Mayor Bill Droste Wraps-up Changes in Rosemount for 2011

Editor's Note: The below information is from Mayor Bill Droste's monthly City Column on the city's website. 

In a tightly knit community like Rosemount, we welcome back many folks who’ve come to spend the end of the year with family and friends.  

It’s a time to catch up with the lives of the people who are closest to us. And in case some of those folks want to catch up with their hometown — we’ve had a lot of changes this year.

Perhaps the most apparent difference is the change in the weather. For now, it looks as if we’ll avoid some of the big expenses that we incurred during the last winter to keep our streets clear. It took a long time for the last of the snow to melt away, but once it did, the change kept coming.

The City is on its way to achieving a long-time goal of providing more housing options for seniors, with a public-private partnership to bring a development to the site of the old school building for St. Joe’s. Current plans include a senior center. But the people who live and meet there won’t be isolated. They will be part of our Downtown. Features like a public plaza to encourage visitors on foot will be possible under a grant the city just won from the Met Council.

From certain vantage points in town, there’s something new on the horizon: rotating blades that represent the cutting edge of research in wind energy. The University of Minnesota has begun research with a wind turbine that reaches 415 feet above ground, just west of Highway 52. The weather tower next to it is slightly taller.

Elsewhere on the UMore Park property, work continues to create a community of the future. Those neighborhoods are years away, but just north of UMore, streets are in place for new developments that will add nearly 200 new houses to Rosemount, the first of them going on the market next year. And some of those residents will have new options for employment close to home.  

Proto Labs is expanding its business making plastic parts at the Rosemount Business Park. The company says it may employ 300 here in three years.

In the meantime, the City has become home to new businesses, offering more dining options and services to the community. It’s the kind of economic strength that has allowed the City to once again cut most homeowner’s property taxes.

And we continue to get good use out of our investment in the Steeple Center, topped off this year by a well-attended Christmas program created by our growing arts council. But for all the change visitors will see this season, we have constants: our dedicated volunteers who work on community celebrations and meet social needs, including help for military families that resulted in Rosemount gaining the designation this year as a Beyond the Yellow Ribbon city. The City Council and I wish all the best to our citizens and their visitors.