Copeland: Controversy has ended plans for Eagan children's home -- for now

Unable to raise the $30 million needed, Mary Jo Copland has backed off plans to build a controversial 200-bed children's home in Eagan. But she vowed Tuesday to see the home built on the site some day.

"There will come a day," she said, "when the world begs for that place."

But, accepting that that day looks to be a long way off, she and her husband have notified Eagan that they will not build the home on the 39 acres they own in the city's northeast corner. She blamed controversy about the project for keeping away donors with "big money."

The city's planning commission unanimously agreed Tuesday to terminate the agreement and rezoned the land as agriculture. The City Council will vote on it Aug. 4.

Mary Jo Copeland is best known as the founder and director of Sharing and Caring Hands, a homeless shelter on the fringes of downtown Minneapolis.

Her proposal ignited a lengthy war of words in which experts debated whether orphanages -- a term she at times used and at times held at arm's length -- are really the answer for troubled kids.

"Kids are 'reunited' to homes with a lot of problems," she said Tuesday, "and children can't grow in those homes. The answer is to give these children stability so they can grow and become productive. And it's so beautiful out there," on her leafy acreage in Eagan.

Residents' reactions mixed

"I'm unhappy the way it worked out," said John Cina, who owns a hobby farm in the area. "We're paying for something that isn't needed now. Things kind of got ahead of the horse here. So much was just proposals, yet a new road came along and nothing else was ready to go!"

Tom Garrison, a spokesman for the city, said the road has been inaccurately described as a thoroughfare to Copeland's property.

"That road was intended all along," he said, given the drift of development toward that still-rural part of a city that has little other undeveloped area to build on. "Obviously it came along sooner because development was anticipated there."

Copeland said she uses the property, which she said she bought for $3 million, for field trips for children she serves in Minneapolis. "That land is mine, and I will keep it," Copeland said. "I'm not selling it. Someday it will do a world of good."

Copeland said she does not intend to keep looking elsewhere for some place that would work.

"Not with the controversy I've had, no," she said. "So many people thought I was goofy. This was a hard thing for me. I went to different cities. I never gave up, I always shook the dust off my feet and went to a different city. But it's not going to happen unless 'the system' admits we need this place. And that will happen some day -- I believe it will."