Fairlawn Avenue, Prior Lake, Minnesota 55372, United States

This is a 96-acre parcel at 19375 Fairlawn Avenue in Prior Lake, Scott County, Minnesota, held by the [owner name withheld]. The land sits in a rural-residential fringe south of the city of Prior Lake, fronting Fairlawn Avenue along its western edge. The northwest corner holds the primary structure — a 2,882-square-foot home built in 1997, with an assessed improvement value of $330,000 — along with a small pond and the original driveway. The two things that most define this parcel are its exceptional size for a suburban-edge location and the dramatic transformation the land underwent between 2015 and 2017, when roughly 60 to 70 acres of row-crop farmland were converted to managed turf with contouring, sandy-patch features, internal winding routes, and expanded water features consistent with a golf course or intensively managed recreational landscape. That transformation is the organizing fact of the property.

The aerial record is unambiguous about what happened, though the use cannot be confirmed from overhead imagery alone: row crops visible in 2010 and harvested fields in 2015 gave way by the 2017 imagery to continuous green turf with what appear to be bunkers, cart paths, and enlarged ponds. The land cover has been stable in that state through the most recent 2023 imagery. The assessor's record describes a single-family home — and the building is clearly residential in origin — but the land value ($1,648,600) dwarfs the improvement value ($330,000), reflecting that nearly all of the assessed value lies in the 96 acres themselves rather than the house. A Zillow estimate of approximately $1,745,000 (unverified, with a wide range of $1.13M to $2.57M) is roughly consistent with the total assessed value. Zoning data could not be retrieved for Scott County, so permitted uses on the land cannot be confirmed from this analysis — Scott County and New Market Township control zoning and permitting here, and any buyer should verify what use classifications apply before assuming any operational or development scenario.

Flood risk is low. Nearly 98% of the parcel is mapped in the lowest flood-risk category (FEMA Zone X), where federal law does not require flood insurance. A small patch of about 2% of the parcel in the northwest — the same corner that holds the house — carries a slightly elevated designation as the fringe of a 500-year floodplain (Zone X shaded), which means there is roughly a 0.2% chance of flooding in any given year in that area. Flood insurance is not federally required but a lender may recommend it. The house's estimated position and this modest flood-fringe area are both in the northwest, which is worth confirming with an elevation certificate but does not represent a significant flood concern.

Wetlands are a more material constraint. About 15% of the parcel — roughly 14 acres — is mapped as wetland by federal records. Temporarily flooded wet meadow types span the southwest (about 9% of the parcel), and seasonally flooded marsh spreads through the northeast (about 6%). A small permanently flooded area sits in the northwest corner, near the house. These wetlands fall under potential Army Corps of Engineers jurisdiction, meaning that any further ground disturbance in or near them — an addition to the house, a new outbuilding, driveway work, filling, or clearing — may require a federal permit (called a Section 404 permit) before work can begin. The soil map reinforces this: four soil units totaling about 23% of the parcel are mapped as hydric (indicating wetland conditions), concentrated in the southwest and northeast. Given that the land conversion to turf occurred between 2015 and 2017, any permits or wetland authorizations associated with that work are worth reviewing.

The terrain is gentle. Elevation ranges from 961 ft to 1,010 ft across the property, with an average slope of just over 3 degrees and 80% of the land essentially flat. This means drainage around the existing building is manageable on gradual terrain, though the hydric soils in wetter portions of the parcel — particularly the southwest — can mean standing water and poor drainage in wet seasons. The soil directly around the house in the northwest is predominantly Hayden sandy loam on moderate slopes, which drains better than the heavier clays and mucks in the lower-lying areas. The full parcel has about 33 inches of annual precipitation and sits in USDA hardiness zone 4b (average winter lows of -25 to -20 degrees Fahrenheit), with a frost-free season of about 153 days at the 50% probability level — meaning the last spring freeze at 32°F has passed by around May 2nd in roughly half of years, and the first fall freeze arrives around October 5th in roughly half of years.

Road access is straightforward: the parcel has direct frontage on Fairlawn Avenue (a local public road) along its western edge, with about 1,426 ft of total frontage including a short segment on 195th Street East. Electric service is provided by Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative, with a 2024 average residential rate of about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour, slightly below the Minnesota statewide average. A 69-kilovolt transmission line owned by Northern States Power runs about a half mile to the northeast — it carries bulk power between substations and cannot be tapped for service, but it represents a right-of-way and a visual presence in that direction.

No EPA cleanup sites, Superfund sites, or active toxic emitters were found within 5 miles. The nearest routine-permit facilities are water treatment operations and businesses well beyond a mile. The geologic area is rated high for radon potential — this describes the broader region, not this specific building — and a radon test of the home is the only way to know what the indoor air actually contains. Wildfire risk is very low, seismic risk is minimal, and two landslide features are mapped about 2 miles to the south (outside the parcel). The bedrock is Lower Ordovician sedimentary rock (dolostone and sandstone) and has no direct bearing on the property's use, though active sand-and-gravel and crushed-stone operations exist 3 to 4 miles away.

No conservation easement appears in the national protected lands database for this parcel, and no protected area adjoins it — but this database is a voluntary compilation, not a title guarantee. The county recorder's index is the authoritative source, and a title search is the appropriate step before any transaction.

Strengths: The parcel's 96 acres at a suburban-edge location near Prior Lake is a rare and genuinely large holding; the land value alone accounts for over $1.6 million of the assessed figure. Flood risk is minimal across nearly the entire property, terrain is gentle and fully usable, and road access is direct on a public road. Weaknesses: About 15% of the parcel is mapped wetland under federal jurisdiction, constraining any future ground disturbance without a permit process; the use and zoning of the land beyond the house could not be verified from this analysis and must be confirmed before any decision about operations or development; and the geologic area carries a high radon rating, making an indoor test of the existing home a practical necessity.

Two gaps in this analysis are worth naming. Zoning data for Scott County was not available in the system used here — the applicable classifications and permitted uses must be confirmed directly with Scott County and New Market Township. The assessor web portal returned only partial data due to a technical block, so tax year details beyond the values shown here could not be retrieved.