Shake Shack, Panera Bread planning drive-through restaurants at Rosedale Center
Jan. 5—Shake Shack and Panera Bread have plans to build standalone restaurants with drive-through lanes at Rosedale Center in Roseville.
Real-estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle has submitted plans to the city for the fast-food restaurants to be built in the mall's southeast parking lot across from the AMC Rosedale 14 movie theater. The restaurants would operate under a land-lease arrangement, according to planning documents.
The restaurants, if approved by city officials, would join other buildings that have gone up around Rosedale's underutilized parking areas in recent years — and complement a planned $200 million transformation expansion to revamp the mall into a mixed-use, urban-style regional center.
In late 2019, Rosedale announced concept plans for a south-side expansion — including market-rate apartments and other housing, a hotel and grocery store — of the mall located off Minnesota 36 and Fairview Avenue. This past August, crews demolished a portion of the former Herberger's department store to make room for new development.
DRIVE-THROUGH ACCESS
According to plans, Shake Shack and Panera Bread each would have two drive-through order lanes and an outdoor patio. They would share 69 parking spaces, with overflow parking available south and west of the restaurants in the mall's lot.
A fast-food restaurant is a permitted use in the mixed-use district, however, a drive-through requires conditional-use approval under city code. The city's planning commission is scheduled to take up the two requests Wednesday night.
New York City-based Shake Shack opened its first drive-through last month in Maple Grove, with a two-lane ordering system and a separate pick-up window. The American fast-casual restaurant chain has two other locations in Minnesota — a standalone building at Southdale Mall and a walk-up one inside the Mall of America in Bloomington.
Panera Bread currently has a location on the north side of Rosedale Center, in the Main Street-like row of shops. Panera's new location would have a traditional drive-through lane and a second lane specifically for orders placed online or through its mobile app. Customers would then merge into a single lane as they approach the drive-through window to pick up their order.
WORK TO BE DONE IN PHASES
Rosedale officials have said that redevelopment of the mall will be done in phases and that the plan closely aligns with the city's comprehensive plan. Mall officials are also working with city staff to secure a conditional-use permit for the new housing, which besides market-rate could include senior or active-living units.
Meanwhile, Woodbury-based Kowalski's Markets in 2020 signed a long-term lease for a roughly 30,000-square-foot store to be built on the mall's south side.
Over on the mall's west side, construction is nearly complete on two buildings off Fairview Avenue. Raising Cane's will occupy one, while Aspen Dental and Visionworks will make up the other. Caribou Coffee and PNC Bank recently opened up in a third building.
Rosedale, which opened in 1969 as one of the Twin Cities' famed "Dales" shopping centers, says that it attracts more than 14 million visitors annually. It is the largest employer and taxpayer in Roseville, paying nearly $5 million in property taxes annually. The mall reports it generates more than $12 million in sales taxes from an estimated $160 million in yearly sales.
