Plan for pickleball on old Burnsville dump advances over mayor’s opposition

A controversial plan to build a Topgolf-style driving range and pickleball courts on an old Burnsville dump is moving ahead despite strident opposition from the south metro suburb’s longtime mayor.

Mayor Elizabeth Kautz voted at a Nov. 25 meeting to deny several permits necessary for “Big Hits at the Gateway,” a sports complex that could reshape a pair of inactive landfills off Interstate 35W. But enough City Council members pledged their support for the project to advance, handing the landfill’s owner a key victory in his decadeslong attempt to develop the site.

Michael McGowan, whose companies and family trust own the Freeway Landfill and Freeway Dump, still faces formidable headwinds, including a lawsuit from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) over concerns that the driving range could contaminate drinking water.

The saga reveals the challenges of building on contaminated sites in suburbs with scant vacant land. And as concerns about drinking water hazards rise across Minnesota — from the presence of “forever chemicals” to manganese — some developers now find themselves sparring with officials and residents over plans to seed cities with amenities.

“I have said from the beginning that the water is important,” Kautz said at the meeting. “This development, if we don’t do it right, will endanger the public health and general welfare of the community through its threat to our water supply.”

The city vote is the latest chapter in a long debate about how to address pollution at the landfills. State environmental officials and the McGowan family and its consultants have advanced two competing theories about the project’s risk to drinking water.

Scientists with the MPCA predict that when a nearby quarry one day stops pumping water that sustains its mining activities, the water table will rise and soak the dumps. That will unleash a slew of contaminants — “forever chemicals,” benzene and vinyl chloride, among others — into Savage and Burnsville drinking water and the nearby Minnesota River.

An environmental consultant working on the project with him has argued that contaminants at the properties won’t pollute drinking water even if the water table rises, because flooding and saturation have largely flushed the waste of harmful substances.

The project can’t move forward without the MPCA’s approval, and McGowan has consistently opposed its ideas for remediating the site.

Kirk Koudelka, the MPCA’s assistant commissioner for land policy and strategic initiatives, previously said in an interview that the state has proposed two options for cleaning up the site.

The first would excavate waste from the dump and landfill and haul it to another landfill for final disposal. Another would supplant the Freeway Landfill with a modern landfill, then move the Freeway Dump waste to that site, priming the dump for a new purpose.

But McGowan has resisted those plans, which would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. These opposing perspectives have left McGowan and the MPCA at an impasse, pushing the agency to file suit against McGowan’s companies and the family trust in October.

McGowan’s project, which could feature a 100-bay driving range, pickleball courts and a conference center, has become a divisive issue in Burnsville, as many residents become increasingly attuned to the quality of their drinking water. McGowan has developed a website to promote the project, and state representatives have shown up at city meetings to voice their concerns.

At the November gathering, Kautz asked supporters, then opponents, of the project to rise. The room seemed evenly divided between those for and against the development.

Council Member Dan Kealey, who voted to advance the project, said he hoped his endorsement would push McGowan and the MPCA to “get together and figure out” a plan for cleaning up the site. The state agency, he added, has the final say.

“None of us up here are intent on putting a business above clean water,” he said. “This is kind of opening the door to fix a problem that’s been around for a long time.”

But Kautz seemed frustrated with McGowan.