Hopkins Among Final 2 Sites for Southwest LRT Maintenance Facility

Southwest Light Rail Transit planners have selected a Hopkins site off K-Tel drive as one of two finalists for the operation and maintenance facility that will service trains along the corridor.

“We see the site as a very good site for us. We can get a very good layout here,” said Jim Alexander, the project’s design and engineering director. “Our operations folks would say this is probably the preferred site because it’s midway—although they indicate that they could operate out of either (of the final two sites).”

At Wednesday’s Metropolitan Council meeting, Alexander unveiled the Eden Prairie maintenance facility at 15150 Technology Drive and the Hopkins site at Fifth Street South (K-Tel Drive) and 16th Avenue South as the two finalists for a facility that no community along the line really wants.

The maintenance facility is the site where light rail vehicles will be cleaned, stored and undergo light maintenance. It will have 180 operator and maintenance jobs. But Hopkins staff argue that the community’s four square miles is just too limited to be losing such a significant amount of commercial real estate.

As many as six property owners could see their property acquired. During a work session after Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Hopkins staff described how one business would probably wind up leaving the state while another moved to Hopkins because an earlier unwanted acquisition and is demonstably against moving again.

Yet Alexander noted that all seven sites considered in this phase of evaluation would require the acquisition of private property and pose tax base impacts. At none of them, did cities envision an operation and maintenance facility.

“There isn’t that open cornfield that’s just readily available that we can just take from the public, from some city or county,” he said. “All the cities, I think it’s fair to say, are concerned about the impact to their tax base.”

Alexander spelled out several strengths that caused the Hopkins site to rise to the top:

• It’s consistent with land use guiding and zoning for the industrial area.
• There’s operator relief access.
• Freight rail and proposed LRT alignment provide a buffer south and west of property borders.
• There’s redevelopment potential for the remaining pieces of the parcels on the east end that wouldn’t be built on.

In the past, Hopkins has worried that a facility would eliminate lucrative redevelopment opportunities, but Alexander said they likely wouldn’t go away altogether.

“There is quite a bit of room left over after the (facility) gets put in place,” Alexander said. “We think there’s some potential for some other land use, but we have to be creative in how we acquire that property, though.”

But there are also downsides. The Hopkins facility would add $35 million to $40 million to the initial estimate—mostly because of relocation and acquisition costs, demolition and clearing and earthwork. Engineers would also have to overcome wetland impacts, flood-prone conditions and soft soils.

The Eden Prairie site would add $30 million to $35 million to the initial cost.

Planners will present the final recommended site to the business and community advisory committees July 25 then to the Southwest LRT Corridor Management Committee on Aug. 7. It will go before the Met Council in August.