Housing Explored for Brooklyn Park City-owned Park-and-Ride Site

The Brooklyn Park City Council is expected to decide the fate of a city-owned former park-and-ride lot on Monday night. 

Once owned by Metro Transit, the park-and-ride at Noble Parkway and Highway 610 could be turned into a housing and commercial development site. 

The city council, acting as the Brooklyn Park Economic Development Authority, bought the parcel in 2018 for $1.2 million. 

“This site, right on 610 and Noble is a really awesome site for development,” said Brooklyn Park Community Development Director Kim Berggren. “We have had a ton of developer interest in the site.”

The Brooklyn Park City Council, acting as the Economic Development Authority, is considering a housing and commercial development at a former Park-and-Ride.

A group of developers are working on a proposal to redevelop the site with a 115-unit apartment building, a 44-unit townhome building and a standalone commercial building. 

However, the apartment building alone faces a roughly $6 million funding gap, according to city council agenda materials. 

Berggren said that while the city would like to see the parcel return to the tax rolls, it’s a difficult market for developers.

As a result, the council will decide on Monday if they want to continue considering the existing development proposal or go back to the drawing board.

“Development is really challenging right at this moment in time, between interest rates and some of the other conditions that make it hard to move projects forward financially,” Berggren said.  “And so tonight’s an opportunity to look at this vision against the financial projections for the project and consider how the EDA wants to proceed.”

Brooklyn Park