The Blaine City Council approved a measure Thursday that buys time for supporters of the Sportstown USA sports/retail development and preserves an agreement between the National Sports Center and one of its contractors.
Earlier this decade, Glenn Rehbein Companies excavated the parcel that now is Victory Links Golf Course in a deal with the National Sports Center. Its payment was part cash and part mineral rights to remove gravel from property owned by the Sports Center.
Rehbein quarried the area east of the National Sports Center soccer fields and north of 105th Avenue, and it backfilled with soil suitable for soccer fields, but probably not for building construction. Two years ago, representatives of the National Sports Center and Donnelly Development asked Rehbein to suspend operations on the remaining 16 unexcavated acres, pending completion of plans for the Sportstown USA project, which would include a hotel and retail shops as well as sports facilities.
Thursday's measure extends Rehbein's mineral rights through 2013.
"For us to sit on the sidelines and wait, it's a commitment, but we also recognize there is probably going to be a construction project there," said Rehbein President Jeff Knutson. "At the end of the day, we either need to remove the material or we need to get compensated in some other way. ... We just don't want to get to the end and all of a sudden have people say, 'Oops, it didn't work.'"
For his part, Paul Erickson, executive director of the Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission, said the extension buys time for NSC and the developer. The commission oversees operations at the Sports Center.
Knutson noted that the agreement is an outgrowth of the dismal development scene, and his company wanted to see it written down.
"This company is 53 years old," he said. "It's family-owned, and we're headquartered in Blaine. We've been around a long time. The reality is we live here, we work here, and if there's something that's a community benefit, we don't want to stand in the way of it. But at the same time, we're a business and we need to protect ourselves."
