After a decade of study, still no development in Edina's Grandview district

Minnesotans, said Edina Mayor James Hovland, "are experts at admiring the problem."

Perhaps that explains why the city's old public works site, a vacant 3.3-acre parcel of land immediately west of Hwy. 100, remains untouched after 10 years and at least 15 separate planning proposals for the surrounding Grandview district.

The latest proposal — a community center and a parking deck — has been rejected by City Council members, who couldn't swallow the $45 million price tag.

"In all honesty, I think all of us on the council were taken aback," said Council Member Kevin Staunton. "That's just a huge chunk to bite off."

Hovland agreed. "That idea has been jettisoned by the council," he said. "Nobody has any appetite for that."

Despite the death of the latest proposal, however, momentum actually may be gathering for development in the Grandview area.

The Edina School District is about ready to put its old bus garage site on the market, several City Council members said. That land on Eden Avenue borders the city's public works parcel. Hovland said he wouldn't be surprised if Edina-based grocery operator Jerry's Enterprises took an interest in the school district land.

Agreement on transportation goals for the area, council members said, will provide a basis for deciding whether future development proposals are a good fit.

"This is a necessary tool," Staunton said at Wednesday's meeting. "It [gives] a staged way of looking at how the district might evolve over time."

Several Grandview development proposals, including the rejected community center, have been passionately opposed by citizens who want a more expansive — rather than expensive — public use of the city-owned property.

Kim Montgomery has been on both sides of the question. She served on the executive committee of a city task force on Grandview planning before becoming a leader of Public Grandview, an opposition group dedicated to keeping the city land "in the public domain for a higher public purpose."

Montgomery said the rejected community center proposal didn't pass her smell test.

"It was a way to say, 'You wanted it. We looked at it. We did the due diligence you asked us for, and it's too expensive.' "

Montgomery said she believes the transportation study adopted Wednesday by the council lays out a justification for future large-scale development in the Grandview area.

"This is a densification and urbanization council as it stands today," she said. "This council, in my opinion, has done everything to ignore the citizens' vision of a low-impact development, in favor of a high-density urbanization plan."