Woodbury's CityPlace producing hundreds of jobs

Buried among all the numbers used to describe the expanding CityPlace development in Woodbury is this fact: New businesses now total nearly three-quarters of the 400,000 square feet the city required when it approved the project.

In the year since demolition crews tore down the abandoned State Farm headquarters and removed its vast parking lots from the 100-acre property, hundreds of people have gone to work at more than 20 businesses and construction sites at CityPlace.

The development now has a 116-room Residence Inn by Marriott hotel and a Spire Credit Union branch, both open for business. Whole Foods Market will open later this spring. A 75,000-square-foot TRIA Orthopaedics clinic, under construction, will open in late summer or early autumn. Numerous restaurants and retail shops have been built and opened, and construction has begun on a second hotel.

Now comes the news that construction soon will begin on a second medical office building — two stories and 50,000 square feet — on the very spot where State Farm once stood. The building will raise total square footage in CityPlace to 290,000 square feet, approaching the 400,000 the city envisioned and likely to be exceeded in a few years.

Creating jobs is a priority for leaders in Washington County's largest city, where a majority of residents commute elsewhere to work. The departure of State Farm put Woodbury's "Places to Work" strategy to a test.

"The city is very pleased with the momentum that's been built in CityPlace," said City Planner Eric Searles. "Creating a high-quality 'Places to Work' environment is the main goal of the CityPlace development. The addition of the new multitenant medical office building will bring us another step closer to that goal."

All but two of the businesses building at CityPlace are new to Woodbury's economy, Searles said.

The latest market value of Woodbury's commercial property is $999.8 million — producing about $35.7 million in tax revenue — compared with $645.3 million before the Great Recession.

The State Farm headquarters once was Washington County's No. 4 taxpayer and Woodbury's largest employer, providing 1,500 jobs inside a cavernous 450,000-square-foot structure that overlooked Interstate 94 at Radio Drive. When State Farm consolidated its workforce in Nebraska in 2005, the Woodbury property had a market value of $39.8 million and paid $1.29 million in taxes, according to county tax records.

The company's departure left the sprawling campus empty for about 10 years. City officials tried to interest someone in converting the abandoned building into offices, but got no takers. They finally concluded that the vast empty hulk would never appeal to smaller companies shopping for modern office space.

Then came Elion Partners, a Florida company, with a vision of new retail stores, medical clinics and hotels that would link Woodbury Lakes on the east with the Tamarack shopping center on the west. The new medical office building, announced recently, is a joint venture between Elion Partners and the Davis Group, a corporate real estate services firm in Minneapolis.

Mayor Mary Giuliani Stephens said the growth of CityPlace "will solidify Woodbury's reputation as a health care destination and an economic hub of the Twin Cities east metro."