Erin Koegel’s view from the front of her Spring Lake Park home is hardly picturesque. She sees a Best Buy, a Becker Furniture World and an overflow parking lot — all part of Northtown Mall across the street in Blaine.
“We do see parents teaching their kids how to parallel park over in that lot,” Koegel said. “Otherwise, it’s really not used.”
That would change in a big way, though, if Metro Transit gets the green light from Blaine city officials to relocate the Northtown Transit Center over to the overflow lot. The proposal is being driven by the mall’s push to redevelop the southwestern part of its property.
The new transit center would be built along Sanburnol Drive, which is the border between Blaine and Spring Lake Park. And that has the Sanburnol neighborhood uneasy about the thought of bus and pedestrian traffic being right across from their homes, Koegel said.
“So many of the neighbors are the original owners of their houses, and they were here before the mall,” she said, adding Northtown was built in 1972. “A lot of them are concerned.”
And they have the backing of the Spring Lake Park City Council, which in August passed a resolution opposing the relocation and requesting the city of Blaine to deny a plan for the proposed site.
Talk of the plan started this past summer after mall owner Washington Prime Group gave Metro Transit a notice to vacate the mall property it leases for the transit hub and identified the new site. The current transit hub, which opened in 1995, has two heated shelters and 300 designated park-and-ride spaces.
Koegel, who is the state representative for both cities and neighboring Coon Rapids, now finds herself front and center in the dispute, which she admits “puts me in a tough position.” She also serves on the House transportation finance and policy committee.
“I’ve been doing outreach to the neighborhood and facilitating conversations between neighbors and everyone involved,” she said.
Adding to the neighbors’ frustration, Koegel said, is that two open houses held last month by management and Metro Transit focused on options for the hub’s design and screening, not other possible sites.
MALL SEEKS MORE APPROPRIATE PLACE
Make no mistake, Northtown Mall is doing well, despite the popularity of online shopping and the loss of Herberger’s last year, said Paula Mueller, the mall’s general manager. All but two spaces within the 700,000-square-foot enclosed shopping mall and the outlying buildings are leased.
And with more than 1,200 employees, Northtown remains Blaine’s largest employer and tax generator, she noted.
Adapting to consumers’ wants and needs is a big key to any mall’s success, she said.
“In a nutshell, here at Northtown Mall, we have 56 acres of land,” she said. “And real estate hardly ever goes down in value. So we’re always looking for ways to redevelop what we have.”
With that in mind, as well as a desire to keep the transit hub on mall property, she said, “We decided we would work with Metro Transit and move them to a more appropriate part of the property and redevelop the place they are now.”
There are no other site options because the remainder of mall property is subject to the rights of current tenants and anchor stores, she said.
“Some of the neighbors say, ‘Well, I don’t know about this.’ But we tell them the only thing worse than living across from a shopping center is living across from a dead shopping center,” Mueller said. “We don’t want that to happen. We’re really invested in this community and this center … so it’s important for us to make it a really great and growing place.”
And opening up the land along the heavily traveled University Avenue for tenants would do just that, she said, adding that the mall has had talks with a small grocer, coffee shop and a fast-casual restaurant, among other retailers.
According to Mueller, the site of the new hub would provide a more safe and accessible location for pedestrians than the current one. “It can be a mess walking over there sometimes,” she said.
HUB HOME TO 1,200 RIDERS EACH WEEKDAY
Multiple bus routes have served Northtown Mall since at least 1978, according to Metro Transit.
Six local and three express bus lines — two to downtown Minneapolis and one to downtown St. Paul — are routed through the hub on weekdays. About 1,200 riders board the bus there every weekday.
Spring Lake Park City Administrator Dan Buchholtz said the concern is that bus noise and fumes and pedestrian traffic “would be harmful to the Sanburnol neighborhood and have a negative impact on their quality of life and decrease property values.”
Public safety is also a concern, he said.
“We’ve assisted Blaine with police calls over at the transit hub at the mall in the past,” he said, “and so we want to make sure that anything that’s over there minimizes those types of police interactions.”
According to Metro Transit, plans to screen a new hub from neighbors include solid walls that resemble wood or stone and an ornamental fence with landscaping. Plans for shelters and other amenities are also being developed, according to Metro Transit.
But first, Metro Transit must receive a conditional use permit from the Blaine City Council to build the new hub. It is expected to go before the council this winter.
In the meantime, planning and community outreach efforts will continue through the end of the year, Metro Transit said in a statement.
“Metro Transit looks forward to creating an improved customer experience at the new facility,” the agency said.
