Robbinsdale district site could become Target location

It was only recently that the Robbinsdale School District sold off one of its old elementary schools. Now, the district is thinking bigger; its administration building could well be on the market.

Discussions are preliminary, and plenty of hurdles remain, but there has been interest in turning the district's New Hope administration site -- called the Education Service Center -- into a Target store.

That would work just fine for New Hope city officials, who consider the site at 42nd Avenue and Winnetka Avenue N. to be the city center and would like to see it redeveloped. Plus, because school districts pay no property taxes, a big infusion of tax revenue from a major retailer would be more than welcome in a small city such as New Hope, with its limited revenue.

"If we had anything other than a school district there we would get tax money out of it," said Curtis Jacobsen, New Hope director of community development.

Jacobsen said there has been interest in plunking a Target store on the site for several years, and he identified the Ryan Companies development firm as the prospective developer. This time, he said, there appears to be enough interest on all sides to get the ball rolling on the project.

Also on the site is the district transportation building, which houses its school buses. Recently, in an initial step toward a possible sale, the school district applied to rezone another site it owns about a mile to the north of the administration site. The idea is to prepare that site for the construction of a bus facility in case the district decides to sell its current administration-transportation center site.

"It is in the very preliminary stages at this point," Jacobsen said. "There are a lot of details to work through."

"If there is an opportunity for the district to move forward with a better, newer transportation facility, and move the administration out of this building into a building with a longer life expectancy, that would be a very good opportunity for our district," said Robbinsdale spokesman Jeff Dehler. "It would save our taxpayers dollars, and that is what we want to do."

As for the buildings, Jacobsen said they are inadequate for almost any use.

"It looks as if [the administration building] was designed to be a concrete bunker," he said. "There are probably better ways to set up an office building. ... To have that mammoth administration center and a bus building, that's not the best use of that site."

Dehler stressed that there would be no sale if it and the ensuing move to another location would involve any additional costs to district residents. He noted that the district has surplus buildings no longer in use as schools. Those include Pilgrim Lane Elementary School in Plymouth, which was shut down to save money at the end of the last school year; the former Olson Elementary School in Golden Valley, which is currently being leased to a charter school; and Sandburg Middle School in Golden Valley, also closed as a school in June.

If the district moves its administrative offices to an existing building, it could reap a financial windfall from the sale of the existing property. Plus, Ryan has already offered to build the district a transportation building and might even cough up whatever it takes to pay for the renovation of an existing district building. No price has been put on the property.

This year, the district sold the former Lincoln Elementary School in Brooklyn Park to a developer for $3.1 million. Dehler noted that Robbinsdale, which has suffered declining enrollments over the last several decades, is no novice when it comes to selling district buildings.

"We have sold a number of facilities in recent years, and quite a few since the late '70s," he said. "It's the right thing to do. It's sizing the facilities to fit the enrollment in our district."