Rosemount Gets $120,000 Grant for St. Joseph Redevelopment

The city of Rosemount has received a $120,000 grant from the Dakota County Community Development Agency (CDA) for redevelopment of the old St. Joseph’s School site into senior housing and a senior center.

The city acquired the property in 2004, and a citizens’ advisory group subsequently recommended that the space be used for seniors, teens, banquets, public exhibits, arts and culture and meeting space. The Rosemount City Council is considering building 80 units of senior housing, along with a senior center, at the site, on the north end of downtown.

“The council’s been talking about this for some time,” Kim Lindquist, Rosemount’s community development director, said Tuesday. “That was part of the reason why we applied for this grant.”

The grant – part of $1 million awarded by the CDA to six cities for redevelopment projects – will be used to pay for removal of hazardous materials and demolition of the building. The projected total development cost of the project is $360,000.

The complex now includes a 9,000-square-foot church building, a 21,600-square-foot school building and a 2,100-square-foot gathering area that connects the two.

Lindquist said the building definitely contains asbestos, and possibly other hazardous materials. Part of the grant money will be used to pay for a hazardous materials assessment, she said.

She said the city needs additional senior housing to prepare for an influx of aging baby boomers.

“Rosemount is still a growing community, and that typically has been younger families,” Lindquist said. “We still have a fair amount of younger families with children, but of course the baby boomers are aging.

“Part of it is a population issue, but another part is that as we grow, we want to have more services in town [for seniors]. Right now, we have some senior housing options, but those are primarily market-rate homes that don’t have any kind of health assistance or congregate dining or any of the kind of things we would hope to attract with this project.”

Lindquist said that if the city council decides to go ahead with the senior housing proposal – and “if we get some private entity interested” in participating – demolition of the old school could proceed as early as this fall.

The other cities that received grants from the CDA this year were Burnsville, Eagan, Hastings, Lilydale and South St. Paul.

A request from West St. Paul to pay for acquisition and demolition of foreclosed single-family homes in the northern part of the city was not funded, because more than $1 million has been spent there over the last three years for the same purpose.