Corridor Development Initiative

Corridor Development Initiative (CDI) helps communities make and keep great neighborhoods by changing the way they approach development opportunities. Our process matches neighborhood and city goals with market realities and moves proposals forward more efficiently.

CDI brings together all interested parties--governing agencies, community and business representatives, and developers. Through discussions and hands-on planning experiences, participants begin to understand market realities facing a particular development site--all before any proposal is submitted to a governing agency.

A typical CDI process consists of four community workshops that occur two to three weeks apart. These workshops allow neighborhood residents to have candid conversations about development scenarios. By the end of the process, participants collaboratively create development recommendations to present to community officials.

“What would have taken two years was done in four months.”

— Local developer

The result? Win-win-win. Development opportunities move more efficiently through the public review system. Neighborhoods have the chance to guide proposed projects to reflect their community vision, and developers reduce the amount of time between making a proposal and breaking ground.

To date, we’ve helped 23 communities in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. In every case, results show that when citizens are brought to the decision table sooner rather than later, communities are able to move development opportunities forward more efficiently.

Workshop participants collaborating on the "block exercise" to compare different development scenarios.

How CDI Projects Are Used

to move from planning to implementation for key development opportunity sites
as an educational forum to front-end a formal planning process
as strategic planning for publicly owned land or growth areas
as a neutral convening process for developers looking for community input
as a marketing tool for communities to recruit developers to an area
to bring multiple stakeholders to the table to build consensus on development goals
as training for elected and appointed officials
to connect greater density and mixed use projects to transportation corridors

To explore how CDI can be used in your community, please contact Gretchen Nicholls.

Current CDI Project Sites

Minnetonka: 5937 County Road 101

Recent CDI Project Sites

Fridley: University Avenue & Hwy 65
Brooklyn Center: Old Brookdale Ford & Brookdale Square site

HOPKINS: LRT Station area

FRIDLEY: Columbia Arena site