Arden Hills is thinking about imposing a cap on how much of its land base can be consumed by its two expansion-minded private colleges.
The city has already imposed a one-year ban on any moves taken by higher education institutions after one of the colleges showed interest in a major facility that once housed Smiths Medical.
Now city officials are studying what they can legally do to corral the ambitions of Bethel University and the University of Northwestern-St. Paul, both four-year evangelical Christian schools with robust enrollment.
Most of the concern involves evidence that educational institutions do not provide the economic punch of a corporate firm like Smiths Medical when it comes to high-paying jobs per square foot. An underlying worry is a loss of tax base to tax-exempt religious institutions.
Northwestern said last fall that it wished to buy the building left behind when Smiths suddenly decided to move its corporate headquarters west to Hennepin County.
That announcement followed Bethel's purchase of a 225,000-square-foot building once occupied by Countrywide Financial for what is now its Anderson Center, 1½ miles from its main campus.
Both Bethel and Northwestern "want to double their student population in five years," City Planner Eric Zweber told planning commission members last week, as he presented the latest thinking of city staffers and City Council members on how to proceed.
One proposal, which drew a bit of pushback: capping higher education uses at 25 percent of one key zoning category. Zweber conceded that Bethel's Anderson Center already consumes 23 percent of it, leaving little room for expansion.
