A civil lawsuit accusing the Eden Prairie City Council of being “unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious” in voting to reject a proposed gas station and auto-repair business in southeastern EP has been dismissed in Hennepin County District Court. The petitioners, EP Land, LLC and Auto Care World, LLC, had asked the court to direct the city to approve the project or commence eminent domain proceedings. But Judge Thomas J. Conley, in an April 4 ruling, said the city’s 2021 denial of the project was reasonable and did not constitute a “regulatory taking” because alternative development options remain. The legal action resulted…
Author: Mark Weber
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Mark Weber
Mark joined the Eden Prairie News as a reporter in 1979, just five years after its start, and spent the next 34 years in various roles including editor and publisher, as well as general manager of the parent company, Southwest Newspapers. He also published Edible Twin Cities magazine. His encore career was serving the nonprofit Eden Prairie Community Foundation as executive director. Mark is now retired. He and his wife, Roma, have two grown sons and a daughter-in-law, as well as a grandson. They have lived in Eden Prairie since 1984. "I hope the many words I have typed over the years have helped people understand the world around them."
Several potential development projects, including the former campus of the Minnesota Vikings, were shared with Eden Prairie City Council members on Tuesday, April 4. The possibilities were part of an economic development update presented at a council workshop, as has happened in past years. Why it matters: The projects are conceptual only – and some may never reach the city council for approval – but they hint at what might be ahead for development and redevelopment of Eden Prairie properties and are potential additions to the property-tax base. Economic Development Manager Dave Lindahl said that the construction of apartments and…
The City of Eden Prairie is looking at relocating and expanding its Police Department space, an expensive project that may be affordable because long-term debt for other major projects drops in 2025. Why it matters: More office space and a garage for dozens of police vehicles now parked outside would help the department handle future needs. It would be a costly undertaking – at least $13 million – but might be financed long-term without a big jump in property taxes. The likeliest scenario has the police moving within the Eden Prairie City Center at 8080 Mitchell Road, where the department…
The latest estimates of property values in Eden Prairie have single-family homes, as a category, going up 5.6% – much less than the nearly 20% jump in value one year ago. Why it matters: The annual estimated market value (EMV) notices recently mailed to property owners show how much they might make from a sale, and are also used in calculating property taxes for 2024. One year ago, the spike in home values was common to many cities because it reflected a housing market where homebuyer demand was far outstripping the supply of homes for sale. Rising interest rates have…
More Eden Prairie property owners are turning to multi-year insecticide treatments to save their ash trees, as a deadly bug tears through Minnesota. Last year, more than 2,200 ash trees on private property in Eden Prairie were treated in a program provided by Rainbow Treecare, at a discounted price through a contract with the City of Eden Prairie. That’s a 53% jump since 2019. Rainbow Treecare has contracts with 37 cities. Among them, Eden Prairie ranked first in overall participation in 2022 with the highest number of private-property trees treated. In per-capita comparisons, which measure the number of treated trees…
Rush-hour congestion at the intersection of Highway 5 and County Road 4 is bad and getting worse, adding time and aggravation to commutes. But, Eden Prairie city officials are leaning toward a long-range push for help. It won’t be easy. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) and Hennepin County have jurisdiction over the roadways, and improvements would be expensive – requiring funds from the state Legislature and perhaps even the federal government. Businesses crowd the intersection, there’s a high-voltage transmission line alongside Highway 5, nearby city streets and their access to Highway 5 might be affected by improvements, and any…
The final step in turning down a controversial Ryan Companies plan to build a five-story apartment building at Valley View and Topview roads was taken Tuesday, March 7, by the Eden Prairie City Council. The council unanimously approved a resolution denying the Ryan application to build 211 apartments on seven acres east of Home Depot. The plan has been criticized by the council and neighbors for issues related to parking, traffic and road access, building heights, and stormwater drainage. The council turned back the plan last August, but left the door open for revisions that would address those concerns. Ryan…
Need a lift to the airport or Mall of America? How about a Lyft instead? Some users of SouthWest Transit’s popular, on-demand, point-to-point ride service called SW Prime will have the ridesharing company called Lyft as another option because of a pilot program approved March 2 by the SouthWest Transit Commission. The program, which will go into effect this spring, will allow persons scheduling SW Prime MSP Airport or SW Prime Edge services to see a Lyft option on their device while using the SW Prime software application, or “app.” The app will show how quickly SWP Prime and Lyft…
When people gathered under a big tent along Eden Prairie’s Technology Drive, not long after the city’s 1999 approval of plans for a new 90-acre ADC Telecommunications world headquarters, they were joyous about the groundbreaking. It was another feather in Eden Prairie’s cap. They probably never imagined that, more than 20 years later, the 470,000 square feet of office built there – far short of the 1.2 million square feet projected by ADC – would be an emblem for an office market in contraction. A market dotted with “zombie” office buildings: the lights are on, but (almost) nobody’s there. Yet,…
The pandemic changed the fast-food industry, with order-ahead and drive-thru becoming consumers’ options of choice. Apparently, the effect is lasting. A redo of the Dairy Queen parking lot in Eden Prairie was given preliminary approval Tuesday, Feb. 7, by the city council to help the restaurant accommodate an increase in drive-thru traffic. Steve Giorgi, a spokesperson for the Dairy Queen location, said drive-thru traffic has grown to be three times larger than dine-in traffic – something that wasn’t anticipated when the restaurant was built in 2005 southeast of the intersection of Highway 5 and Eden Prairie Road. Without a designated drive-thru…