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10 <br />Regional Setting • <br />Located between St. Paul and Roseville, Falcon Heights is within the Developed <br />Communities area of the metropolitan region. The Developed Communities are the cities <br />where more than 85% of the land is developed and infrastructure is well established, <br />according to the Metropolitan Council's 2030 Regional Development framework. Within <br />this area the Metropolitan Council supports and, in fact, gives priority to, reinvestment, <br />infill and revitalization to increase the economic competitiveness of these communities <br />and to enhance their quality of life. <br />[Map: Location of Falcon Heights within the Metro] <br />Unique Attributes <br />Falcon Heights is a very small but truly unique community. It is a city of contrasts. It has <br />virtually no privately owned buildable vacant land, but, unlike any other first tier suburb, <br />it has a distinctive rural appearance attributable to the University of Minnesota <br />Agricultural Research Center (656 acres) and the huge expanses of crop land which <br />border Larpenteur Avenue. As misleading as it might seem to the casual observer, Falcon <br />Heights is an urban community very much like its neighbors, St. Paul and Roseville, <br />except that it has anurban/rural identity, something that is rare or nonexistent among first <br />tier suburbs. • <br />Falcon Heights is a suburb with a small town character attributable in part to the <br />University of Minnesota and the Snelling and Larpenteur retail core. On one hand, it is <br />residentially fragmented by the separation created by University of Minnesota lands, <br />Snelling Avenue and elementary school boundaries. On the other, it is a community that <br />is connected by some of these same factors. It is a stable community where the housing is <br />excellent and the quality of neighborhood life has undergone only slow, generational <br />change in the last two decades. <br />Falcon Heights is the host city for one of the State's largest and most important outdoor <br />events, the Minnesota State Fair (288 acres), which attracts more than one and one-half <br />million people per year to the City and inundates City streets and parking lots with a <br />flood of automobiles for twelve days each summer. Falcon Heights is also home to the <br />University Golf Course, which frames the western entrance to the City. <br />• <br />Background: Draft 2 FH Comp Plan 2007 Page 5 of 9 <br />