Current status:

On May 24, 2018, the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District Board of Managers voted to select Kraus-Anderson as the master developer for 325 Blake Road. The decision was made after a rigorous application process informed by input from the Southwest LRT Community Works Blake Road Corridor Subcommittee. The subcommittee included representatives from the cities of Hopkins, St. Louis Park, and Edina, Hennepin County, and the Blake Road Corridor Collaborative. A joint working group representing the city of Hopkins and MCWD reviewed the applications, interviewed the finalists, and recommended Kraus-Anderson for the project.

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About this project:

325 Blake Road, which is home to a large cold storage warehouse, is the centerpiece of the Minnehaha Creek Greenway restoration. We purchased the site in 2011 as a key piece of the Minnehaha Creek Greenway, which will provide 50 acres of a connected corridor of restored creek and habitat through St. Louis Park and Hopkins, providing more opportunities for the public to view and access Minnehaha Creek while improving water quality. The project site is next to the creek, Cottageville Park, and the proposed Greenline Extension light rail station.

Of the site’s 17 acres, we will keep four acres to treat polluted stormwater that flows into the creek from 260 acres of surrounding area and to restore more than 1,000 feet of creek frontage. The remaining 13 acres will be sold to transform the rest of the industrial site into a transit-oriented neighborhood.

About this project: 

Over the next ten years, the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District (MCWD or District) and its partners will engage in one of the Twin Cities metro's largest habitat restoration and water quality enhancement projects: the restoration of 2,488 acres of in-lake habitat across 14 connected deep and shallow lakes and the creation of corridors of restored wetland and uplands in the Six Mile-Halsted Bay Subwatershed (SMHB), one of the largest tributaries to Lake Minnetonka. 

The SMHB is one of the District's focal geographies. With our partners (listed below), we?ll be working to align priorities and investments across agencies to accomplish large-scale habitat, corridor, and water resource restoration objectives, including larger-scale wetland restorations, additional rough fish management, in-lake and watershed phosphorus reduction, or others.

Managing the subwatershed's large population of common carp is the first phase in our comprehensive restoration of the SMHB, which will restore 2,488 acres of shallow lake habitat, benefiting game and non-game fish species, improving wildlife habitat for waterfowl, and address water quality issues for the 14 lakes that are listed by the state as being impaired.