Rosemount Could Get a 2.8 Million-Square-Foot Industrial Park Off County Road 42
TLDR
A developer called Opus wants to build a big new business park in Rosemount, just southeast of County Road 42 and Blaine Avenue East.
The site is 160 acres — and it could hold up to 2.8 million square feet of warehouses or factories.
It's being marketed right now, so it's early. The land still needs formal city approvals before anything gets built.
It would sit right next to Meta's data center and the Flint Hills refinery, in what's quickly becoming Rosemount's industrial corridor.
Rosemount's east side keeps getting bigger. A developer named Opus is now pitching a huge new industrial park called Flintlock 52, and the numbers are eye-popping — up to 2.8 million square feet of building space on 160 acres of land.
For comparison, that's bigger than the FedEx and Home Depot distribution centers that already went up nearby. Combined.
Here's what we know so far.
Where it would go
The site sits southeast of County Road 42 and Blaine Avenue East, near where MN Highway 52 cuts through town. If you've driven Highway 52 down toward the Flint Hills refinery, you've been right by it.
It's a smart spot for this kind of thing. The developer points to "near immediate" access to Highway 52 and County Road 42 — which, heads up, is getting a major overhaul of its own in 2027. Downtown Minneapolis is about 25 miles away, roughly a 30-minute drive.
It's also in good company. The plan puts Flintlock 52 right between Meta's Rosemount data center and the FedEx warehouse, in a stretch that already includes the Koch/Flint Hills refinery. This part of Rosemount has become the go-to landing spot for big industrial projects.
What could get built there
Nothing's locked in yet. The developer is showing off a few different layout options — one with as few as five buildings, another with ten smaller ones. The biggest single building on the drawings would be well over a million square feet on its own.
The space is pitched for "high-bay distribution or industrial manufacturing." In plain terms: giant warehouses, shipping hubs, or factories. The buildings would have clear heights (the room from floor to ceiling) of 24 to 40 feet, plus trailer parking and outdoor storage. The developer even floats the idea of landing a big corporate or regional headquarters.
Power would come from Xcel Energy, gas from Minnesota Energy Resources, and water from the City of Rosemount.
Why Rosemount keeps winning these projects
A few reasons, and taxes are a big one. Dakota County has the lowest real estate tax rate in the entire Twin Cities metro — about 18.3% in 2024, well below Hennepin, Ramsey, and the rest.
The city also hands out incentives to lure companies in, like tax increment financing (a tool that reinvests future tax dollars back into a project's own site), shovel-ready land, and fee deferrals. And there's a workforce to draw from — more than 73,000 warehouse and transportation workers live within a 30-minute drive.
Then there's growth. Rosemount's population is projected to jump more than 51% between 2020 and 2050. Companies like to build where the people (and future customers and workers) are heading.
What happens next
This is the early stage. The land is "ready for formal entitlements," which is developer-speak for "we've done our homework, but the city still has to approve it." An environmental review (called an AUAR) was updated back in December 2023. There's no confirmed tenant, no construction date, and no price tag attached publicly — the brokers list it as "contact for pricing."
So don't expect trucks and cranes tomorrow. But the pieces are lining up, and 160 acres is a lot of Rosemount to fill.
It's also worth watching how neighbors feel about it. Rosemount residents have already started asking the city to slow down on data center growth, and nearby Apple Valley just turned down a million-square-foot data center after pushback. Flintlock 52 isn't a data center — it's warehouses and manufacturing — but it lands in the middle of a bigger conversation about how fast the south metro's industrial side should grow.
The Bottom Line
Flintlock 52 is a big swing: up to 2.8 million square feet of industrial space on 160 acres off County Road 42. It's being marketed by Opus through the brokerage CBRE, and it still needs city sign-off before anything real happens. If you live nearby, this is one to keep an eye on — both for the jobs it could bring and for the traffic and land-use questions that come with a project this size. You can see the full pitch on the CBRE listing page, and track approvals through the City of Rosemount's economic development page.
FAQ
Wait, what exactly is Flintlock 52? It's a proposed 160-acre business park in Rosemount that could hold up to 2.8 million square feet of warehouses or factories. A developer named Opus is behind it, and it's being marketed to potential tenants right now.
Where is it going to be? Southeast of County Road 42 and Blaine Avenue East, near Highway 52 — the same industrial corridor as Meta's data center, the FedEx warehouse, and the Flint Hills refinery.
Is this a data center? No. It's pitched for warehouses, distribution, and manufacturing — not a data center. It just happens to sit right next to Meta's data center site.
Is it actually being built? Not yet. It's in the marketing and approval stage. The land is described as "ready for formal entitlements," which means the city still has to approve it and there's no confirmed tenant or construction date.
How big is 2.8 million square feet, really? Huge. That's larger than the FedEx and Home Depot distribution centers already in Rosemount put together. It could be split across five to ten buildings depending on the final plan.
