Woodbury presents 2024 community development report; highlights housing, business growth and Gold Line opening

Janelle Schmidt, presenting for the city’s community development team, told the Woodbury City Council on March 12 that Woodbury’s population is just under 80,000 and the city has just under 30,000 occupied housing units.

“The report is full of detailed information, development trends, and a few deep dive topics,” Schmidt said, introducing the 2024 annual report and thanking staff and the Economic Development Commission for their work compiling it.

The report showed 452 new residential units in 2024, a level staff said is in line with the growth rate anticipated in the city’s comprehensive plan. Schmidt told the council the city has had consistent residential growth but fewer multifamily units the last two years because no apartment buildings were permitted during that span.

On commercial construction, staff reported seven new commercial buildings permitted in 2024 totaling about 267,000 square feet. Noted projects include Topgolf, four Woodbury storage-condo buildings, the Washington County Service Center and a Woodbury Express Car Wash; permits do not mean the projects are complete. The city estimates about 13.5 million square feet of cumulative commercial space citywide, with roughly 37 percent retail, and about 26,000 employees at nearly 1,900 business establishments in Woodbury.

Schmidt also reviewed the report’s deeper topics: affordable workforce housing, a 10-year look back at City Place redevelopment, a five-year review of Tax Increment Financing District 15 (TIF 15), and activity in the Northeast Business Park. On affordable housing, staff highlighted two projects the council approved in 2024: Settlers Reserve at Settlers Ridge (about 252 units, two buildings) and Meadows at Prairie Ridge, which Schmidt said received a state tax-exempt bond allocation the week of the meeting and plans to begin construction this year once tax credits and remaining funding gaps are resolved.

City Place, a long-term redevelopment on roughly 100 acres the city described as a success, showed taxable market value growth city staff said rose from about $12.5 million in 2014 to about $250 million today; the city emphasized that zoning and planning — not public subsidy or a TIF — facilitated much of that growth. By contrast, staff described TIF 15, a pay-as-you-go district approved in 2019 to remove blighted structures and prepare sites for reuse; increment revenue for that district is lagging expectations but the city said it was not financially on the hook because of the pay-as-you-go structure.

The Northeast Business Park was reported to contain just over 2 million square feet of space, about half of which is occupied. Schmidt said several large speculative buildings were developed there since 2020 (including an Amazon and a facility for Condeva), and additional approved projects are not yet started. She noted utilities and state and private funding helped unlock the corridor for development.

Schmidt closed with program updates: Destination Woodbury, the city’s new destination marketing organization funded by a lodging tax, completed a full year of revenue collection in 2024, hired a destination marketing manager and plans a website launch at the Woodbury Expo on April 5; the city’s new rental licensing program issued just under 8,000 licenses in 2024 (about 6,000 multifamily and 1,800 single-family) with an estimated 90 percent compliance rate; and the city closed 26 HRA loan transactions in 2024 across homeownership and home improvement programs.

The council thanked staff and said the report will be posted online. The presentation also noted regional coordination on the Gold Line bus-rapid-transit opening March 22, with free rides the first week and local events planned in Woodbury.