The Golden Triangle, a 1,370-acre industrial area within the City of Eden Prairie, has developed over the last four decades into an extensive industrial/office park with a wide range of building types and business uses and over 9.8 million square feet of industrial and office space. In 2002, it was estimated that businesses in the area employed nearly 25,000 people. Traffic congestion has become an increasing problem in the Golden Triangle area due to the high concentration of similar office/industrial uses and limited access points to the regional roadway system.

A consulting team, led by Hoisington Koegler Group and including IBI Group and Bonz and Company, was retained to conduct a land use and transit study for the area in order to determine what types of long-range land use and transit changes might help mitigate current and future traffic congestion problems.

The study resulted in a new land use plan that illustrated land use changes in

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areas that are most suited to redevelopment because they are economically obsolete or underutilized. New land uses were focused on balancing trip generation while accommodating a mix of uses that would create a more sustainable neighborhood pattern.

During the course of the project, a study was being conducted evaluating the potential of a fixed route rapid transit service to serve the area. An alignment was proposed that ran adjacent to the Golden Triangle area within the right-of-way for Highway 212. The HKGi project team began to explore the idea of transit service that could enhance redevelopment in the project area in a manner that would support traffic mitigation measures. The analysis concluded with the finding that a fixed route transit system that actually penetrates the Golden Triangle (as opposed to running adjacent to the area) would serve as a catalyst for redevelopment and that a balanced TOD land use pattern would extend the life of capital investments in infrastructure and potentially create a catalyst for future redevelopment.

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