The Eagan City Council has been persuaded to consider a less-restrictive alternative to closing the median at Yankee Doodle Road and O'Leary Lane in Eagan after nearby store and restaurant owners said they were concerned about losing customers.

After hearing testimony and receiving letters from a handful of businesses, Eagan council voted unanimously Dec. 16to continue the issue until its Jan. 20 meeting.

That will give city and Dakota County engineers time to study the proposed alternative, known as a three-quarter intersection. The county, meanwhile, will design other elements of a larger plan for intersection improvements at Promenade Avenue and the heavily traveled section of Yankee Doodle Road just east of Interstate 35E.

Those improvements, called for in a 2007 study intended to smooth traffic and increase safety on Yankee Doodle Road, also would improve access to the planned City Vue Commons project. That's the 112-unit apartment complex that developers are planning in the 10-story office building that formerly housed Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.

The mixed-use City Vue Commons development, which council members approved in June, eventually would include construction of a new 90-unit apartment building and 28,000 square feet of retail space on an undeveloped part of the 10-acre property.

$1.2 million road project

The intersection improvements, which would include realigning Promenade Avenue and adding or lengthening turn lanes in the area, would cost an estimated $1.2 million. The developers would pay $400,000 of the cost, with the city responsible for $350,000 and Dakota County for $450,000.

The proposal to close the median on Yankee Doodle Road at O'Leary Lane drew objections from residents at a neighborhood meeting in November and a public hearing earlier this month.

"We do welcome the apartment building being constructed there — more customers," Clint Racine, who with his wife owns a Culver's restaurant on O'Leary Lane, told the council. "But we do need to have accessibility for other customers. Closing off that (median) would be very, very negative."

Racine said he would support an alternative that neighboring businesses have proposed for a three-quarters intersection.

Three-quarters intersection

The three-quarters intersection would allow westbound drivers to take a left turn from Yankee Doodle Road to go south onto O'Leary Drive. But it would prevent drivers from turning left from northbound O'Leary Lane onto westbound Yankee Doodle Road.

Michael Schifsky, senior real estate manager for Ashland, which owns a Valvoline Instant Oil Change location on Yankee Doodle Road, told council members the company could live with a three-quarters intersection at O'Leary Lane.

"If they can't take a left when they're coming up, we really can't expect our customers to be inconvenienced to the point where they're going to turn around at some point down the road and come back to us," Schifsky said of customers who live in residential areas east of the Valvoline store and use westbound Yankee Doodle Road to reach it. "They're going to go find a competitor."

Mayor Mike Maguire said he favored taking time to study the three-quarters intersection proposal.

"It comes down to the differences between having accessibility and preserving ideal accessibility," Maguire said. "While I'd like to see the access preserved there, if I hear back from Dakota County that it just isn't safe to do it — and I think they're motivated and interested in trying to accommodate that if they can — I think we just have to recognize that it's a congested area and it's going to become increasingly so and sometimes things change and transportation patterns change too."

Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Woodbury. His e-mail address is todd_nelson@mac.com