The board overseeing the development of the 427-acre Rice Creek Commons project in Arden Hills said it plans to part with its developer after months of sluggish talks left numerous pieces of the ambitious project yet to be negotiated.
The formal breakup won’t happen until June 30, the deadline that was set two years ago for the developer, St. Louis Park-based Alatus, to hammer out a development agreement for the complex housing and commercial project.
Alatus founder and principal Bob Lux came to Wednesday’s meeting to ask for a 60-day extension, but the five-member board opted instead to let the agreement expire.
“I think the clock has run out,” said Kurt Weber, an Arden Hills City Council member who also serves on the Rice Creek Commons Joint Development Authority. That five-member panel includes two Arden Hills City Council members, two Ramsey County commissioners, and one appointed Arden Hills resident.
The board plans to hold a workshop during their July 7 meeting to discuss their next steps.
After the meeting, Alatus’s attorney sent the joint development authority board (JDA) a letter threatening a lawsuit over the breakup, saying the board was acting in bad faith and that it should grant Alatus a 75-day extension. Lux added in a statement Friday morning that Alatus has spent the past nine years on the project, devoting “1,000’s of hours and millions of dollars” into it.
“As Council Member Monson acknowledge during Wednesday evenings meeting, the proposal we have in front of the JDA’s Advisory Committee is a good proposal,” Lux wrote. “If the JDA would work with us to perfect that proposal, instruct their staff and consultants to work collaboratively with us to solve the remaining issues, the mass grading of this site could begin very soon.”
The vision for development at Rice Creek Commons, the site in Arden Hills that was once home to the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant, is ambitious: carbon-neutral, fully electric and highly efficient. It calls for geothermal heating, houses that run entirely on electricity, and extensive bike paths and parks winding around and through the residential and commercial areas envisioned there.