Innovative Hopkins Developer is Putting the Urban in Suburban

The imposing structure of the Northeast corner of Hwy. 169 and Excelsior Boulevard in Hopkins once served a similarly imposing task: It was a munitions plant for Alliant Techsystems, and a home to large-scale torpedo manufacturing. Today, the renovated building, still dreary from the outside, has a ultra modern interior, and is home to several light-industrial tenants and offices, including the headquarters of the company responsible for its renovation, The Beard Group.

The property development and management firm was founded by Bill Beard in 1991, and has carved a niche in the Twin Cities’ growing suburban community using flexible and often innovative strategies. Key projects for the group have included renovating long-dormant suburban downtown areas, including Hopkins, and creating new neighborhood-friendly residential areas and meeting the increasing demand for “live-work-play” communities.

Many projects harken back to the good olds days. Beard said that older urban patterns are becoming popular again. Centerville, for example, has a contract with the Beard Group to renovate its downtown to reflect the city’s French-Canadian roots.

“We’re really creating a pattern of development consistent with today’s standards and today’s needs, wants and amenities, but we’re following and older path,” Beard said. “Not every City center needs to be like a mall.”

Newer developments often require a change from traditional thinking about commercial suburban property, but communities are gradually growing appreciative of what Beard calls an older community model. And the cooperation of the city is a key component to the Beard Group’s success.

"These things only work when there’s really strong community support," Beard Said. "If it’s tepid, you don’t get there."

Lakeville City Administrator Steve Mielke worked with the Beard group several times in his former job as the Hopkins city administrator.

“They look for and have the ability to find projects that many of the larger development firms many not find interesting,” Mielke said. “We had tremendous success watching them be creative and innovative.”

Another example of cooperation between the developer and a community can be seen in the impending development of a 634-acre section of land in Hassan Township, northwest of Maple Grove.

Initial plans for the land include a small neighborhood commercial development and a residential area of 66 townhouses and 200 single-family homes with a park situated in the center. The group eventually plans to build 1,500 homes on more than 400 residential acres, with additional space dedicated to open space and commercial use. “What we’re hearing from folks up here is that they want to live in a place that feels like a community,” said Beard Group developer Tom Gump.

Some community members agree. Jim Kemmetmueller, a member of the Hassan planning commission, said that when approached by the Beard Group about the development, they were impressed by the group’s experience and dedication to providing parks and open spaces.

“They seemed like they had a lot of their stuff in order, and they really were working with what we wanted for a community,’ Kemmetmueller said.

Every project faces some degree of opposition, Beard said, and the Hassan project is no different. “Some people don’t ever want change,” Kemmetmueller said.

Not every project is the same scale as Hassan; the Beard Group is also currently in the early stages of another project in Hopkins called Marketplace and Main- converting the downtown Hopkins Honda building into condominiums with first-floor retail, bound on two sides by stand alone townhouses. The shops that the store will recruit also fit into the overall theme of a self-contained neighborhood.

Beard describes the businesses that are seeking as the “best bad tenants,” meaning that tenants without the financial backing of larger national firms, yet who are established local retailers that better fit the overall aesthetic of the developments. “We really specialized in people that are really the mom-and pop operators, who have one, two, and three stores,” Beard said. Ultimately, Beard sees the group as benefiting the some-times-maligned suburbs.

“There never seems to be anything good that comes after ‘urban,’” Beard said. “It’s always urban decay, urban blight, urban sprawl. But these communities really want a sense of place.”