United Health Corporate HQ - Eden Prairie

[mamundsen]

Ok, I was actually just trying to make sure I understood it correctly. I wonder if there was any attempt to have these new 4 towers closer to the existing buildings?

[min-chi-cbus]

I worked in their real estate dept. for a bit and can answer some of your questions:

The original campus (off of Bren) was about 500K to 750K SF before the 2 additions JUST to the South: Data Park I & II (370K SF each). Data Park I held Optum Health, a division of UnitedHealth Group that is growing incredibly fast and has the need for much more space than what the area held. Another reason for the development was to consolidate the offices scattered throughout the Twin Cities into a few concentrated nodes, mainly the HQ campus, Eden Prairie and Golden Valley. So between UHG and Wells Fargo, I expect continuing high vacancies in the suburban metro for Class B office space.

UHG bought the land South of Hwy. 62 off of Shady Oak Rd years ago and this is the only place where they can expand that is anywhere near their existing operations. It's also going to be along the future LRT route for the SW Corridor, and that's probably not a coincidence. I don't remember what will go into the Shady Oak expansion (1.5M SF in total once completed), but it might be Optum relocating from Data Park into a larger campus of its own (I want to say Optum Health ALONE controls over $40 billion of the company's $100+ billion in revenue). The combined Eden Prairie (Shady Oak) and Minnetonka (Bren Rd) campuses will be between 2.5M and 3.0M SF in total.

UHG was never a contender to consolidate space downtown, and I never really knew why. I personally think it's the free parking and the fact that most/all of its senior executives and board members live in the Minnetonka area and Western Suburbs area of the Twin Cities -- that doesn't help.

[mattaudio]

I hate to nitpick, but "free" should always be placed in quotes whenever the word precedes "parking."

[mamundsen]

I worked in their real estate dept. for a bit and can answer some of your questions:

The original campus (off of Bren) was about 500K to 750K SF before the 2 additions JUST to the South: Data Park I & II (370K SF each). Data Park I held Optum Health, a division of UnitedHealth Group that is growing incredibly fast and has the need for much more space than what the area held. Another reason for the development was to consolidate the offices scattered throughout the Twin Cities into a few concentrated nodes, mainly the HQ campus, Eden Prairie and Golden Valley. So between UHG and Wells Fargo, I expect continuing high vacancies in the suburban metro for Class B office space.

UHG bought the land South of Hwy. 62 off of Shady Oak Rd years ago and this is the only place where they can expand that is anywhere near their existing operations. It's also going to be along the future LRT route for the SW Corridor, and that's probably not a coincidence. I don't remember what will go into the Shady Oak expansion (1.5M SF in total once completed), but it might be Optum relocating from Data Park into a larger campus of its own (I want to say Optum Health ALONE controls over $40 billion of the company's $100+ billion in revenue). The combined Eden Prairie (Shady Oak) and Minnetonka (Bren Rd) campuses will be between 2.5M and 3.0M SF in total.

UHG was never a contender to consolidate space downtown, and I never really knew why. I personally think it's the free parking and the fact that most/all of its senior executives and board members live in the Minnetonka area and Western Suburbs area of the Twin Cities -- that doesn't help.

This answers everything I was wondering! Thanks!

[bapster2006]

Optum HQ

[mattaudio]

Will they be offering canoes to connect the wetland with the future LRT station? Or will they have a subsidized car storage space for every employee so nobody "has" to use transit?

[mnmike]

Is this updated or something? I don't recall the 15 story...aren't the other two done now?

[FISHMANPET]

So it looks like the LRT station is going to be in the middle of nothing? I hate the SouthWest corridor more and more as each day passes...

[woofner]

I'm sure this is not the final site plan. I remember seeing on an Eden Prairie planning commission meeting that the final build out will include more towers near the LRT station. But yeah, it was an atrocious site plan. Just like the suburbs to give stormwater ponds pride of place and divide the whole thing with wetlands. I suppose United Health has no interest in promoting active lifestyles - healthy people don't have bills to pay to pay UHG's bills.

[RailBaronYarr]

I mean, this is as much UH/Optum's fault as the SW corridor. Yes, there's a little wetland area, but the buildings could easily be located directly adjacent to the LRT stop instead of a wet or sh!tty (~1,600 ft along a highway) walk to one of the buildings. I guess that's what you get when suburban LRT lines have stations along effing freeways...

[mattaudio]

Before we jump to conclusions, I think there's still a chance this is just the first phase of a larger development... I think there are plans to locate buildings closer to the station on 62. That said, I do not understand how this could be integrated well if there's wetlands between this campus and a future station.

