Brooklyn Park Leaders to Include Public on Boulevard Corridor Plan Next Year
Brooklyn Park city leaders hope to engage the public starting in the spring about corridor improvement plans for a large chunk of Brooklyn Boulevard. The plan includes the area immediately surrounding the proposed Blue Line light rail station on Broadway/County Road 81 near the intersection with Interstate 694 and extends along Brooklyn Boulevard to the city limits near Park Center Senior High School.
“We’ll be talking to property owners, making sure they’re included in the conversation,” said Senior Planner Cara Donovan with the City of Brooklyn Park. “We’ll be talking to different community organizations, public schools, Zanewood, making sure their voices are heard, and then we’ll do public engagement in February or March.”
The light rail extension brings with it the possibility of all kinds of development and investment in the city, said Donovan.
“We want to make sure we have an idea of how future roads will be set up, for how the existing property owners, because it’s mostly privately-owned areas, that those property owners have an understanding of what they can do with their property moving forward to kind of maximize benefits and do what the city hopes will be done to guide that area,” she said.
The city of Brooklyn Park owns several undeveloped parcels near the intersection of Zane Avenue and Brooklyn Boulevard.
The city wants to develop the corridor in three sections, with the light rail station to the west, a section nearer the intersection of Zane Avenue and the boulevard to the west, and a corridor in between along the busy five-lane road.
“We’ve got four different parcels on Brooklyn Boulevard that the EDA is looking to develop in the future,” said Donovan of the area near Zane Avenue. “We know a lot of the people who live in that area already do not have cars or use transit a lot, and we want to make sure that people who rely on those alternate forms of transportation options have a safe place to walk and to dine and to play and to live.”
