Brooklyn Park mayor lashes back at neighboring suburbs in density dispute

The Brooklyn Park mayor’s early vision for a vacant swath of land at the city’s northwest corner includes biotech businesses, retail and denser housing for potentially thousands of new employees.

But his neighbors, the mayors of Champlin and Maple Grove, are fighting against the possibility of apartments near their city borders. Their single-family neighborhoods surround the northern and western edges of Brooklyn Park’s 700-acre site, north of Hwy. 610 and on either side of Hwy. 169.

“There are a lot of implications when you jam that many families into a small area of your city,” Champlin Mayor Ryan Sabas said, explaining he worries about added traffic and public safety costs falling “on the backs” of his city and Maple Grove.

The mayors recently sent Brooklyn Park a letter asking the city to stay consistent with nearby development patterns, which included a map showing what they would support for the site.

Brooklyn Park Mayor Hollies Winston said the cities' approach was “alarming.”

“They have developed their neighborhoods in a certain way and are suggesting we develop in a similar manner. The problem is, I think they’re interested in regional redlining,” Winston said, referencing the racist real-estate practices that perpetuated segregation.

Winston argued his city wasn’t granted such a say in how Maple Grove or Champlin were built out.

“Now people feel like they can make a better decision than leadership that’s in our city, even though that hand has never been extended in the past,” he said.

Sabas argued that was a “far reach.” He said the cities only want a “seat at the table.”

“They need to actually think regionally and worry about how developments will affect neighboring communities,” he said.

Winston said his city wants to be a good neighbor and will take outside input, but his top priority is hearing what Brooklyn Park residents want.

“The way we’re looking at this as a city is first, second and third, we’re going to listen to Brooklyn Park residents,” Winston said. “Fourth, fifth and sixth, we’re going to listen to Brooklyn Park residents. And we’re going to close it out listening to Brooklyn Park residents.”

Brooklyn Park, a growing city of 86,000 residents, is much more diverse and has a larger percentage of lower-income residents than its neighbors Maple Grove and Champlin.

Winston points to similarly sized cities, such as Bloomington, that rake in far more sales and commercial property taxes, saying Brooklyn Park should close that gap. He hopes to ease the burden on homeowners in a suburb that has more affordable-housing units than many others.

“When we have residents who pay disproportionately high property taxes because we don’t have our commercial sector built out, we have to tend to that first. Not to the desires of Maple Grove or Champlin,” he said.

Seeing more growth move toward its northern edge, Brooklyn Park has been studying how to develop the empty northwestern property, which is where the proposed Blue Line light-rail extension would eventually connect the suburb with downtown Minneapolis.

City leaders are planning a biotech district, with medical and health technology companies, to take up a large chunk of the project, with a mix of housing and commercial space likely filling in the rest.

Plans are far from approved, as the city works on gathering resident input. Winston has said more dense, market-rate and workforce housing will be critical to the project, to accommodate the thousands of jobs the biotech district could bring. He believes retail, restaurants and entertainment would follow.

He hopes a successful project would generate business and bring in revenue for the broader northwest metro.

The City Council is expected to consider early plans for the northwest area in mid-March.

Word of the planning process raised some concerns for leaders in Champlin, population 23,000, and Maple Grove, population 71,000.

Sabas, the Champlin mayor, worries high-density housing near his city could “decrease the values of our single-family neighborhoods. I believe it would create a lot of traffic implications in this area that’s not designed to handle the amount of traffic. Perhaps it’s increased crime that would be on the weight of neighboring cities.”

The vacant land in Brooklyn Park is a significant opportunity to steer growth in the northwest metro. To the north, Champlin has single-family homes and some industrial buildings. On the western edge, Maple Grove has single-family neighborhoods.

Maple Grove Mayor Mark Steffenson said he supports the idea of a biotech district, with his city already hosting many medtech companies.

But his concern “is that you have a cohesiveness between the three cities, with similar development patterns in the areas along our borders so we get a well-planned, sustainable development.”

Steffenson said he would support single-family housing near his border, then a gradual approach to building up to higher density farther away. The mayors believe a business district, similar to properties north of 109th Avenue in Champlin, and mixed-use projects could fill out the rest.

Winston said Brooklyn Park is a leader in the region with a history of solving its own problems. He worries about others “limiting our economic options.

“We’re going to start designing nice things for ourselves, so we can have a wonderful, sustainable city down the road.”

Winston encouraged the other mayors to give him a call.

“If they want to have a discussion about it, if they have economic resources for us and want to help our residents push down property taxes and be sustainable as a city, I’d love to hear it,” Winston said.