By David Minor
12 Feb 2017
A new apartment building to be built beginning this fall in the Prospect Park neighborhood will be part of a collaborative storm water management while also contributing to the creation of a new park in the area.
The Minneapolis City Planning Commission approved on Feb. 6 an application to build a new, six-story apartment building near the Prospect Park light-rail station. The Green on Fourth Apartments project is being built in unison with the Green Fourth Street initiative to redesign a short stretch of Fourth Street that will have trees and greenery and make the area more bicycle and pedestrian friendly.
Since the METRO Green Line was first being planned, Prospect Park Association and other neighborhood groups have been planning for the developments that are now occurring around the Prospect Park Station. Prospect Park 2020 is an organization that has been working with developers to ensure that the needs and wants of the community are taken into account, Prospect Park 2020 President John Kari said. “It’s a new way of doing things,” Kari said. “Rather than just waiting for developers to come and say, ‘this is what we’re going to build here, we want you to approve it,’ we are saying ‘these are the things we would like to have here.’” They then worked with the developers to make sure they met their economic needs as well as the community’s needs, Kari said.
The city has been pushing for higher density in the neighborhood, Kari said. However, residents, he said, like the mix of student housing, homeownership, and renting that Prospect Park has to offer. The new building will have a mix of 66 affordable and 177 market rate apartments and will be across the street from another new building that will contain what will be the only grocery store in the Prospect Park neighborhood. The Green on Fourth Apartments will keep with the mix of the neighborhood, Kari said, and is part of the larger plan for the area that includes senior housing along with more possible developments to the north of the University of Minnesota Transitway. Prospect Park 2020 has been advocating for a mix of housing, retail and public spaces in the area. “We wanted to create an urban village,” Kari said.
Residents said they wanted more open, public greenspace where community meetings and events could be held, Kari said. The property owner, Prospect Park Properties, came to an agreement with the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board to sell a portion of the land at a discount to be used as a park, the president of the company, Jeff Barnhart said. Specific plans for how the park will be developed have not been finalized, he added.
Between the new building and the park, a public green area has already been completed. It is not just a green space though. An underground water storage tank for the storm water management system is included. The Green on Fourth Apartments as well as the surrounding properties will channel their runoff toward the system, where it will be filtered through plants and soil before being stored in the 206,575 gallon tank for reuse.