[nordeast homer]

With a company that size I would imagine if there is not a direct path for the employees to get to the LRT stop they would probably provide a shuttle.

As far as wetlands, they filled in A LOT of area here so they could build, but I don't know that it was a true wetland. Either way, I thought we had progressed past building in areas like this. It's not like there aren't other under utilized spaces within the Opus development.

[David Greene]

Will they be offering canoes to connect the wetland with the future LRT station? Or will they have a subsidized car storage space for every employee so nobody "has" to use transit?

This is a *huge* problem with the plan. UHG has explicitly said they don't *want* LRT near any of their buildings. The current plan has transit users walking through parking garages to get to work.

Lots of people on the CAC are very upset about this. The explanation is that UHG doesn't want disgruntled patients to have easy access to the office buildings. I don't know whether that was a joke or not. No one in the room laughed.

[David Greene]

I mean, this is as much UH/Optum's fault as the SW corridor. Yes, there's a little wetland area, but the buildings could easily be located directly adjacent to the LRT stop instead of a wet or sh!tty (~1,600 ft along a highway) walk to one of the buildings. I guess that's what you get when suburban LRT lines have stations along effing freeways...

The station placement is entirely the fault of UHG. They own the land and "graciously" donated the parcel along the freeway for LRT. There's not much the project can do about it. Most everyone on the CAC agrees this is a terrible plan. Others on the CAC didn't say anything so I don't know what they're thinking.

Still not enough reason to kill the line, though. The site can always be improved later.

[David Greene]

Before we jump to conclusions, I think there's still a chance this is just the first phase of a larger development... I think there are plans to locate buildings closer to the station on 62. That said, I do not understand how this could be integrated well if there's wetlands between this campus and a future station.

There are such plans but it still puts parking ramps next to the station instead of buildings.

[bapster2006]

This is the latest plan, but a phase 3 with a 4th building could still be built over by the LRT. That would be a few years off, so by the time LRT came around, it would be done. There would be a skyway from building 4 all the way west to the other buildings. The plan is for 2 miles of trails and 1,600 new trees

[min-chi-cbus]

Will they be offering canoes to connect the wetland with the future LRT station? Or will they have a subsidized car storage space for every employee so nobody "has" to use transit?

This is a *huge* problem with the plan. UHG has explicitly said they don't *want* LRT near any of their buildings. The current plan has transit users walking through parking garages to get to work.

Lots of people on the CAC are very upset about this. The explanation is that UHG doesn't want disgruntled patients to have easy access to the office buildings. I don't know whether that was a joke or not. No one in the room laughed.

That's odd....I used to work in UHG's real estate department and I took part in the SW Corridor alignment meetings, and I thought UHG very very much wanted LRT stations to be as close to their campus as possible. The problem is that UHG does not have any land anywhere near where the LRT line would be running, so their options for stations aren't great, and most options would be a bit too far for the avg. commuter to walk (>0.5 miles). I know this was part of the discussion, at least, although this WAS at least 3 years ago now.

I can't comment about disgruntled patients having easy access to the buildings, but when I worked there a few years ago there were death threats from protestors to Mike Mikan and/or Steve Hemsley, so we beefed up security around corporate campuses and it became an instant priority to make sure that important offices like HQs were not easily accessible by Joe Protestor. Yes, these billionair weenies are extremely paranoid, but they can afford it (er....I mean they can afford to use policyholder dollars to foot the bill for their safety).

Finally, as far as the "Eden Prairie/Shady Oak" portion of their campus is concerned, there has been plans in the books for at least 1.5 million SF of office space that would eventually house most of the Optum operations, which is what you're looking at in that diagram. I'm not sure if I remember 15 floors either but 10-12 was always part of the plan.

*Edit: I'm sorry, I just got a peak at where the station would go in that diagram, and it is NOT where we were discussing that station's location during the meetings I went to! If anything, the station was supposed to be where those round-a-bouts are and the line was supposed to slice right through there and then take a sharp turn to the SW toward EP. Everyone's critique is correct: WTF kind of idea is that?!?!

[min-chi-cbus]

This is the latest plan, but a phase 3 with a 4th building could still be built over by the LRT. That would be a few years off, so by the time LRT came around, it would be done. There would be a skyway from building 4 all the way west to the other buildings. The plan is for 2 miles of trails and 1,600 new trees

Can you say "environmental sustainability"?!

[mattaudio]

My sarcasm detector is a little off today... that was sarcasm, right?

[min-chi-cbus]

Nooooooooo.....

Clear enough?