Business and housing development – Part 3: The western portion of town

Correction Notice: Photos of The Ellie apartments in this story have been updated to show the correct location. Previous photos depicted another apartment building on Eden Prairie Road.

What’s happening with that building? What’s going in there? What businesses are coming and going in EP? Those are the types of questions the Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce seeks to answer with its Economic Development Bus Tour. The fifth annual iteration of the event was held in June, with David Lindahl, economic development manager for Eden Prairie, acting as tour emcee. Ride along on the tour in this three-part series to learn more. This is Part 3.

Near Interstate 494, Highway 62

As the Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce‘s 2024 Economic Development Bus Tour left the Golden Triangle area, the bus visited the site of another Eden Prairie office building being repurposed. Eden Prairie Schools is buying the United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) office building at 11840 Valley View Road. The district plans to use the building on the north side of Valley View Road, not far from the northbound on-ramp to Interstate 494, for its TASSEL transition program for 18- to 22-year-olds with special needs. 

For the west end of the UNFI campus, CSM Corp. has presented the city with a concept plan for development that would include a hotel and, possibly, a restaurant. 

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It’s in the area where vehicles southbound on I-494 enter the city that the city plans to erect its final entry monument, said David Lindahl, Eden Prairie economic development manager. “With the traffic that comes into Eden Prairie here – it’s a lot of traffic – we just felt that should be a priority.”

Although it will require building an access road to reach the hillside along I-494 from the city water tower property, Lindahl said he hopes to see the monument erected this year. 

At the southwest corner of Highway 62 and Baker Road, largely hidden by trees, is what Lindahl referred to on the bus tour as “a neat little redevelopment” – an office building being converted to senior housing. 

That prompted a question on how much senior housing the city will allow. “We don’t have a cap on it,” Lindahl said. “But as we age in place, there just continues to be more demand for senior housing.” He said, however, that he thinks additional projects would be redevelopment, without significant growth in that market, because of the small amount of land left to be developed in Eden Prairie. 

Lindahl said the city does not necessarily prefer general occupancy over senior housing for apartment complexes but rather looks to its original comprehensive plan.

“They wanted a lot of housing options to accommodate a lot of different lifestyles and incomes, and that’s really kind of what we have in Eden Prairie,” he said. “About 45 percent of our housing is attached, and that’s apartments, townhouses, condos, duplexes, fourplexes, everything in between. So there are a lot of choices people have. They’re not always inexpensive, but they’re out there.”

Eden Prairie Road

Although the bus tour ran out of time to visit the sites, Lindahl spoke of some other recent developments in the city, including car washes being built at both former Burger King sites. Crew Carwash is being built at the intersection of Highway 5 and County Road 4 (Eden Prairie Road), while a new Mister Car Wash is being built at the intersection of Prairie Center Drive and Flying Cloud Drive near Eden Prairie Center. 

“I’ve gotten a lot of questions, ‘Why a car wash?’” Lindahl said. “Probably the best answer is that they would not allow the property to be sold to any food use. So that took restaurants or fast food off of the table. And, honestly, car washes are paying the most for real estate by far than any other use. They paid $85 a square foot, which is a lot. I mean, typically, you’re paying $20 a square foot for real estate for an office building or an apartment building.” 

Farther south of the new car wash site on Eden Prairie Road sits The Ellie, apartments named for Elizabeth Fries Ellet, the 19th-century author who gave Eden Prairie its name. United Properties, the developer of The Ellie, also developed the nearby Applewood Pointe senior living facility. The Ellie replaced seven single-family homes along Lincoln Lane.

In the same general neighborhood, but on the west side of Eden Prairie Road, north of Miller Park in an area formerly occupied by Gunnar Electric, is the Sheldon Place Townhomes redevelopment. (Gunnar Electric is now on Martin Drive.) The townhouses, Lindahl said, “are just finishing up right now. We’ve had kind of a renaissance of development in that neighborhood over there.” 

At the beginning of the bus tour, Lindahl mentioned that his family moved to Eden Prairie in 1963. At that time, he said, the city was “pretty much a blank canvas of farmland and lots of opportunity for development.” In 2024, with a population of roughly 65,000, Eden Prairie has about 28 million square feet of commercial space and is about 98 percent developed. Many current projects are infill or redevelopment, Lindahl said.

Read Part 1 of the bus tour, about the central portion of town, here, and Part 2, about the Golden Triangle, here.

Editor’s Note: David Lindahl is a member of Eden Prairie Local News’s board of directors.