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Community profile: Empire Township

Development pressures felt in farm country

Note: This is one of a series of community profiles, intended to highlight issues faced by local governments as they begin the process of updating their comprehensive plans.

Empire Township’s neighbors to the west and north – Farmington, Lakeville and Rosemount – are all growing rapidly. On parts of the township’s border you see dense housing on one side of the road and farms or gravel mining on the other.

But the lowdown on Empire is that despite the pressure, farming is in the township to stay – at least for several more decades.

“We respect our farmers,” said Terry Holmes, chair of the Empire Town Board. “We’ve got the smells and sounds of farming in this community. If you want to put up a half-million dollar home, you need to know that your neighbor is going to be applying manure to his fields in the spring.”

How are the township’s landowners resisting the pressure of land speculation and development? First, some have a commitment to farming that goes back generations. This is reflected on the town board, which “isn’t afraid to say no,” according to Dean Johnson of Resource Strategies, the township’s planning consultant. “Empire is a community that doesn’t let the tail wag the dog.”

But even commitment can waver when your land could be sold for tens of thousands of dollars more per acre if the land use changes from farming to residential. That’s where the township is incredibly lucky: much of the land in the western and northern portions of the township is rich in aggregate resources, providing a natural – though temporary – barrier to development. Those resources are sorely needed for building roads in the growing Twin Cities area.

The township is fortunate, and unique, in another way. Because of the presence of the Vermillion River, Empire is home to a mid-sized Metropolitan Council wastewater treatment plant that provides service to Farmington, Lakeville, Apple Valley and by 2008, all of Rosemount. The plant also treats wastewater from the small but steadily growing part of the township that is zoned for suburban-density single-family residential, where the bulk of the township’s residents live.

Empire’s relationship with Farmington has not always been good, Johnson said, due to unwanted annexations, though “it has gotten much better” in the last four or five years. In fact, it was a dispute with Farmington and Lakeville over sewer capacity in the late 1990s that led to a major township planning study funded by the Metropolitan Council.

One result of the study was extensive discussions among township residents that helped forge a consensus about the township’s future. Another was the understanding that by committing to mineral extraction as an interim use on thousands of acres of farmland, the township could effectively put an end to land speculation and encroachment of development for several decades, Holmes said.

Another natural barrier to development is the University of Minnesota’s UMore Park, a research facility located in Rosemount and Empire. Today UMore covers about 2,600 acres in the northeast portion of the township. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has a 480-acre wildlife management area surrounding the Vermillion River – a designated trout stream – and plans are under way to expand the area to the north.

“ Empire Township has done an excellent job of planning to ensure its aggregate resources will not be lost to development. ”

- Brian McDaniel,
Metropolitan Council, District 16

In addition, Dakota County is poised to acquire 460 acres for a regional park, Empire Wetlands. Together with open space at the wastewater treatment plant and another proposed conservation area, the contiguous lands will total somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 acres. “Seventy-five years from now it will be the single largest piece of open space in the metropolitan area,” Johnson said.

Not all townships would see the benefit of having as much open space as is proposed for Empire, said Curt Chatfield, a planner for Dakota County. “The township is very progressive, and the residents have set aside some of their own interests because they see the big picture and how they fit into the region. I think they should be congratulated for embracing this vision,” Chatfield said.

Holmes expresses pride that the township is “fiscally self sufficient” and carries no debt for its investments, including a new water tower and wells. He also said that Empire enjoys a “very good relationship” with Dakota County, which provides public safety services. The county recently built a new dispatch center in Empire. The township shares some recreational facilities with Farmington, and purchases fire protection from the city. It also works closely with the Vermillion River Watershed and the University of Minnesota on issues of joint concern. “We’ve tried to be good neighbors and respect the people around us,” Holmes said.

-- published October 2006 --