5. EDSR 09-11-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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"There were a number of different developers that tried to put this site together, maybe not as ambitious as ours, but smaller pieces," Gump says. "It's interesting to talk about what motivates sellers -- it's not always the case that if you just give them the most money they will sell. "One parcel had been in the family for 100 years. There was one owner before them, and that deed was from the U.S. government and was signed by Abraham Lincoln." Gump says the owner decided to sell when he read about a Sierra Club award given to the Beard Group for its Excelsior Tech Center project in Hopkins. "Those kinds of things really do make a difference if everyone's offering pretty much the same kind of money," he says. Hassan Township has largely avoided the large-scale housing and commercial development that is going on to its north in Rogers and its south in Maple Grove, in part because, as Hennepin County's only remaining township, it never had the resources to deal with major development. Rogers has its own municipal sewer system, for instance, while Maple Grove (which has imposed a housing moratorium) is hooked up to the Metropolitan Council's interceptor system. That resulted in a "doughnut hole" in Hassan with gung-ho development going on all around it. "Hassan Township is not in the business of providing urban services," says Brad Scheib, a consultant for the Hoisington Koegler Group, who serves as the township's planner. "In 2003 they executed an 'orderly annexation' agreement with the city of Rogers, which will be completed by 2030. So by then they'll be absorbed by Rogers, but at the same time they don't want to shut the door and say no to growth." Historically, he says, the projects in Hassan have been rural subdivisions and some small industrial, but that will change with Stone's Throw. James DePietro, a senior vice president for CB Richard Ellis who is handling the project's leasing and marketing, says that going by its sheer size and location, it's the most interesting planned community concept in the state. "It's just a phenomenal opportunity, what with all of the growth around it and to the north," he says. "It's an unintended consequence of the Met Council's rules on sewer extension. People had to leapfrog Hassan and go over it. For instance, Duke Realty has gone beyond it to build in Otsego, and now here we are back in Hassan - so it's essentially an infill project." But what's ultimately built there is dependent on the promise of a pair of major infrastructure improvements. The first is the extension of a sewer line from the Met Council's Elm Creek Interceptor to serve Hassan and parts of Dayton. Work on that sewer line began this year and is expected to finish in 2008. Then there's the proposed freeway interchange at I-94 and Brockton Lane. The prospects of that happening in the short term, however, are dicey. The proposal has yet to be funded by the state or federal governments, although U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad says he has put the interchange on his priority list for federal funding. Hassan Town Administrator Danny Nadeau says a co-operative effort by his town, Rogers, Dayton, Maple Grove and others is under way to drum up support for the project.