MnDOT advises elevating Highway 252 at three intersections; council presses on noise, takings and safety

MnDOT project manager Amber Blanchard told the Brooklyn Park City Council at a special work session that Phase 1a of the Highway 252 / I‑94 environmental impact statement (EIS) is focused on a single technical question: at several intersections, should the highway go over or under local roadways.

Brandy Copenhagen, project manager for HDR Engineering, presented the team's Phase 1a analysis and recommended that Highway 252 be elevated (the 'over' option) at 85th Avenue, Brookdale Drive and 73rd Avenue. Copenhagen said the 'over' choices generally reduce the number of property takings and relocations compared with 'under' options, while the 'over' alignment concentrates noise impacts that the team expects could be mitigated with noise walls once detailed designs are developed.

The recommendation rested on a color‑coded comparison of impacts at each intersection: green where differences were minor, yellow for moderate differences and orange where differences were substantial. Copenhagen said the team evaluated property impacts, environmental justice (EJ) areas, community facilities, traffic noise, Section 4(f) resources (parks/recreation), historic properties, stormwater and biological resources including the rusty patched bumblebee.

“We evaluated a number of evaluation criteria here,” Blanchard said, listing property impacts, noise and EJ considerations. She explained the Phase 1a decision — over or under at intersections — precedes Phase 1b, which will analyze access combinations, and Phase 2, which will examine mainline alternatives.

On property acquisition, MnDOT said areas where driveways would be severed under an 'under' configuration could become inaccessible and therefore require takings. “These would result in property takings because there's no access to those driveways,” the consultant said. MnDOT added that any acquisitions would follow a standard process using fair‑market valuation and that formal acquisition would not begin until after the environmental review is complete.

Council members pressed MnDOT and HDR on the tradeoffs. One council member raised near‑term pedestrian and public‑safety concerns, saying safety “is my biggest concern” and asking how the project would address conditions before construction begins. Blanchard replied that safety work will be examined in later phases and in the design work that follows, and that Phase 1b includes evaluation criteria for access and safety.

On noise, presenters used 66 A‑weighted decibels (dBA) as the threshold for a noise impact and described that level as between a vacuum cleaner and normal speech. Copenhagen emphasized that noise‑mitigation performance was not modeled at this stage because detailed designs are required to estimate how much a noise wall would reduce decibel levels for specific homes.

The team also described its outreach: targeted meetings with roughly 65 potentially affected property owners (by intersection), two in‑person workshops with about 896 attendees, virtual materials and an online survey, plus pop‑up events. In total the presenters said they reached about 1,400 people and collected about 150 comments; response patterns varied by event type (property owners often registered a preference, broader workshops produced many 'no opinion' responses and the online survey showed more support for 'under' at some intersections).

Copenhagen and Blanchard said Phase 1a analysis will be wrapped up ahead of an upcoming Policy Advisory Committee meeting, with Phase 1b (access combinations) proceeding through the spring and Phase 2 (mainline alternatives) extending into the following year. They noted that many details — including exact noise‑wall locations, the final count of relocations and tax‑loss calculations beyond the 2023 baseline — will be refined only in later design phases.

The meeting closed with MnDOT and HDR inviting further council feedback and promising continued coordination as the EIS proceeds.