A world’s fair in Minnesota? Horticulture expo could reshape Twin Cities suburbs.

An enormous horticulture exhibit is set to seed Dakota County with millions of visitors from around the world — in about five years.

But Twin Cities suburban area leaders are already approaching the faraway global event with a local mindset, hopeful that the six-month-long spectacle brings permanent development to their fast-growing part of Minnesota.

Expo 2031 is the United States’ first A1 International Horticulture Exhibition, a widely attended event similar to the world’s fair. Its upcoming location in Dakota County — past host countries have included Qatar, the Netherlands and China — is a product of local leaders’ intense effort to draw people, and profits, to the state’s third-largest county. And it comes after years of lobbying from Minnesota officials to draw a world’s fair event to the state.

Officials haven’t yet announced a precise location for the event, though they predict 4 million to 6 million people will pass through the 160-acre site between May and October 2031.

“This is economic development in its purest form for Dakota County, Minn.,” said Jon Althoff, president of the county’s Regional Chamber of Commerce. “It’s going to be a phenomenal boon for the entire region.”

This isn’t the first time Minnesota has tried to secure a spot on the world’s stage.

In 2023, Bloomington lost a bid to host the upcoming World’s Fair Expo to Belgrade, Serbia. City leaders had proposed hosting the event, with a theme intended to highlight Minnesota’s robust health care industry, near the Mall of America.

Wendy Meadley, the CEO of Expo 2031, said after officials decided to wage a campaign for Minnesota to host the festivities, they asked cities and counties interested in anchoring the main campus to submit formal proposals. Dakota County’s pitch intrigued her.

The area boasts several advantages, she said. It’s close to the airport. It’s looking to grow. And it’s blanketed, especially in the south, with a resource that’s becoming increasingly hard to find in the Twin Cities area: vacant land.

“We wanted a contiguous site,” Meadley said, adding that land availability is “another piece of the puzzle.”

A November letter from the federal government supporting the Minnesota-based event buoyed Expo 2031 leaders, who are now deciding among three Dakota County cities for the final location.

Althoff noted most empty land lies in Farmington, Hastings and Rosemount, including thousands of acres that the University of Minnesota owns and has long sought to develop.

Such exhibitions historically alter their host city’s landscape, leaving behind grand mementos. Seattle got its Space Needle. Spokane, its Riverfront Park. And New York City emerged studded with several monuments that still stand: a science museum, pavilion and silver globe sculpture in Queens.

In Minnesota, a “future living district” is the centerpiece that will endure long after Expo 2031 ends. Imagine a neighborhood of 100 homes outfitted with the latest technologies, from automated watering systems for gardens to drones darting above rooftops.

“We’re thinking, ‘How do people want to live in the future?’” Meadley said. “Not Jetsons, but what are things that people feel are real amenities that are also related to horticulture?”

The event with the theme “Where Humanity and Horticulture Meet” will emphasize the intersection of wildness and civilization, leaving behind other fixtures in the county. A pavilion near pollinator-shaped lakes. A hotel, amphitheater and broadcast studio. Even a “secret garden wedding venue,” Meadley said: “These are things in that region that don’t already exist.”

And throughout the exhibit’s duration, as spring turns to summer and fall, visitors will get a chance to navigate lush landscapes and check out green tech. Think tropical forests and reflecting pools, rainwater harvesting systems and wind turbines.

Althoff, the chamber president, noted that visitors are likely to explore other destinations, including the Twin Cities and Mall of America. (An indoor water park is set to open at the Bloomington retail behemoth two years before the expo.) That means hotel stays, meals and gas station trips will be spread across the metro area.

“This is still relatively new,” he said, but “the energy, already five years out, it’s really starting to build.”