Southwest LRT Planners Eyeing SLP Sites for Maintenance Facility

St. Louis Park seems to be at the center of Southwest Light Rail Transit disputes. First it was the freight rail reroute. Now it’s the location of an operation and maintenance facility needed to service trains along the corridor.

The controversy was initially not one that St. Louis Park faced. The project’s draft environmental impact statement identified just six possible sites where the facility could be located—five sites in Eden Prairie and one in Minneapolis.

However, planners decided that the start of preliminary engineering was a good time to take a look at more sites. They’ve now identified 18 sites, including the following four St. Louis Park sites:

• Two sites by the proposed Louisiana Station near Louisiana and Oxford,
• A third by the proposed Beltline Station off Highway 7 west of Highway 100 and
• A fourth site shared between Hopkins and St. Louis Park near the 7900 block of Excelsior Boulevard.

(Click on the PDFs to the right to see a map and list of all 18 proposed sites.)

Communities along the line are not exactly welcoming the proposed facility. Although Hopkins officials have said they’d be willing to accept it on a site that’s currently a landfill, proposals at other sites along the line have prompted worries about the loss of tax base and redevelopment potential.

The Southwest LRT design team will next narrow the possibilities to five or six sites and seek input from project committees in late April and early May. Public open houses will take place in May in the cities where the sites are.