Cities along Southwest LRT seek support, not dictation

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For all the successes of the Hiawatha Light Rail Transit line shuttling riders between Minneapolis and Bloomington, there are some lingering missteps along the route in development planning.

“Go look at the intersection of Minnehaha and Hiawatha (in Minneapolis),” said Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin. “That’s pretty grim.”

Development along the Hiawatha line, he said, is “just now catching up on land use and zoning issues.”

He points to a lack of pedestrian access, limited housing development potential and poor interactions between automobiles and the LRT as outcomes at a key intersection that were not foreseen.

Those are among the mistakes backers of the Metropolitan Council’s new transit-oriented development office hope to correct with future development near light rail transit starting with the planned Southwest line between Minneapolis and Eden Prairie. The office is taking applications for an executive director through this week and expects to have five employees by this time next year.

“We have a wide variety of cities” along the route, said McLaughlin who also is chair of the Counties Transit Improvement Board, a key funder of transit in the Twin Cities area. “Some are involved in sophisticated development projects and some cities haven’t done as much.”

He sees the TOD office working best if it provides financial and technical help to steer local planners away from previous mistakes.

The Met Council is now ramping up the new office. The agency intends to be the first point of contact on funding timetables and requirements, legal issues, communication among municipalities, and other logistical questions related to development along the Southwest line as well as other future building around transit centers. The Southwest route also will stop in St. Louis Park, Hopkins and Minnetonka.

The idea at first encountered resistance from city officials worried it would add another layer of bureaucracy. Eden Prairie officials were among those with concerns the regional agency would attempt to meddle in zoning and permit decisions — the legal and traditional domain of municipalities.

“Initially, we had a little bit of trepidation about what extent the Met Council would dictate development” said Dave Lindahl, Eden Prairie’s community development manager. “That was the general fear for all of the five cities.”

At least fourof the planned 15 LRT stops along the nearly 14.5-mile route are in Eden Prairie.  One is next to the new 1.5-million-square-foot UnitedHealth Group campus expected to house 6,700 employees. Keeping track of funding, development plans, permits and the proposed rail alignment stretched city resources.

“It is very daunting for us to have a handle on that at the local level,” Lindahl said. Those are the kinds of details he foresees the TOD Office helping with in the future. “They (the Met Council) heard that.”

The Met Council would need legislative approval to get involved in local zoning decisions. The signals from the agency, so far, are it will not pursue that.

“We want to start to elevate the visibility of this TOD Office,” Metro Transit General Manager Brian Lamb said at a Met Council committee meeting earlier this month. “Ultimately, we would provide support” for cities and developers working with the process.

One veteran of transit-oriented development projects is hopeful that the support comes with a longer-range vision that some earlier LRT planning lacked.

“Coordination is wonderful,” said Tod Elkins, a partner at UrbanWorks Architecture. Elkins worked on the designs for the Longfellow Station apartments along Hiawatha Avenue and the 1301 University student apartments in Minneapolis along the Central Corridor LRT or Green Line. The Green Line starts running next summer.

“Everyone’s going to advocate for their own interests, but in the end [the Southwest LRT] is greater than just one municipality,” Elkins said.

One of the major lessons from the Hiawatha line and other light rail projects around the nation is that they attract developers. McLaughlin, a longtime light rail proponent, believes the TOD office can create an efficient way to anticipate and coordinate that demand.

“The infrastructure itself is very powerful,” he said. “If you have a supportive vision and funding and technical ability,” then it becomes more powerful.

See related story: Met Council awards $3.9M for projects near transit stations

Correction: The original version of this story should have said the Green Line — not the Blue Line — opens next summer. The story has been updated.