Developers are usually very competitive, engaging in a never-ending jockeying for locations seen as having the best potential for returns on investment. But an exception is happening in Minneapolis' emerging Prospect Park North area, where three local builders are presenting a united front as part of a larger goal for the neighborhood.
Representatives of Prospect Park Properties, Wall Cos. and Oppidan Investment Co., each of which have development projects in the area, appeared together at a recent event of Minnesota Commercial Real Estate Women.
They spoke about their common work turning the Prospect Park neighborhood into a national model of "integrated development."
Integrated, of course, means working together, which is why the transformation of the industrial area around the Prospect Park Green Line light rail station is unusual in the history of community development in Minneapolis.
The developers praised an overarching vision, first laid out in 2008, for redeveloping the area into a mixed-use urban village featuring high-density housing and green infrastructure. The plan emerged from the Prospect Park neighborhood association and was later spun off into a new organization called Prospect Park 2020. That group has since been joined by a public-private coalition called the Prospect North Partnership.
The latter group, established in 2014 through the efforts of the Urban Land Institute, counts among its public members the University of Minnesota's real estate arm, the city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County. Perhaps its most active private-sector member is Prospect Park Properties, a firm led by neighborhood booster and second-generation real estate professional Jeff Barnhart.
Barnhart, a 2008 U graduate, told the group his story of rather reluctantly taking over his father's small-scale real estate business, which was centered on several commercial buildings at the corner of University and 29th avenues. With the coming of the Green Line three years ago, he found himself becoming a key player in the neighborhood's transformation.
"One of our buildings was taken through eminent domain to build the station and another burned down. So I've had to learn a lot about real estate over the last four or five years," Barnhart said. One of the lessons, he added, was the value of working together with community partners.
