PCAgenda_07Aug28 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Unique Attributes • Falcon Heights is a very small but truly unique community. It is a city of contrasts. It has virtually no privately owned developable land, but, unlike any other first tier suburb, it has a distinctive rural appearance attributable to the University of Minnesota Agricultural Research Center (656 acres) and the huge expanses of crop land which border Larpenteur Avenue. As misleading as it might seem to the casual observer, Falcon Heights is an urban community very much like its neighbors, St. Paul and Roseville, except that it has an urban rural identity, something that is rare or nonexistent among first tier suburbs. Falcon Heights is a suburb with a small town character attributable in part to the University of Minnesota and the Snelling and Larpenteur retail core. On one hand, it is residentially fragmented by the separation created by University of Minnesota lands, Snelling Avenue and elementary school boundaries. On the other, it is a community that is connected by some of these same factors. It is a stable community where the housing is excellent and things have not changed very much in the last ten years. Falcon Heights is the host city for one of the State's largest and most important outdoor events, the Minnesota State Fair (288 acres), which attracts more than one and one-half million people per year to the City and inundates City streets and parking lots with a flood of automobiles for twelve days each summer. Falcon Heights is also home to the University Golf Course, which frames the western entrance to the City. Historic Resources The City of Falcon Heights was originally part of Rose Township, established in 1850 in Ramsey County and named after early settler Isaac Rose. Rose Township also included the Cities of Lauderdale, Roseville and parts of Minneapolis, St. Paul and St. Anthony. Heman Gibbs settled just west of Cleveland Avenue in 1849 on lands situated north and south of Larpenteur Avenue. There he built a sod house that was replaced in 1854 by the present Gibbs Farm. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is currently owned by the Ramsey County Historical Society. Heman Gibbs also built the first schoolhouse in Rose Township. It operated until 1959 and still occupies the southwest corner of Larpenteur and Cleveland Avenues. Owned by the University of Minnesota, the old school was extensively remodeled in 1930 by the WPA. The schoolhouse site is expected to become the home of the Bell Museum of Natural History in the next ten years. The fate of the schoolhouse building is undecided. The Minnesota State Fair has occupied the land west of Snelling and north of Como Avenue since 1885 and draws over two million people to Falcon Heights each year. The University of Minnesota School of Agriculture, established in 1888 southwest of • Assembled Elements, Draft 1 FH Comp Plan 2007 Page 6 of 42