Preliminary work underway on new
municipal campus in Mendota Heights

By Jake Spitzack | Staff Writer | July 2026

Design work and public engagement are underway for the City of Mendota Heights’ new municipal campus, slated to break ground next spring and open in late 2028. The new facility will replace the current campus that houses City Hall and police operations. It will be built next to the existing campus at 1101 Victoria Curve and use some materials, including solar panels, from the existing campus for sustainability and to reduce costs. Preliminary estimates show that the $33 million project will increase taxes by around $400 annually for 20-30 years for the owner of a median priced home of $551,000. However, the City was recently awarded a $4 million grant by the legislature in this year’s capital investment bill, which should help bring the cost down.

The city welcomes public feedback 4-5 p.m., the first Tuesday of the month at City Hall. The next date is July 7. Feedback can also be sent to municipalcampusproject@mendotaheightsmn.gov. The final design is expected to be completed by this fall, with construction bidding in December.

The driving factor for the hefty project is the City’s commitment to retaining its police department, which is currently operating in a significantly undersized space, according to a 2021 space needs analysis. Conversations in the early stages of analysis floated the idea of potentially eliminating the police department altogether and contracting-out police operations. This would have only required renovating the existing building rather than building a new one. However, public feedback strongly favored keeping the department, and the City Council agreed by voting unanimously to build the new campus. The current building dates to 1987 and has outdated safety and accessibility features, as well as aging mechanical systems.

“We value the services that the city provides when you have a police department,” said Mendota Heights Mayor Stephanie Levine. “If we had contracted services, somebody from the sheriff’s department or something would be coming and I don’t know if the response times would be nearly as good as they are.

“The police department has one room where they clean their guns and eat their lunch, and they don’t have proper rooms for processing evidence or interviewing,” she added. “If you come in and you have trauma and need to be interviewed, you’re literally being interviewed in a cubicle in the lobby…anyone who comes into the lobby may be able hear you, and the community needs better. We just don’t have the space because our police department has grown because our population has grown.”

The new 51,000-square-foot facility will be more than twice the size of the current one, with the upper floor designated for City Hall and the basement for the police department. Overall, designs call for most spaces to be intimate rather than oversized, similar to the style at the existing building. Being added is a community room that staff and the public can use for small gatherings. City Hall has the equivalent of 31 full-time employees, and the police department has 23. The police department is upgrading from 9,950 square feet to 22,350 square feet.

“One of the things that most people love when they come into our city hall is they feel a warmth,” said Levine. “They feel welcome, they feel warm, and they feel like it’s homey. It was [designed as] residential construction because people wanted to feel like they were actually in a home, and we’re going to preserve that…. During city council meetings when people are wanting to go out and have small group discussion or talk to the police chief or something we have four chairs gathered [for them], and we want to keep that. We want to preserve those opportunities and the way that our community interacts with one another and with our leadership.”

Mertensotto Field
The adjacent Mertensotto Field at Civic Center Park will have to be relocated since the new building is being constructed over a portion of the field. It’s long been the city’s premier baseball field, named after longtime mayor Charles “Chuck” Mertensotto, who served eight terms as mayor and 14 years on the City Council. City staff are working with the Two Rivers Athletic Association to determine a new location. Likewise, staff are seeking community feedback about what to do with the green space around the new campus. A few options proposed by community members thus far include a tee-ball field, pollinator gardens and farmers market space. To learn more, visit mendotaheightsmn.gov.

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