Richfield dreams big about the old Lyndale Garden

Foxes, raccoons and vandals have taken over Richfield's empty Lyndale Garden Center and Hardware, where big crowds at times required police to manage parking lot traffic. Broken windows, missing sign letters and sagging split fascia mark the exterior. Inside, copper piping and mechanical systems have been stolen.

A Lyndale Avenue landmark for 50 years, the store closed in 2006. Since then, several attempts to buy and redevelop the site have sputtered.

Now, in what Richfield city officials say could be a signature Twin Cities development, the 10-acre site on Richfield Lake has been sold the Cornerstone Group, a real estate developer based in the city. The firm has ambitious plans to make the site a new city center, linking busy Lyndale Avenue to quiet trails that ring the little-used lake, where ducks paddle and herons fish the shallow water.

John Stark, Richfield's community development director, compares the site to Edina's Centennial Lakes, which has a park, a pond with summer boating and winter skating, a weekly farmers market and nearby housing and retail.

"Centennial Lakes started as a gravel pit," he said. "The place we're starting from is significantly better than a gravel pit. There's no reason the result can't be significantly better than Centennial Lakes."

Cornerstone President Colleen Carey agrees that the site could become a new heart for the city.

"We've been looking at this site for years and always felt like it would be a great place to develop a town center for the city of Richfield," she said. "Other people have come and gone and haven't completed anything. Now might be the right time to get something done."

"We'd still have room for flex space that could include community education space for yoga or salsa classes, space that could be rented out for kids' birthdays and things like that," Carey said.

The garden center building that faces Lyndale Avenue looks decrepit, but Carey said it is structurally sound. Though vandals have stripped the inside of mechanical systems and nature has been moving in -- Carey said a fox ran out a door while she was there and she saw a raccoon inside -- she said the concrete block building is solid and would not be difficult to remodel.

Excited about Richfield Lake

But it's the property behind the building, which is largely out of view of passersby and runs down to Richfield Lake, that makes the project exciting, Carey said. The lake is ringed by a newly paved path, and city officials hope storm water holding ponds that were added three years ago will improve the lake's water quality.

"We want to tie in the whole idea of active living," Carey said. "Our plan is to use this as a place for people to live and play and shop and gather."

"Most everybody is familiar with Wood Lake and the nature center there, but Richfield Lake is hidden and inaccessible," he said. "We really look at this project as a way to provide access to Richfield Lake and start to use this as an amenity."

Carey envisions creating outdoor spaces that draw people toward the lake -- restaurants with decks overlooking the water, trails that link to the existing path, perhaps a small amphitheater.

"A lively outdoor experience would open up the area from Lyndale to the lake," she said. "Most people don't even know the lake is there."

A push for financing

Big dreams require big money. Cornerstone has a purchase agreement for the land and needs to arrange financing by sometime in August.

"But we have very strong support from Richfield and the business community. ... I'm certainly an optimist about this, or we wouldn't be doing this."

She said Cornerstone will hold meetings for area residents to talk about what they would like to see in a development. Stark thinks that after the site's history of stops and starts with possible development, that's a good idea.

"We've never had a shared vision of what this should be," he said. "We want to bring in a consultant to help staff and the public come together to dream a big dream. Cornerstone can pursue their development plans at the same time we pursue this vision."