Building Around Nature

As the Twin Cities continue to overtake cornfields, local governments, developers, and homebuyers have become increasingly committed to preserving the state’s natural resources, both for biodiversity and scenic beauty. Often, land once owned by a single family is being carved into subdivisions. When the land has valuable natural resources, communities and builders are choosing to protect it through conservation easements or homeowner association covenants. Conservation easements are legal agreements by which landowners voluntarily limit development on part of their land, transferring with ownership to ensure the land remains protected through the generations.

Several such developments are currently being built in Minnesota and Wisconsin, all with varying degrees of conservation features. The first principle of conservation development is minimizing changes to the land and restoring natural resources to maintain or enhance ecological function and biodiversity. “We really are stewards of the land,” says Keith Waters of Keith Waters & Assoc. in Eden Prairie. “We are saving it for the next generation.”

Land Stewardship
Portico on the Green in Minnetonka, a Waters development, sits on a twenty-five-acre parcel of land that was previously owned by a single family. Originally, this land had six wetlands of varying quality. A conservation easement with the City of Minnetonka now protects 65 percent of the total land area. “We have a commitment to remove the nonnative species like buckthorn and to plant the native species you would expect to see in the wetlands,” Waters says. Other areas being preserved and restored include hardwood forest, upland prairie, and wetland edge. When completed, the development will also have twenty-five individually designed homes.

Inspiration, a conservation development in Bayport by Contractor Property Developers Co. in Roseville, is a 245-acre neighborhood. More than half of the total land area, or 145 acres, is protected by a conservation easement held by the Minnesota Land Trust, a nonprofit conservation organization. This development currently has a staff naturalist and nature center. The property, most recently a cornfield, originally had three main ecosystems: oak savannah, native prairie, and wetlands. Now, however, much of the degraded ecosystems will be restored to their original state.

“It takes a monumental effort to bring a cornfield into a natural prairie,” says Andy Dahl, Inspiration’s naturalist and salesperson. “But it will benefit all of the animals in the food chain, from insects to birds of prey.” Dahl estimates that prairie restoration will take five years. When developing the property, Dahl says, “We underemphasized the role of engineers and overemphasized the role of ecologists.” When completed in 2012, Inspiration will have 253 single-family homes and one cooperative building.

The fifty-acre Foxborough development in Lino Lakes has conservation easements on twenty-seven acres of restored forests, prairie, and wetlands. The developer, Royal Oaks Realty in Shoreview, is restoring a degraded wetland to a native sedge meadow, an effort that will take five to ten years, according to Mike Black, the project manager. “An enormous amount of buckthorn has been removed from the wooded areas,” Black says. When completed, this development will have fifty-seven single-family homes.

Another development, Cannon Bluffs in Cannon Falls, sits on the  bluffs of the Cannon River and is regulated by Wild and Scenic River legislation and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which was given a conservation easement on the property decades ago. Today, seventy-five acres of this 150-acre site are protected. The protected cedar glade, which leads down to the Cannon River, has natural deer paths that will be left untouched. “It’s wonderful,” says Linda Ingle, managing partner of Cannon Bluffs in Cannon Falls. “You can eat wild blackberries on your way down to the river.” The development will have a total of forty single-family homes.

The 110-acre Diamond Lake Woods development in Dayton has a conservation easement on fifty acres of restored prairie, hardwood forest, and wetlands. This wildlife sanctuary is a stopover spot for migrating swans and supports hawks and waterfowl. “It’s not necessarily about giving the animals more space, but about creating a safe place for them to live,” says Gretchen Hempel, land and contract manager with Christian Builders in Rogers, the company that will be building the development’s twenty-nine single-family homes.