‘Shoppes at Cottage View’ to be marketed in Cottage Grove

Talk about it

swente@swcbulletin.com

If you name it, will they claim it?

The city of Cottage Grove hopes that’s the case as it markets an area around the former Cottage View Drive-In for commercial development.

The Cottage Grove City Council on Jan. 2 formally approved “The Shoppes at Cottage View” as the name for a 103-acre site that includes the planned Walmart store and other land owned by the drive-in proprietor and adjacent property owners.

The Shoppes moniker will appear in marketing materials the city distributes to promote development on that site as well as in the larger East Ravine area around Highway 61 and Keats Avenue. That area also includes the Shoppes at Almar Village development at Keats Avenue and 70th Street, where there remain commercial vacancies.

Economic Development Director Danette Parr said the city will send information about the development opportunities to commercial and residential developers in the Twin Cities area, promote it at an annual development conference in Las Vegas this spring and in other communication.

“We are going to have that show up in everything we do from a marketing standpoint,” Parr said of The Shoppes at Cottage View.

However, she noted, it is not necessarily a permanent name for the commercial area. A developer could buy land in the area and give the project a new name.

The city is working with the landowners, including drive-in site owner Gerry Herringer, to promote their properties to developers. Parr said the city would prefer one large-scale project to a number of smaller, separate commercial projects built by different developers in the same area.

“We’re obviously better served by having a larger, more comprehensive development take place rather than a piecemeal” approach, she said.

Construction of the Walmart Supercenter on part of the drive-in property along East Point Douglas Road should spur more developer interest in surrounding parcels, she said.

Tags: cottage grove, updates, government