Southwest Light Rail: Who 'Gets' the Service Center?

Original article by James Warden.

Southwest Light Rail Transit planners have selected an Eden Prairie site on Technology Drive as one of two finalists for the operation and maintenance facility that will service trains along the corridor.

At Wednesday’s Metropolitan Council meeting, Jim Alexander, the project’s design and engineering director, unveiled the Eden Prairie maintenance facility at 15150 Technology Drive and the Hopkins site at Fifth Street South (K-Tel Drive) and 16th Avenue South as the two finalists for a facility that no community along the line really wants.

The proposed Eden Prairie location is at the southern end of Technology Drive on a site now occupied by a city maintenance facility. It is yet to be determined exactly where the light rail line will be going through Eden Prairie. Some officials want to move it closer to Eden Prairie Center.

“Our operations folks would say this is probably the preferred site because it’s midway—although they indicate that they could operate out of either (of the final two sites),” Alexander said about the site in Hopkins.

The maintenance facility is the site where light rail vehicles will be cleaned, stored and undergo light maintenance. It will have 180 operator and maintenance jobs. 

Alexander noted that all seven sites considered in this phase of evaluation would require the acquisition of private property and pose tax base impacts. At none of the sites did cities envision an operation and maintenance facility.

“There isn’t that open cornfield that’s just readily available that we can just take from the public, from some city or county,” he said. “All the cities, I think it’s fair to say, are concerned about the impact to their tax base.”

Alexander spelled out several strengths that caused the Eden Prairie site to rise to the top:

• Consistent with land use guiding and zoning.

• Acceptable to the city with conditions.

• Opportunity to include station and park-and-ride facilities on site.

The Hopkins facility would add $35 million to $40 million to the initial estimate—mostly because of relocation and acquisition costs, demolition and clearing and earthwork. Engineers would also have to overcome wetland impacts, flood-prone conditions and soft soils.

The Eden Prairie site would add $30 million to $35 million to the initial cost, mostly due to site demolition. 

Some of the downsides to the Eden Prairie location would be wetland impacts; noise and vibration impact concern to the Eaton property; the end of line location poses operational limitations; the site requires coordination with station and park-and-ride facilities. 

Planners will present the final recommended site to the business and community advisory committees on July 25 then to the Southwest LRT Corridor Management Committee on Aug. 7. It will go before the Met Council in August.