash.” It was. Out came the potluck dishes, the pizzas, the soda, the treats, the games, the chats and the kids. Temporary traffic barriers, a portable fire pit and food tables were set up on the street. An Eden Prairie Local News photographer walking on Summerhill Drive at about…
Author: Jeff Strate
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Jeff Strate
An Eden Prairie resident since 1994, Jeff has served as an organizer for local open-space initiatives and get-out-the-vote parks referenda. He has also served on the Eden Prairie Human Rights and Diversity Commission, conservation area task forces, the Southwest Light Rail Community Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Land Trust. Jeff studied journalism and mass communication at the U of MN and has been a producer/writer and occasional on-camera figure in the Twin Cities, New York, Boston, and Trenton. Jeff has written for websites and magazines and has produced award-winning access programing through Southwest Community Television (SWTV).
The steaming asphalt is a sign that two years of orange and white traffic barrels along one of Eden Prairie’s busiest arteries may slowly disappear in November.
Eden Prairie’s signature water tower overlooks a radically changed landscape noticed only, perhaps, by the residents and businesses along Eden Road and Singletree Lane. The transformation has been hidden behind Bachman’s, Bowlero, residential complexes, Costco and Emerson. Where three years ago a neglected ridge of buckthorn, brush and weeds stretched east to west, now, light rail track alignments, a nearly completed passenger station and a four-lane, paved street are laid out. Branded as “Town Center Place,” the new street begins where Eden Road elbows to the south at Redstone American Grill. The pavement heads west to Eden Prairie Town Center…
Eden Prairie’s hike and bike trails become embraced by spectacular autumn canvases each October. As October cedes to November and Thanksgiving, the blazes become less bold but more nuanced and informing — more interesting. Hidden ponds, creeks, neighborhoods and vistas re-appear as leaves fall. We can drop “Prairie” from our town’s name and just go with “Eden.” Every one of our neighborhoods is supplied with welcoming trails and walkways. The following small list of trails is not intended to be an arbitrary ranking; it is a reminder for the car-bound among us to take a hike or ride a bike…
Southwest Light Rail project work sites remain busy.
The rhthms, chugging, hisses and haunted horn whistles – the smell of fired coal – made steam engines the drama queens of the Industrial Age. The few survivors remain so today.
“Milwaukee Road 261,” a steam locomotive that likely pulled passenger and troop trains to Chicago and Puget Sound during World War II, will chug along the same Delano to Hopkins right-of-way this Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 2 and 3. It will be assisted by a restored Milwaukee Road, diesel locomotive. If you delight in the drama of belching plumes and jets of hot steam, driving pistons, mechanical noises, train bells and shrill whistles, remain in town this weekend. The Milwaukee Road 261 and its power assist are passing through Eden Prairie and will be pulling a train of beautifully restored…
The following temporary road closure alerts were included in a Thursday, Sept. 23, Southwest Light Rail Project construction update. Highway 62 Westbound lanes of Highway 62 between Highway 212 and Shady Oak Road are slated for closure from 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24, through 5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27. Beginning Monday morning at 5 a.m., only one Hwy. 62 westbound lane and one Hwy. 62 eastbound lane between Hwy. 212 and Shady Oak Road will be open. Additionally, the Highway 169 off-ramp to westbound Hwy. 62 will be reopened, but the eastbound Hwy. 62 on-ramp from northbound Shady Oak Road…
“There’s berry and then there is cranberry-apple,” explained a server to a woman customer. They were under one of the canvass canopies set up near the pavilion in Purgatory Creek Park. As the server lifted a chilled can of hard seltzer water from a cooler for her friend, he peeled back the tab on its lid. The action made a metallic charipp sound and a soft hisss. “The cranberry-apple is very good,” replied the woman. “I want to try the berry.” She was sampling the libations offered by Lift Bridge Brewing Company of Stillwater; one of 13 craft-brewers at this…