Mobile home park residents battling Arden Hills city plan

Pat McLafferty says he and other residents of an Arden Hills mobile home park don't intend to simply stand by as nearly 50 homes are lost as part of a proposed expansion of Hwys. 10 and 96.

"We have over 300 families there," he said, and the park's residents don't want to see perhaps 100 of their neighbors displaced without a fight. Some have been living there for decades.

Arden Hills is requesting $29 million from the Legislature this year as part of the estimated $60 million it will take to expand the highways to prepare for redevelopment of the massive former Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP). The mobile home park, between Hwy. 10 and Hwy. 96, would lose homes that are on built along two edges of the highways under the city's plan.

For the city, the TCAAP property represents an unprecedented opportunity for business and residential development. Its roughly 4 square miles represents 40 percent of Arden Hills' entire area. Of that land, the city is looking to redevelop 585 acres, envisioning a mix of housing and businesses.

While the transfer of the land from the federal government to the city is perhaps a year away, the city wants to get started on infrastructure to handle the projected 5,000 additional vehicles the redevelopment could bring to the area every day. Its funding request of the Legislature is to improve access points into the site from the nearby highways.

To pitch the project, the Arden Hills played host Thursday to members of the Senate Capital Investment Committee. Mayor Stan Harpstead talked about the TCAAP redevelopment as an area of "regional significance."

He asked the legislators to consider that it is located just north of the nexus of I-35W and I-694, an area where 140,000 cars pass each day, Harpstead said, and that its diameter is large enough to encompass the Mall of America, Edina's Centennial Lakes area and Richfield's Best Buy campus combined.

Yes, McLafferty says.

"We haven't pulled out all the rabbits yet," he said. "We still have a few in our hat."

McLafferty and his neighbors, joined by advocates for the mobile home park and some other Arden Hills residents opposed to the proposed road project, picketed last week's meeting, handing out leaflets to draw attention to their cause.

Law requires compensation

Harpstead said the city is committed to working with residents and following the law to compensate anyone who would lose his or her home during construction.

Sen. Satveer Chaudhary, DFL-Fridley, sits on the Senate bonding committee and is the author of the $29 million request for the highway project in the Senate.

"Their concerns are legitimate. No one wants to be displaced," he said. But with the additional traffic that the redevelopment is expected to bring, Chaudhary said something has to be done. If people are forced to move, he said, they should "be compensated well."

That's what Ned Moore, lead community organizer for tenants' rights group All Parks Alliance for Change, wants as well.

Moore's group is working with residents of the mobile home park on what he said would be a "binding resolution" to be presented to the City Council at one of the two meetings that are scheduled for January.

Generally speaking, he said, the goal is to "minimize the displacement" of residents and "guarantee that the homes will be protected as the city's first preference."

Harpstead said the city is trying to find a way to protect the neighborhood, but the mobile home park is "in the middle of a triangle, which is an unfortunate position to be in."

"If there were any way to design a road [expansion] to work where it wouldn't take any homes, that's where we would end up. But that's not been found yet," he said.