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Project Status Memo 4 Finance and Commerce Alatus talks tall buildings, high density at TCAAP By: Janice Bitters August 16, 2016 12:15 pm 0 An early look at master developer Alatus’ draft plan for the state’s largest superfund site left some Arden Hills officials shifting in their seats Monday over the increased density and taller buildings than planners had envisioned. “I feel like you’re trying to build a mini-Minneapolis here in my suburb,” Arden Hills City Council Member Brenda Holden said at a meeting. “I worry about this for a suburb.” The former Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant site has a master plan, created by a Joint Development Authority between the city and Ramsey County, which calls for buildings reaching up to 65 feet, or about six stories, and a maximum of 1,431 units throughout the 427-acre site. But if Minneapolis-based Alatus has its way, the site’s early phases would include a town center anchored by a grocery store eventually surrounded by up to 1,500 high-end residential units, a hotel, a theater and 16,000-square-feet of restaurant space in mixed-use buildings. Later phases would add up to 466 single-family homes and townhouses. Condominium buildings reaching as high as 12 stories would be built near the entertainment and retail, helping to create an active town center to draw homeowners in the later stages, Alatus Principal Bob Lux said at the meeting. Lux noted he wants to build condos at the site despite state laws that have made many developers shy away from them in recent years. Existing statutes allow condo owners to sue developers and others involved in the projects for defects up to a decade after the units are built. “If you had asked me two years ago if I’d ever stand in front of a body in Arden Hills and say that we would consider doing condominiums there, I would have said absolutely not,” Lux said. “I am convinced, from the research that we are doing, that there is a need for condominiums.” But in order to limit liability to the developer and its team of more than 30 planners on the project, Lux said the condominiums need to be built with concrete, which is more expensive than other building materials and not as cost-effective in shorter buildings. “You eliminate 90 percent of those [liability] problems if you start with concrete,” Lux said. If city and Ramsey County planners can’t envision at least 10-story condominium buildings at the site, condos won’t likely make it into the final draft of Alatus’ plan, Lux added. One of the primary goals of the redevelopment, planners and the developer agree, is to increase the tax value of the site, also known as Rice Creek Commons. The land has been vacant and undergoing a $22.5 million soil cleanup and remediation for the past three years.