No one passing by Valleyfair in Shakopee pays any attention to the big bare spot of land alongside it. But it's the site of a public project, about to be launched, that will cost far more than the Metrodome: $200 million.

It's the place where all the bath water will go from the hundreds of thousands of people expected to move into the southwest metro over the next couple of decades.

More than anyone expected, the latest estimates suggest the metro area is tilting toward the southwest. Of the seven big metro counties, five are quietly tapering off in population growth. Only two are accelerating: Carver and Scott.

"If only because that's where land is available," said Rick Packer, an ex-Metropolitan Council member who is now a leading voice in the homebuilders industry, "growth will shift to the southwest."

And that affects the entire metro area. If the center of gravity for jobs and homes migrates away from downtown Minneapolis, it weighs on everyone else, mainly in the form of longer commutes to jobs.

Packer himself is a case in point. He lives in Coon Rapids, but the firm he works for is in Edina, along the mighty and growing I-494 job cluster that runs from Bloomington to Eden Prairie and Minnetonka with offshoots into Chanhassen and beyond. "My commute over the last few years, despite some major roadwork, has grown from 45 minutes to an hour and a quarter.

"And I haven't moved!"

Unlike many other parts of the metro -- notably the wealthy, still semi-rural parts of western Hennepin and Washington counties -- both Scott and Carver counties still seem robustly pro-growth.

But in both counties there's a cautious mood.

In Scott, the bridge that is the primary link to the outside world is traffic grinding to a halt at rush hour. And in Carver, the population explosion expected from a long-awaited new freeway is not happening quite yet -- victim of the sudden downdraft in the housing market.

The bridge over the Minnesota River on Hwy. 169, says Jon Ulrich, chairman of the Scott County Board, "is our lifeline. It affects our development and growth."

Across the river in Carver, the state is nearing completion of what has been forecast to be equally transformative: a new four-lane Hwy. 212 that will be the first high-speed freeway ever to extend in that direction.

Cologne to quadruple in size

Yet cities such as tiny Cologne, which expects to quadruple in size, with nearly 1,800 housing units on the drawing boards, are still pretty quiet, with only a handful of houses actually being built.

"We expected a housing slowdown," said city administrator John Douville. "We didn't expect it to be this severe."

Once it recovers, growth should take off.

A home buyer in Cologne, once the new 212 freeway is finished, should be able to reach Eden Prairie Center in 15 minutes, says Barbara Swanson, the mayor of Cologne. That's faster than some people in inner-ring suburbs can get downtown -- and the homes can be had in the low $200,000.

The latest population estimates show that, six years into the decade, none of the seven main metro counties is quite on track to meet its population growth forecasts for the year 2010, the next major benchmark year.