The challenge of Bassett Creek: Can it be redeveloped?

The soils are poor. The site's "in a hole." There's an auto impound lot there that nobody else wants to take custody of. Yes, the risks, costs and challenges of redeveloping the strategically located Bassett Creek Valley west of downtown Minneapolis into a place that could yield up to 3.2 million square feet of office space and 1,450 housing units are indeed daunting.

But the rewards could also be great. One of the city's goals has long been to relocate its impound lot from its current location between Interstate 394 and Glenwood Avenue -- as well as to redevelop the unsightly adjacent Linden Yards public works area -- mainly because they're so highly visible and command fantastic views of downtown as motorists enter from the western suburbs.

Also, with the construction of a new Minnesota Twins ballpark going on just a half-mile away, and with bike trails and potential light- and commuter-rail routes running through the site, the potential for commercial development synergies seem rife at first blush.

However, this fall city officials were finding out just how costly an undertaking the development of Bassett Creek Valley might be. After issuing a request for proposals earlier in the year, the Minneapolis Community Planning and Economic Development Department (CPED) got back only one response that it said sufficiently addressed all of its concerns: a $222 million plan from Ryan Companies that would require $68 million in public subsidies, including $24.5 million in its first phase alone.

Massive platform is plan's centerpiece

It's a bold plan, different from anything proposed in Minnesota before, primarily because of how it would address the twin problems of poor soils and the low-lying nature of the Linden Yards, which the city now uses for its concrete crushing operations. Ryan is proposing to build a massive three-level platform, or plinth, that would extend for hundreds of yards along the I-394 frontage and support a "unified urban district" built on top of it, including high-rise office buildings and housing towers.

Under the platform would be parking ramps with room carved out for a future light rail transit tunnel, storage space for commuter rail cars and a possible new home for the impound lot. Along the northern edge of the platform would be the existing Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks, which Hennepin County foresees as possibly expanding into a railyard for the new Northstar Commuter Rail line.

Ryan's proposal envisions new workforce and affordable housing occupying a section of what is now the impound lot. The rest of the lot would become part of a newly created park called Bassett Creek Commons.

Also, the planned future extension of Van White Boulevard would be changed so it would empty into a traffic roundabout amidst the new buildings. The roundabout could also include an entrance to the high-occupancy vehicle lane of westbound I-394.

The plinth would help solve the puzzle of how to fit a myriad of long-term, still-iffy transit plans into a short-term desire to redevelop Bassett Creek, says Rick Collins, Ryan's vice president of development.

"It would a complicated project that, I believe, would be unprecedented in the Twin Cities," he says. "The plinth is thought to accomplish several things. The site has very poor soils, so any development is going to need to be constructed over structural pilings to provide load-bearing capability, so if we're going to go down as much as 200 feet for pilings, it's a question of how to we spend the money most efficiently."

Also, Collins says, the plinth would allow the buildings to rise above the hole next to the freeway and command stellar views of downtown and, at the higher floors, see all the way west to Lake Minnetonka. He adds that Ryan officials recently toured Atlanta's 138-acre Atlantic Station project - being built on a polluted former steel mill site -- to get an idea of how plinths can be used for complicated transit-oriented redevelopments adjacent to freeways.

But the plinth would be very costly: Ryan's preliminary estimate indicates that of the project's $222 million total cost, $150 million of it would be for the massive platform.

City officials wary of cost

The first phase of the project, envisioned for between 2009 and 2013, would include 445 units of market-rate rental apartments, condominiums and senior housing -- as well as 588,000 square feet of offices -- to be built on the platform along the freeway, and some 203 units of affordable housing on the impound lot site. Include pollution clean-up and other pre-construction costs, this initial effort would total $95 million and require $24.5 million in subsidies. In all, Ryan foresees four phases stretching out until 2022.

Ryan Cos. and CPED were still in the due diligence phase in mid-November, according CPED Senior Project Manager Beth Grosen, who says the proposal probably won't come before the City Council until February.

"Ryan was the only proposer to address everything in the RFP, they were the only ones who were completely responsive," she says. "We've addressed with them some of the critical issues that need to be looked at before a contract is signed. The redevelopment will be costly and complicated."

She notes the platform idea is "very expensive," but nonetheless solves the dilemma of gaining access to what she calls the "most desirable" part of the Linden Yards site next to the freeway.

Ryan's Collins says the company will work diligently with city officials to bring down the preliminary costs estimates in a permanent design package if and when the City Council agrees it's a concept worth pursuing. Not the least of the Council's worries would be to relocate the impound lot, something it has been unsuccessfully trying to do for several years.

Relocating the impound lot

"As far as the impound lot, we are exploring a variety of options," Grosen says, adding that CPED and the city's Public Works Department are still looking at several unnamed sites both inside and outside of the city. In fact, the city is taking the opportunity to study new ways make its vehicle impounding operations more efficient, says Greg Goeke, Minneapolis' director of property services.

"We're doing a 'best practices' study of other cities with northern climates because there may be different ways to manage a new impound lot that would use less land," he says. "As an example, our current lot has back-to-back parking, in a different scenario we may redesign that to be more efficient and to be able to use better screening."

And, Goeke says, there may be one than one location for a new lot, where cars involved in crimes would be taken to a different place than the "general towing" of parking meter and snow emergency scofflaws.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis City Council Member Lisa Goodman, who has worked with Bryn Mawr neighborhood residents for years to craft a master plan for the Bassett Creek Valley, is skeptical Ryan's proposal will fly. Doug Kress, a policy aide for Goodman, says its "do-ability" is debatable.

"We did take a look at it, it might not be do-able," he says. "The issues that we think it will come down to have to do with room available on the site, and whether it will it fit within the I-394 planning structure. For instance, how does it match up with our goals for Van White Boulevard? How will all the moving pieces down there be compatible with each other?

"That's one set of questions. And of course, there's the financing of it, that's another big question."

Earlier this year, CPED officials said that tax increment financing would be "one option" in raising a public subsidy for Bassett Creek. Another would be to seek "special legislation" that would "broaden the rules" to better accommodate the phased redevelopment.