We’ve settled into our new home in downtown Apple Valley
Shortly after 4 p.m. last Thursday, I was greeting guests at a chamber of commerce party we threw in the atrium of the building we had moved the newspaper into a couple weeks earlier. Bruce Nordquist, director of community development and planning for the city of Apple Valley, congratulated me on our decision to move from Burnsville to the Shops on Galaxie building.
“You’re a visionary,” Nordquist said with his characteristic overstatement and enthusiasm. “You’ll love it here. There are 57 restaurants within a half mile of this building. I counted them.”
By the time the party began last Thursday, I was feeling more like a punching bag than a visionary. Over the last two months, we have merged Thisweek Newspapers with the Sun Current papers to create Sun Thisweek while moving our entire operation from our longtime home in Burnsville to the Central Village area of Apple Valley. At the same time, we’ve had to make some major changes in our distribution system and our technology to accommodate the acquisition of the Sun papers by ECM Publishers, our parent company.
But Nordquist’s comment about the choice of this Apple Valley location for our headquarters got me to thinking about an interview I did several years ago with Bruce’s boss, Mayor Mary Hamann-Roland. At the time, I was writing for the Star Tribune and doing a story about her plans for a new walkable downtown where people can work, live and play without having to get into their cars.
In her conference room, the mayor showed me a map with lines drawn where office buildings, restaurants, a park and multi-family housing would be built on what had been a pumpkin patch. Hamann-Roland was jumping on a trend known as “new urbanism” that was being embraced by other suburban communities, including Burnsville, where her friend, Mayor Elizabeth Kautz, had built her “new downtown,” known as Heart of the City.
For years, Apple Valley officials had referred to the commercial cluster adjacent to Cedar Avenue and County Road 42 as “downtown.” As anyone who has driven through that intersection knows, there’s nothing “walkable” or “pedestrian-friendly” about that busy place. So Apple Valley officials had embarked on turning a pumpkin patch along Galaxie Avenue, a couple blocks south of 42, into a place that feels more like a downtown.
Readers of this newspaper might recall we’ve done several stories on the fact that the Central Village has been slow to develop. The building in which I am writing this column has seen several tenants fail after opening their businesses with great hope. And as I look out my office window, I can see empty plots of land where apartments and townhouses were to have been built by now. The Great Recession got in the way of the big plans Hamann-Roland and Nordquist had for this place.
But now that the economy is improving, the prospects for Central Village are improving. Our building, which had dropped to about 40 percent occupancy, is more than 80 percent occupied. An apartment building planned to our west will connect by trail to the new Bus Rapid Transit line on Cedar. There’s talk of another development to our north that will wrap around the lovely Kelley Park where concerts are held in a bandstand on summer Fridays.
And my staff enjoys walking along the sidewalks of Central Village to some of those restaurants or grabbing a bite at the Valley Diner, which, along with the Kami Japanese steak house, is in the Shops of Galaxie building.
Readers of this space know I’m a downtown guy. There’s something magical about the vitality of working in a place that offers the variety that downtowns do – retail, restaurants, workplaces and gathering spots such as Kelley Park. As our lease was headed for expiration in Burnsville, I began to look at space in downtowns, including Burnsville’s Heart of the City and downtown Lakeville, one of my favorite places to hang out. We got the best deal in Apple Valley, and we’re happy to be here.
Last Thursday, about 150 businesspeople enjoyed food from Kami and Valley Diner and music from a talented performer known as Rockin’ Woody. Many of the folks who came to our party said they had never been to the old pumpkin patch that is becoming a downtown.
If you’re in the neighborhood, stop by. I can recommend the food at Kami, Valley Diner and a few of the other restaurants I’ve tried in our new neighborhood. It will take me a while to try all 57 of them. It’s a difficult job, as they say, but someone has to do it.
Larry Werner is editor and general manager of Thisweek Newspapers and the Dakota County Tribune.
