Type: Retail
Size: 33,500 square feet
Parcel: 5.21 acres
Developer: Ryan Companies
Details: Ryan Companies is developing a vacant lot along Hwy. 65 (Central Av. NE.) in Blaine into a 33,500-square-foot retail building housing a Marshalls department store and a Petco pet supply store.
The plans submitted to the city of Blaine indicate the Marshalls store will be 21,000 square feet while the Petco store will take up 12,500 square feet within the one-story building. There is also room on the site for a future 15,500-square-foot addition.
The 5.21-acre location is part of the city's Central Avenue Acres addition, which, when it was platted in 2009, opened up a sizable area on the west side of the highway for commercial development for the first time. The Ryan building is set for the southwest corner of Central Avenue's intersection with 117th Ave. NE., just east of an existing Lowe's home improvement store.
The site plan calls for a 245-stall parking lot. Its exterior building materials menu includes rock-face block of multiple colors, glass, metal and insulated cement fiberboard cladding.
While the area around the new building has emerged as Blaine's northernmost commercial development frontier, the 117th Av. NE./Hwy. 65 intersection itself has not been improved since it was originally laid out with traffic lights decades ago. The Minnesota Department of Transportation has slated it for complete reconstruction into a full, modern interchange, but the project has yet to be included on MnDOT's official timetables.
Don Jacobson is a St. Paul-based freelance writer. He can be contacted at hotproperty.startribune@gmail.com.
