Agenda - Council Work Session - 06/27/2006 - Ramsey Town Center

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2. The Project Area Over the past five years, the City of Ramsey and Ramsey Town Center, LLC (master developer for the Ramsey Town Center area) have been actively developing Rarnsey Town Center. Ramsey Town Center is a 370-acre, mixed-use development located on Trunk Highway I0 between Ramsey Boulevard and Armstrong Boulevard in the Ramsey, Minnesota. The Ramsey Town Center will have over 2,800 housing units; 775,000 square feet of commercial, retail, office, and civic uses; a potential mmsit station for Northstar Commuter Rail; and 25 acres of parks. The Ramsey Town Center design is based on New Urbanism and Transit-Oriented Design principles that emphasize pedestrian orientation, a mix of land uses, and connections to existing trails in Ramsey. The Ramsey Town Center is a practical solution that will meet the community's needs for shopping, employment, and residential options and is especially important as the project will create a central and identifiable "downtown" which the City does not have. The Ramsey Town Center was originally envisioned in the Comprehensive Plan process begun in 1998, and has an extensive history of citizen involvement and partuersh/p. The adopted 2001 Comprehensive Plan, as amended in February 2002, presented a m/xed-use town center on the project site. In October 2001, more than fii~ residents participated in a Town Center workshop facilitated by Calthorpe and Associates. The Metropolitan Coune/1 (the local Metropolitan Planning Organization) provided funding for this workshop and the overall visioning process, The workshop produced eight unique plans that all included a commuter train station component. In November 2001, residents reviewed two alternative plans and provided comments to the City. In that same month, 61% of the electorate voted to support a mixed-use town center project after residents gathered thousands of signatures in support of a town center development. A seven-member Town Center Task Force was created to provide on- going c/tizen input into the remainder of the design, review, and approval process. Mos~ recently, a Town Center Review Board was established to add an additional level of expertise to the review and approval process in order ensure that individual buildings and projects meet the Ramsey Town Center Development Guidelines and the City's overall vision for the Town Center. The Ramsey Town Center project is expected to have a market valuation of $1.1 billion. At build-out, the project is expected to annually generate an add'afioual $4 million in tax capacity to the City. In the last two years, the following projects have begun the first phase of development in the Ramsey Town Center project: · The P.A.C.T. Charter School finished construction and opened its doors in September to 560 K-12 students. The two-story building is 73,000 square feet. · N.A.U. Insurance opened 40,000 square feet of corporate offices in the Spring of 2005. Ramsey Town Center Cinema - Request for Proposals June 9, 2006 2 of 12