Cottage Grove Walmart project heads for final approval
August 28, 2012 at 3:28 am in South Washington County Bulletin
Cottage Grove planning commissioners on Monday recommended City Council approval of plans to build a Walmart Supercenter on the site of the Cottage View Drive-In movie theater. Continue Reading
Was there ever a question that this would be shoved down people’s throats?
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I applaud the effort to bring in business development of all kinds to our City. Keep up the good work!!
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Ok-so you own some prime real estate. You have an antiquated drive in and you either can’t afford or don’t want to upgrade to digital projection. You want to get out of the business and retire. So you put your property up for sale and someone wants to buy it. Regardless of whether it’s a Walmart or a Shopko, Costco, Super Target, doesn’t matter. They want to buy your land. So if any of us owned this property and was selling it, what would you do? I know that if I owned it I’d be a little upset if someone told me I couldn’t sell it to Walmart.
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also-what needs to change is what the city and county charge you per acre to divide up large tracts of land. It only allows the big boys to play. The little guy can’t compete. Check it out. Then maybe someone else with a different idea might have been able to buy the Cottage View property.
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First, who said this was shoved down anyone’s throat and who shoved it? The owner of the land has wanted to sell for years. He had a buyer who approached, with cash in hand, and chose to sell.
Buzz, it was the property owner who didn’t want to sell it in divided sections. A small shop owner wouldn’t be able to afford the buyer’s price and they would have a hard time getting getting anything else done because of utilities, etc. It has to be a larger developer that buys this type of property, who then can work with the potential business owners insert them into the plannned development. It is because CG used to do things piecemeal that we lost a lot of business opportunities by putting housing where we should have had commercial. This is a planned development and hopefully, the developer who buys the rest of the drive-in site, allow for boutique or smaller shops around the bigger box stores that could go in.
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Chris, I understand regarding the Cottage View site. I’m talking about in general to divide a large parcel. I know a gal that is basically forced to sell the whole farm rather than sell a portion. The cost was astronomical.
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My question who is paying for all the street and other up grades? I would hope the store owners
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WalMart will be paying for the street changes required for this project, including turning the through-streets behind the building into cul-de-sacs.
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Buzz – all she would need to do is take an application to the planning commission along with the developer – or whoever – to subdivide the land and have part of it rezoned. Now, there are areas in the city, in particular along the river, where it isn’t as easy to do that, but that is because of the state – not the city or county. Now in my third term on the planning commission, I can honestly say we’ve had a number of these applications come through in the past. If the use is consistent with the master plan, generally it is accepted. The only big issue that could come about is if there aren’t city services extended to the property. In that case, she should put that on the developer as part of the purchase agreement for the land and have it included in the application to subdivide.
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Thanks Chris, I’ll pass the info on.
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I support the planned Walmart. I reviewed the application before the Planning Commission online. My only concern is that architecturally the City should insure that the final design is more architectually in line with the North gateway area or better. The Walmart in Invergrove Heights should be an example of how to do it right. This project will be the benchmark for other development on this site so if we do it right with Walmart and hold them to a high standard than it will be easier to maintain that with the rest of the development. The industrial look of a DIY shop like Menards may be fine but I hope we expect more of this site. As an aside I hope the interior is more cheery than Woodbury’s Walmart. That place is so depressing I go to Hastings site any chance I can. (Hope you are listening Walmart)
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I can’t figure out why people in Minnesota even shop at Walmart when we have a discount retailer, Target, that maintains its corporate headquarters locally. For all the emphasis on buying locally in Cottage Grove lately, that extends to our state level too. Why send our money to Arkansas when we can keep it in Minnesota? Pricing at Target is equal to, or less than, that of Walmart, unless you start cherry-picking specific items. But even if pricing were slightly higher, I would gladly support Target first simply because no other retailer invests more money back into the Twin Cities or employs as many people in our metro area. To some extent, the same is true with Cub (Supervalu).
Now, that doesn’t mean I think that we can stop Walmart from coming into CG. I hope the store spurs additional development around it. I just won’t shop there unless they have an item I need that I can’t find at Target/Cub.
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it’s nice to see the comments related to this article are for the most part calm and without attacking specific people or a general sense of “making it up as you go along”.
Often times the crazies get a hold of these areas and make outlandish comments that takes away from the overall purpose of what comments should be about.
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