For more than 10 years, Julie Butcher has enjoyed her quiet, dead-end street surrounded by woods and wetlands.
The Chanhassen resident regularly takes her family on secluded nature walks on a private trail between Lake Lucy and Lake Ann — one of the few remaining undeveloped swaths in the growing southwest city.
Now she fears development will dramatically alter the environment and hurt neighbors' quality of life.
Lennar Corp., the Twin Cities' top homebuilder, plans to convert the vacant land commonly referred to as the "Prince Property" into a neighborhood with 200 market-rate and luxury houses.
"We chose Chanhassen because of how it felt — a quaint small town," said Butcher, whose property abuts the proposed development site. "Now it's becoming a little bit like suburbia hell. It's losing its charm."
The late Prince Rogers Nelson owned the sprawling 188-acre site at 7141 Galpin Blvd., where he once lived in a yellow three-story house with Manuela Testolini, his wife at the time. The house has since been demolished, but a security gatehouse remains.
Five contiguous parcels have an estimated tax value of more than $20 million, according to Carver County property records.
Prince's estate put the land on the market last fall, more than 18 months after the musician's April 2016 death from an accidental drug overdose.