The Ford Motor Co.’s Highland Park campus has been demolished so thoroughly and neatly, it could easily be mistaken for a massive truck parking lot. City leaders are hoping to redevelop it into much, much more.
Where its Twin Cities assembly plant once stood, Ford has finished tearing down about 2 million square feet of structures, leaving behind little more than concrete slabs lining 122 acres of vacant land above the Mississippi River bluffs.
That work, which unfolded over the past year, was the relatively easy part. On top of soil testing the next 12 months, five city-led efforts will help ready the massive riverfront property to become a “21st-century community,” according to St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman. He hopes to turn the site into a national model for an energy-efficient, pedestrian-friendly development.
“For St. Paul, and for this region, it’s unprecedented,” Coleman said. “On this scale and for this region, there’s nothing to compare.”
The city’s efforts will include zoning research, a jobs and employment work group, an energy and sustainability study, transportation planning and a new monthly newsletter and public outreach campaign.
The St. Paul Planning and Economic Development Department’s outline for new zoning on the site will likely be ready by mid-October, Coleman said. Ford could begin marketing the site by mid- to late 2015, when it will issue a national request for proposals seeking a master developer.
The mayor on Tuesday joined St. Paul City Council member Chris Tolbert and Mike Hogan, property site manager for Ford Land, Ford’s real estate division, to outline each of those activities. Coleman repeatedly called the opportunity to redevelop the campus into an environmentally sustainable, “mixed-use” community unique for the metro, if not the nation.
City officials are envisioning homes, employment and public recreation situated near public transit, all within equal driving time of downtown St. Paul and downtown Minneapolis. And then there’s the nearby “international airport you can’t hear,” Tolbert added.
Tolbert, who grew up playing Little League on the ballfields that still constitute the southern end of the Ford property, said those playing fields will be preserved, although Ford has said they could be moved elsewhere within the property.
Tolbert envisions “life-cycle housing” for young and old, as well as increased property tax revenue through new private-sector development. Ramsey County is embarking on a study of transit options along the Riverview Corridor from downtown St. Paul to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and the findings also could play into the future of the Ford site.
The overall process, including a still undetermined amount of environmental cleanup, will take years to unfold.
The various visions for the property face a number of challenges, including the fact that the city does not own and does not plan to purchase the Ford site. That puts Ford more or less in the driver’s seat.
Some critics worry that without control over the site, the city will end up with the same kind of car-friendly development common in the suburbs — large “big-box” retailers surrounded by residential cul-de-sacs. They’d like to see the city buy the Ford site, construct a street grid with sewer and water infrastructure, and then sell it to a developer.
“By building standard-sized city blocks through most of the site, you would have a pretty safe bet for properly scaled urban development to follow,” said Matt Brillhart, who writes for urban planning blogs. “Without small city blocks, I think the big worry is that we’ll wind up with suburban big-box style development.”
As workers remove concrete slabs this summer, soil testing will help determine the amount of environmental remediation necessary to bring the site up to industrial standards set by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Ford has not promised to bring the land up to residential standards, but testing will determine how much more remediation would be necessary to make areas of the campus livable.
“We’ve got to find out what is beneath the slabs,” Hogan said.
He said the city and the company would prefer to see one developer purchase the site, but Ford has not ruled out splitting the land between multiple developers. Ford officials declined to estimate the value of the property.
“It’s a supply and demand,” said Steve Bill, a project manager with Ford Land. “The market’s going to talk back. … We’re open to offers.”
Over the next year, demolition contractor Carl Bolander and Sons will crack and remove the concrete slabs that served as the foundations of Ford’s factory buildings. The crushed concrete will be reused on site as landfill for pits and trenches.
Ford began production on the Highland Park campus on May 4, 1925, and shuttered the facility in December 2011. Buildings were cleared out and cleaned up before structural demolition began in June 2013. Much of the demolition material was carted off-site to be recycled, Hogan said.
But not all of that history has vanished. Below the river bluffs, 22 acres of Ford land remain home to an old steam plant and its iconic smokestack, a wastewater treatment facility and a hydro-electric plant. With the exception of the hydro-plant, which is owned by Brookfield Energy, those facilities will be cleaned, sold and repurposed, Hogan said.
Meanwhile, above the bluffs, thirteen large storage containers house the stone limestone façade of what had been the company’s northwest corner showroom. The building once showed off finished Model T’s, and history buffs had rallied to save it.
They won a partial victory. Its red clay roof tiles and large lanterns that once adorned fluted columns will remain in storage until a master developer figures out what to do with them.
“The vision is that Ford will offer that up to the developer for a future use on the new site,” Hogan said.
Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.
ON THE WEB
For details on the Ford plant site’s development, go online to stpaul.gov/21stCenturyCommunity.
