Chick-fil-A, one of the country’s largest fast-food chains, plans to build an Eden Prairie restaurant southwest of the intersection of Flying Cloud Drive and Prairie Center Drive, where other commercial and apartment construction is already underway. The development agreement and construction plans were approved Tuesday, April 19, by the Eden Prairie City Council. They include a late change providing for another drive-through lane based on how business changed during COVID-19. The Atlanta-based company was ranked as America’s fourth-largest restaurant chain, by sales, in 2020. Chick-fil-A’s original plan for the Eden Prairie restaurant had two drive-through lanes narrowing to one. The…
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."
The Eden Prairie Senior Center has completed a remodeling project just as “highly active senior citizens are coming out of the woodwork,” says Sue Bohnsack, supervisor of the city-run facility at 8950 Eden Prairie Road. In the upper-floor construction project, contractors tore down office walls to create what Bohnsack describes as a more open and welcoming social space for older adults who might spontaneously gather in groups of two, three or four. There are plush chairs, a fireplace and a television to make things cozy, and coffee and other refreshments are just across the room. It was created with a…
Eden Prairie City Council members say they have the state’s best city manager in Minnesota and plan to increase his salary, but only to the limit allowed by state law. A total annual pay package of approximately $218,000 was approved for City Manager Rick Getschow by the city council at its March 15 meeting. That’s a salary of $198,286 with the remainder being paid time off put into an account that Getschow would receive upon leaving employment with the City of Eden Prairie. The two-piece package allows the city to follow what is commonly called the Governor’s Salary Cap Law,…
Owners of single-family homes in Eden Prairie this week are learning about increases in their home’s value that are being described as historic and unprecedented. The annual property-value notices are showing that the typical Eden Prairie single-family home increased in value by 19.3% over a 12-month period. And, while the spike in value doesn’t necessarily translate to higher taxes in 2023 – that will depend on budgets and tax levies set next fall by the school district, city, county, and others – it’s an increase that is eye-catching and a reflection of housing demand that is far outstripping supply. Adding…
For longtime Eden Prairie residents Michael and Mai Bui, the Asia Mall being constructed in the shuttered Gander Outdoors building at 12160 Technology Drive is a chance to give their EP friends and neighbors greater exposure to Vietnamese cuisine. The new food hall will include an Eden Prairie version of their Pho Mai restaurant, located in the Dinkytown area of Minneapolis, near the University of Minnesota, their alma mater. They also operate MT Noodles in Brooklyn Park and are soon opening a bubble-tea and mocha-donuts concept, Bober Tea and Mochi Dough. Ultimately, they would love to have all three concepts…
Newly announced delays in completing the Southwest LRT project don’t appear to be discouraging plans to build an Eden Prairie apartment complex near one of the LRT stations. The Eden Prairie City Council on Tuesday, March 1, gave approval to the 425-apartment Blue Stem North project that would be within walking distance of the Golden Triangle LRT Station under construction along West 70th Street in the Golden Triangle industrial area of northeastern Eden Prairie. Its developer said that, while proximity to the LRT station is a factor in the project, it is local demographics as well as the large adjoining…
A two-phase, 425-apartment project at 6901 Flying Cloud Drive in northeastern Eden Prairie – near the planned Golden Triangle LRT Station – is being reviewed by the Eden Prairie City Council at its meeting Tuesday, March 1. Proposed by Greco Properties and endorsed by the city’s planning commission, Blue Stem North is technically a redevelopment project. The city OK’d construction of a 128,000-square-foot office building on this site in 2007. Soil correction and some work on the foundation of what was called Liberty Plaza commenced, but the Great Recession followed in 2008 and the project was abandoned. The new plan…
An Eden Prairie nonprofit dedicated to keeping alive the stories and artifacts of U.S. military aircraft is without its showcase museum and searching for a permanent home at Flying Cloud Airport. Wings of the North (WOTN) may be best known for its annual Air Expo, when restored vintage airplanes fly in and out of Flying Cloud Airport. It has also built a large collection of wartime art, uniforms, and aircraft and has also borrowed from other collections across the country. Almost all of that is currently in storage, as WOTN in August lost its lease of five years at Club…
Eden Prairie city officials have agreed to take over control and management of Eden Prairie’s oldest cemetery. At the request of its current caretakers, Eden Prairie Cemetery – like Pleasant Hill Cemetery before it – will come under the city’s control on March 1, folded into the Parks and Recreation Department. The cemetery at 8810 Eden Prairie Road, nearly 160 years old and the resting place of many pioneers, is forecast to have positive year-end financial balances of between $5,000 and $15,000, even when city staff time is taken into account, according to a financial analysis by the city. That’s…
The Eden Prairie City Council has directed city staff to make tax-increment financing (TIF) a part of the final-approval documents for The Ellie apartment project proposed along Eden Prairie Road at Lincoln Lane. The decision Feb. 8 ensures that the financing tool, frequently used by cities – including in Eden Prairie, for several other apartment projects – will increase the number of apartments with lower rents, part of a broader effort to meet affordable-housing goals in the metro area. Using TIF, a city diverts a portion of a project’s increase in property taxes to support a public improvement, in this…