Economic Development Bus Tour, Part 1: Taking to the (light) rails

If you live or work in Eden Prairie, or even have just driven through, you’ve probably noticed plenty of changes. Some businesses and buildings are new. Some are gone. Some have been altered.

The Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce sponsors an annual Economic Development Bus Tour that highlights what has happened in the past year. This year’s tour took place in July and was emceed by David Lindahl, economic development manager for the city of Eden Prairie.

Ride along on the tour in this three-part series to learn more. This is Part 1. Part 2 will be published tomorrow, and Part 3 on Thursday.

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The 2025 Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Bus Tour began at Fat Pants Brewing Co., 8335 Crystal View Road, and traversed all areas of the city. 

As the tour made its way through the city, the bus passed sites connected to the Metro Green Line Extension Project light rail transit running from Minneapolis to Eden Prairie. 

David Lindahl, the city’s economic development manager, said the project is complete on Eden Prairie’s end. Only the Minneapolis side remains to be finished before trains can carry passengers to and from Eden Prairie. Lindahl recently discussed the project in a YouTube video by the Metro Green Line Extension.

“It’s basically done through Eden Prairie,” Lindahl said. “They plan to start testing cars, probably later this year, maybe even this fall.”

Metro Transit’s tests will last a year. 

The light rail project, previously known as the Southwest Light Rail extension and coordinated by the Metropolitan Council, has been under discussion for a long time.

Lindahl recalled a meeting about the idea in the late 1980s, when Hennepin County was discussing plans for railroad rights of way purchased from the Chicago and North Western Railway Co. As discussions progressed over the years, Lindahl said, it became clear that the railroad corridor alignment in Eden Prairie wasn’t the right route for light rail transit.

“It kind of cut right through the middle of the city,” Lindahl said. Repurposed into the Minnesota River Bluffs Regional Trail, the route missed Eden Prairie’s major areas of employment.

“That was the biggest challenge for Eden Prairie: finding an alignment that worked and finding locations for the stations where they get the most use,” Lindahl said. “We think we’ve got it figured out.”

The Metro Green Line Extension route will stop at four stations in Eden Prairie, Lindahl said. They include SouthWest Station, Town Center Station, City West Station, and Golden Triangle Station. 

Town Center Station, on Town Center Place west of Redstone American Grill, is located in what currently “feels like a little bit of a remote area,” Lindahl said.

“We wanted to try to get a station closer to the mall, but it just never worked out,” Lindahl said.

The city is still working on how to address getting people from such stations to their final destination, such as Eden Prairie Center mall.

“This is a little bit of a walk, but one of the solutions we think, to what they call kind of ‘the last half mile challenge,’ is the automated vehicles, as SouthWest Transit has routing around Eden Prairie right now,” Lindahl said.

In 2024, SouthWest Transit partnered with May Mobility to begin autonomous micro-transit for first- and last-mile rides near Eden Prairie’s SouthWest Station.

Placing e-bikes, scooters and bicycles near the stop could help address the last-half-mile challenge, Lindahl said. “Obviously, in the middle of winter, those are a bit more challenging, but we do think this is a walk to walk from (the) station,” he added.

From rails to the trails

The city is also building walking paths near light rail stops.

Trails built near Golden Triangle Station, on West 70th Street between Flying Cloud Drive and Shady Oak Road, will help people get from the station to their jobs, Lindahl said. The city funded the trail construction with the help of a Hennepin County grant.

“From this location, people could walk to a lot of different jobs in the area,” Lindahl said. “But, again, we’re hoping that there will be other micromobility options of bikes and e-bikes and things like that parked here.”

Eden Prairie’s Golden Triangle area, about 1,000 acres roughly bounded by Interstate 494, Highway 169 and Highway 212, has long been considered an industrial area.

Lindahl noted that The Fox and the Grouse, an apartment complex developed by Greco Properties at 6901 Flying Cloud Drive, was recently built near the Golden Triangle Station. The completed first phase of the project has about 230 units. The developer said in 2023 that the second phase of construction would add over 180 more units.

Developers created a trail from the apartment complex that leads directly to the light rail station, Lindahl said. The city has also built trails along West 70th Street and Shady Oak Road from Valley View Road to Flying Cloud Drive. Hennepin County grants helped fund the trail construction and the addition of lighted bollards on either side of the roadway.

The third light rail station built in Eden Prairie, City West Station at the eastern terminus of West 62nd Street, sits on five acres of land donated by UnitedHealth Group (UHG), Lindahl said.

Lindahl told bus passengers that UHG’s 70 acres in the area sat unoccupied for years until the company approached the city about building the Optum campus around the same time light rail stations were being sited.

The current campus consists of three office buildings, two occupied by Optum and one by UHG. Existing city approvals allow for the construction of an additional 10-story office building, which would essentially have the City West Station in its backyard, Lindahl said.

Though City West Station has a parking lot, the city is still planning for other ways for people to travel from the station, Lindahl said.

“The big challenge here is to connect this area to … where the new apartments are going in,” at 6436 City West Parkway, Lindahl said. “So our plan is to try to build a trail that would kind of start there and go all the way through those woods and come out in that area where they’re building the new apartments.”

SouthWest Station and future maintenance

A large, lighted Eden Prairie sign greets riders at the City West Station, Lindahl said. 

“That was one of our special projects, too, where we said, ‘Hey, we might as well welcome people to Eden Prairie’,” Lindahl said. 

Funded through the city’s Economic Development fund, the sign is not currently lighted because the station is not yet in use.

It joins other infrastructure and aesthetic projects the city has put in place in advance of light rail passenger service, currently anticipated to begin in 2027.

Since the city wanted to increase safety by avoiding light rail tracks crossing existing roadways at the same grade, Lindahl said, “There’s a lot of bridges, and that’s part of why the project is very expensive.”

One of the longest bridges in the Metro Green Line Extension project crosses over Flying Cloud Drive, Shady Oak Road and Highway 212 in Eden Prairie. “We did our best with, they say, (to) ‘put lipstick on a pig,'” Lindahl said. “That’s what some people say about the art that we have on the piers.”

The city has added artwork to the piers that support light rail transit bridges and can change the colors of the lights that illuminate the artwork at night, Lindahl said.

The city also extended West 62nd Street and Town Center Place and added landscaping to all three newly built light rail stations.

The fourth and final light rail stop in Eden Prairie will be SouthWest Station, 13500 Technology Drive. SouthWest Transit, Lindahl said, owns 22 acres in the vicinity. The station, which now serves as a hub for buses, SouthWest Prime on-demand rideshares and autonomous vehicles, added 450 parking spaces to its ramp in recent years in anticipation of light rail ridership, he said.

“Our hope is that, eventually, people will be using the train when that opens in ’27 and using the express buses downtown, and that’s kind of what that station’s about,” Lindahl said.

The renovation of SouthWest Station in anticipation of light rail ridership, completed in 2023, displaced a Culver’s restaurant at the site. The business moved to 920 Prairie Center Drive, in a shopping center anchored by a Lunds & Byerlys.

“During COVID, they had the most successful drive-through, probably, in the Twin Cities,” Lindahl commented. “Cars would get backed up all the way up onto Prairie Center Drive. But it really worked out well for them.”

As construction continues on the Metro Green Line Extension, residents can expect weekend maintenance activities along the track throughout Eden Prairie, Minnetonka and Hopkins, according to the Metropolitan Council. Beyond weekends, minor construction will also continue in Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, Hopkins and St. Louis Park.

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Editor’s note: David Lindahl is a member of Eden Prairie Local News’ board of directors. Joanna Werch Takes contributed to this report.