Shakopee features multiple development hot spots

Shakopee and the communities immediately surrounding it have more than their fair share of regional entertainment destinations: Canterbury Park, Valleyfair, Mystic Lake and Little Six casinos, the Minnesota Renaissance Festival grounds.

Time was when Shakopee was known primarily as a destination for diversion-seeking Twin Cities residents. But those days are long gone. Shakopee today has nearly 50,000 residents, and with hundreds of housing units permitted or under construction across town, it’s among the metro’s fastest-growing cities.

The development hot spots include the 360-acre Canterbury Park campus, where the Canterbury Commons master plan is taking shape; a 140-acre former gravel pit south of Canterbury Park, where Rachel Development is leading work on up to 850 new housing units; and the southwestern edge of the city, where D.R. Horton plans to build around 600 new homes .

These and other projects, including a multimillion-dollar riverfront revitalization effort, fit into Shakopee’s long-term plans to become a “multilayered community” that draws new visitors, residents, and employers from across the metro and beyond, Shakopee Director of Planning and Development Michael Kerski said.

A broader vision for Canterbury Park

Approximately half of the Canterbury Park campus is occupied by its “operating business,” including the racetrack, grandstand, parking lots, and related infrastructure, said Jason Haugen, vice president of real estate at Canterbury Park.

The rest is set aside for the phased Canterbury Commons development, which “is coming together quickly now,” Kerski said.

The 60-acre first phase is built out or under construction, Haugen said. It includes Doran Group’s 321-unit Triple Crown Residences at Canterbury Phase I , 108 townhomes developed by Pulte Homes , the age-restricted Omry at Canterbury apartment community, Greystone Construction’s 28,000-square-foot headquarters, an expanded taproom and production facility for Badger Hill Brewing, a child care facility, and a destination Mexican restaurant.

The 305-unit Triple Crown Residences at Canterbury Phase II wrapped construction on June 1 and is already more than 80% leased, said Doran Group Chief Marketing Officer Tonya Tennessen.

Canterbury Park broke ground last month on the project’s second phase, a 10-acre, four-pad commercial subdivision with grandstand access and racetrack views.

“There are not too many horse-racing tracks in Minnesota,” Haugen said. “So we want to capture the pageantry and specialness of that.”

Boardwalk Kitchen and Bar is confirmed for one of the pads, and Canterbury Park is actively marketing the three others to users that could include destination restaurants featuring active entertainment like pickleball or golf, Haugen said. The subdivision will also have an open event center with “300-to-400-person capacity in the warm months and music three to four times a week,” he said.

Canterbury Commons’ third phase remains in preconstruction, with utility and road projects being bid out this spring and summer, according to Haugen. Canterbury Park envisions a 25-acre “creative development” immediately south of the 37-acre site where Swervo Development is building a 19,000-seat amphitheater which Kerski calls “the eighth wonder of the world” that will anchor the complex’s entertainment offerings.

“Swervo tells us they’re on track [to complete the amphitheater] in summer 2025,” Haugen said. But since it’s Swervo’s project, “it’s hard to tell where they’re at,” he cautioned.

Canterbury Park will have a better sense of how the third phase will look once the infrastructure is in place, but Haugen hopes it’ll include a hotel, bars, restaurants, retail, hundreds of apartments, and a “first-to-market type of attraction that doesn’t exist elsewhere in the metro area,” he said. For inspiration, the organization is looking to entertainment destinations like Nashville, he added.

Not a ‘standard subdivision’

Across Highway 169 from Canterbury Park, at the southwest corner of 17th Avenue East and Mystic Lake Drive, lies Shakopee’s second development hotbed: a sprawling former gravel pit that Kerski likens to “a 140-acre hole in the heart of the city.”

Rachel Development’s plans call for up to 534 apartment units, 98 townhomes, 223 single-family homes, 174,300 square feet of mixed-use commercial, and 24 acres of open space on the 146-acre site, Finance & Commerce reported in April . The developer hopes to acquire the site later this year, begin grading work soon after that, and complete the project in two phases by 2030.

Rachel Development is expected to submit a request by August to the Shakopee City Council for the creation of a tax increment financing district to partially defray the project’s estimated $350 million cost, Kerski said.

The gravel pit project will be anything but cookie-cutter. The location in a high-traffic area near the geographical center of Shakopee called for something other than a “standard subdivision,” Kerski said.

“We wanted a more integrated subdivision with outdoor amenities an urban Central Park-type situation,” he said. The development will have a lake, ice skating, a mix of open spaces, and a network of interconnected non-motorized trails that link to retail and commercial areas nearby, including a grocery store that Kerski hopes to see included in the development.

The single-family portion of the development also has 40-foot-wide lots, much narrower than the typical outer-suburban subdivision, Kerski said.

Shakopee does have more conventional single-family subdivisions under development, like D.R. Horton’s 237-acre, roughly 600-unit HighView Park neighborhood. Located on the city’s western edge in a recently annexed portion of Jackson Township, HighView Park will include 509 single-family homes and 92 twin homes built in several phases, Finance & Commerce reported last year.

Though it looks straightforward at a glance, the HighView Park area will have plenty of outdoor assets, including an “ag-themed playground” and mountain biking, walking, and running trails, Kerski said. The plan includes 80 acres of parkland, according to D.R. Horton .

This emphasis on outdoor activity spaces is a legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, which drove “a huge shift in subdivision design [to be] much more walkable with more amenities,” Kerski said.

Toward a ‘multilayered community’

First-class subdivision amenities factor into Shakopee’s overarching vision for a “multilayered community” with a broad mix of housing types and price points, a solid employer base, entrepreneur-friendly infrastructure that attracts additional business investment, and a continued focus on drawing visitors from across the region, Kerski said.

Shakopee leaders are working on multiple fronts to realize this vision. A sustained effort to attract larger employers paid off in December, when Sam’s Club announced plans to open a distribution center in town, filling a hole left by the shuttering of a nearby Amazon distribution center. The facility employs more than 80 people, who Kerski says earn at least $24 per hour with benefits.

Separately, Shakopee and surrounding southwest metro communities host FounderyMN , a growing “ founder’s network ” with about 30 members working to attract startups and high-growth companies to the area. Launched about three years ago, the initiative has drawn at least one new company to Shakopee already, Kerski said.

The city’s new business innovation facility, dubbed The Hub , could help attract even more. The facility’s members include a greeting card company that makes “cards for uncomfortable situations” in about 600 stores and a telehealth firm founded by a UnitedHealthCare alum that broke $1 million in revenue less than a year into its existence, Kerski said.

Last but not least, the city is “working with state and federal representatives” on a $15 million “ riverbank restoration and park improvement project ” along the Minnesota River in downtown Shakopee, Kerski said. The aim is to restore the riverfront to its “original look” and create a “superregional attraction” that acknowledges the city’s origins as a 19th-century river town and the wider region’s deep cultural significance to the Dakota people, he said.

At least one major Twin Cities developer says Shakopee’s efforts are paying off.

Doran Group is seeing “strong interest [in the Triple Crown development] across the southern metro, from Eden Prairie to West Bloomington to Chaska and Prior Lake, [and] we’ve also seen some in-migration from south of Shakopee, as far as New Prague,” Tennessen said.

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