August 4, 2016 at 3:58 p.m.
When a billion dollar project needed an ace landscape they tapped Peterson Co.
When a billion dollar project needed an ace landscape they tapped Peterson Co.
The project required experienced and highly skilled installation. Of all the contractors out there vying for a piece of a billion dollar redevelopment effort, who would have guessed that a Chisago Lakes-area company would be chosen?
Founder John Peterson feels one reason why Peterson Companies got the Minneapolis downtown east commons job was because it could show “a lot of thought was put into the bid.” The company has a culture of finding the correct product for special uses and being willing to improvise if need be.
Peterson Companies, headquartered on the Wyoming-Chisago City line, is like the Downtown East Commons itself...much of what goes on is not visible. Locals see the bright yellow pickup trucks on the road around here-- but the company is so much more.
In Minnesota alone-- Peterson Companies is developing athletic fields/stadiums at high schools from Waconia to Braham to Stillwater. The company has the new Shakopee Amazon distribution facility site. Peterson Companies also built CHS field for the St. Paul Saints.
Operations Manager Ryan Potvin explained how Downtown East Commons presented challenges not a lot of other firms were prepared to deal with.
Peterson Co. can handle logistics coordinating dozens of vendors. For example, Downtown East Commons sports a custom sod product, shipped in from growing fields near Green Bay Wisconsin. The root system is known for speedy percolation and high tolerance in urban uses.
The commons design also specified soil mixtures with varying ratios of peat to organics to sand.
There’s 22,000 square feet of “porous paver” and /or playground mix-- a recycled rubber product that appears to be solid, but water drains through.
Rainfall onto the commons travels into an extensive underground stormwater collection system also built by Peterson. There’s massive invisible components that required excavating capabilities most other companies would have contracted-out.
VP of Internal Operations Laurie Lyons said the firm hits the right notes on both scope and scale. And, during the real estate development recession the last few years they could focus on bigger public sites and stayed pretty busy. Now that the more intimate residential landscape jobs are returning, staff are stretching creativity and ingenuity on a residential level.
Peterson planted 7,000 shrubs and 200 trees with trunk diameters from six to 10 inches across in the stadium commons. It took 720 end dumps to haul in the soil.
Coordinating all this are operations and administrative staff housed in Peterson Co. offices, on County Road 22.
John Peterson mentioned the company is at a point where an expansion is imminent. Drawings for adding a third floor and substantially enlarging the footprint were hanging on the conference room wall. True to the company’s belief in promoting sustainable methods like irrigating with captured rainfall and utilizing recycled materials; the original plan was the Chisago headquarters would have a grassed rooftop. Structurally, the building is ready to go up a floor, Peterson explained.
Peterson Co. is around 150 employees at peak season. As a Chisago Lakes high school grad himself, Peterson is proud to point out there’s a number of hometown workers that he has come to rely on, and some have worked with him since the business did its first project in 1997.
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