Plymouth Mayor’s Minutes: Mayor Wosje Shares Transportation Updates
Plymouth Mayor Jeff Wosje talked with Dave Kiser about the latest on road construction projects that are coming soon in this Plymouth Mayor’s Minutes
Chankada Trail Improvements
The city is requesting $20 million in state bonding funds to complete safety improvements and pavement upgrades to the corridor that used to be known as County Road 47.
Wosje says the project is broken into three phases, with the city completing the first phase.
“It’s a $30 million project we had a total of enough to pay for the first, but now we need more money to pay for the second and finish up the third phase,” explained Wosje. “So we’re asking state bonding money for $20 million to fill that gap.”
Highway 55 Bus Rapid Transit
Plymouth is supporting continued efforts to complete a Highway 55 Mobility Study to consider advancing Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) down Highway 55.
“We want it to become a BRT corridor, a transit corridor,” said Wosje. “I know when I was first elected 10 years ago I was looking at transit map and they’re transit corridors throughout the whole Twin Cities except Plymouth. So, this is an effort by the council along with Golden Valley and Minneapolis to get a transit corridor where we can have all day bus service coming along Hwy. 55.”
Prudential Site Special Legislation Request
Plymouth is also seeking special legislation to allow for the creation of a TIF District for the redevelopment of the Prudential site.
The 75-acre site at the corner of Interstate 494 and Bass Lake Road in Plymouth has been sold to Scannell Properties and Roers Companies.
“So they are going to redevelop that property and it’s going to require all six intersections to be redone and the county has already said they don’t have money to pay for the reconstruction of those six intersections,” said Wosje. “So what we want to do is get the legislature approve a special TIF district that will allow us to use the the increase value of the development to pay for those improvements instead of the taxpayers of Plymouth.”
Initial plans call for the current Prudential building to be demolished and the property to be redeveloped into a mixed-use property that will include retail, medical office, multifamily residential, and business park uses. Learn more here.
Rendering of apartments/courtesy Roers/Scannell and RSP Architects
Half-Cent Transportation Sales Tax
The city is also urging the Hennepin County Board to ease restrictions on the half-cent transportation sales tax collection to allow flexibility to fund county road and bridge projects.
“This is more of something we’ve been lobbying the Hennepin County commissioners with. There’s a half cent tax sales tax and that goes towards just light rail transit and we wanted to go and not just to transit priorities but also to transportation roads bridges that the county has to reconstruct that so just more more use than just transit dollars,” said Wosje.
You can see more details on Plymouth’s legislative priorities on the city’s website.
Mayor Wosje also welcomed new council members Julie Peterson, Julie Pointner and Clark Gregor to the Plymouth City Council.
