The redevelopment of Twin Lakes, a 300-acre site in the northwestern corner of the city, has seen a flurry of progress over the last five years after two decades of environmental remediation and re-imagination efforts.
While the redevelopment is not fully complete, Twin Lakes now hosts a plethora of new places to work, shop, dine, play, and live!
Twin Lakes once consisted of multiple trucking terminals in the northwestern corner of the city With the shuttering of those trucking terminals, the former industrial uses left behind contamination that threatened our natural resources and resulted in under-utilization of prime real estate conveniently located to both St. Paul and Minneapolis downtowns.
City leaders recognized the value and potential of this 300-acre area. City leaders also understood that as a fully developed community, building new homes and retaining and attracting new businesses often required public and private partnerships to realize redevelopment and environmental cleanup.
To that end, the city worked with developers, Ramsey County, and the state, to pool financial resources. Tax increment financing was used to build public improvements and to provide financial support towards the environmental remediation of most of the area. These efforts helped attract and secure private investment, resulting in the creation of new tax base.
What was once vacant and polluted has become nearly 300 acres of new development. Over the last ten years, many new uses have been added to the area, including new hotels, a transit station, retail shopping, medical offices, a headquarters for a major construction company, light industrial businesses, rental and ownership senior housing, and market-rate and affordable apartment homes.
Recreation amenities have also been added including a multi-use and multi-modal trail that connects its users to existing parks.
Most recently, Smash Park, a restaurant, sports and entertainment complex, Bank of America, and a Taco Bell opened on the site with additional businesses poised to open this year. 
The Twin Lakes redevelopment area has added more than $150 million to the city’s overall tax base. It’s helped to clean up and revitalize a corner of our city that was once contaminated and underutilized. It now serves our residents, businesses, and visitors and will ensure Roseville continues to be a community where people want to live, work, shop, dine, and play.
While it’s important to celebrate our successes, we can’t lose sight of the remaining opportunities in Twin Lakes. A 10-acre site remains and the city is eager to partner with the landowner and developers on this final piece of the Twin Lakes puzzle.
Redevelopment is never easy. Being able to bring new businesses, jobs, shopping, dining, and housing to land that was formerly occupied by industrial uses requires commitment of time and resources. Elected leaders deserve credit for their foresight to improve Twin Lakes so that it better serves our community and our environment.
This article was written by Janice Gundlach, Community Development Director.