In the Eden Prairie, the Major Center Area (MCA) to those of us at City Hall is the area that surrounds the Eden Prairie Center. Generally, it is the area inside Prairie Center Drive.
At our Council meeting next week, City staff will ask the Council to appoint a 13 member task force to guide the preparation of a new MCA Land Use Planning Study. With the exception of two members of the task force from our Planning Commission, the task force is composed of people who live, work, manage, and own property in the MCA. The purpose of the study is to provide an overall legislative and regulatory guideline to the redevelopment of the MCA. The purpose of the task force is to make sure the plan is responsive to the hopes and dreams of those in the planning area.
This task force will be an important community group in 2005. We are going to spend a lot of time with them. We are going to be hearing a lot from them. The redevelopment opportunities in the MCA are very significant. The market sees them and is waiting to see what the City will do. Will the City enable certain choices and discourage other choices? Probably. But what will they be? That’s really what this task force and the MCA study is all about.
Like it or not, our MCA is the central commercial focus of our community. It is, for lack of a more precise term, our “downtown”. What will it look like in the future? We’ll be able to answer that question by the end of 2005.
