by John Gessner
Thisweek Newspapers

Forty years after it opened, the abandoned AAA Minnesota/Iowa building that doled out road maps while helping put Burnsville on the map is about to disappear.

Demolition is scheduled to begin Oct. 22. Anderson Development is working with the city to put two office buildings and a hotel/event center on the 4.75-acre site commonly known as the AAA property.

The city has been trying to land a high-profile project since 2001, when it bought the land at 7 Travelers Trail W. for $1.8 million as part of the Heart of the City downtown redevelopment.

But the AAA building was an attention-getter in its own right when the Minnesota State Automobile Association opened its state headquarters there in September 1967.

"I moved out here in 1965, so the building wasn't even built when I got there," said Mike Turner, a Dakota County commissioner. "But their movement there was a big deal for Burnsville at that time. Burnsville was only 7,000, 8,000 people."

With its round "dome," rustically shingled peaked roof and tan, building-block walls, the building once turned heads at Highway 13 and Nicollet Avenue.

"It was pretty new, fancy and modern," said Patty Ploog of Lakeville, a 40-year employee of the travel organization now called AAA Minnesota/Iowa, which is still headquartered in Burnsville. "And with the round dome area, that's something I guess you didn't see that often."

The services for AAA members and the general public made the building a common, if infrequent, destination for many.

It was where you went to renew your driver's license and tabs.

The headquarters was enough of a community fixture to merit a page in the first Burnsville history book, published in 1976.

"Here AAA members can obtain auto travel counseling and custom routings, emergency road service, and automobile and accident/health insurance," the book says. "Under the ‘dome' are two additional services available to members and the general public alike: the automobile and driver's license department and the World Travel Department -- offering everything from airline tickets to group tours to individual custom-travel arrangements around the globe."

Said Turner, "Travel services were very important at the time. You didn't have MapQuest and other computer-aided trip maps. You'd go to Triple A to get your trip planned out for you and to tell you where the detours were and everything else."

Ploog's first job with AAA was typing duplicate membership cards and transferring members to other AAA clubs when they moved. Now she's director of information technology.

Sue Lau of Burnsville was 17 when she went to work in the old building 28 years ago. The former mailroom worker is now director of sales for both states.

For years AAA owned a deputy registrar franchise, which issued the licenses and tabs. The operation, staffed by AAA employees, was in the domed part of the building.

"We had a lot of fun with the deputy registrar for a long time," Lau said. "It always kept the place hopping, let's put it that way -- long lines and sometimes unhappy people, which was not our fault. We were just following the state's rules. Sometimes it created a lot of insurance business for us, because to get the tabs, you needed insurance."

AAA Minnesota/Iowa didn't move far after leaving the building. It has occupied the former Tires Plus headquarters at Travelers Trail and Burnsville Parkway since 2000, and filled space in a nearby office park for a few years before that, Ploog said.

Dakota County picked up the licensing business AAA chose not to renew. After several years at the Burnsville Transit Station, the license center is now in the Cub Foods mall in the Heart of the City.

It's certain the old building will come down. But after seeing glittering development plans for the property come and go since 2001, Lau isn't sure when something will go up.

"It's going to be interesting, let's put it that way," she said. "The city's had such trouble trying to figure the whole thing out and get it moving. It's almost like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop on whether it's really going to happen."

John Gessner is at burnsville.thisweek@ecm-inc.com.

Comment from Diane DeMarco, 10/15/07

This article brought back many memories -- I worked in that building from 1977 - 1980 as a public relations associate and associate editor of the Minnesota Motorist Magazine. It was a wonderful job as got the opportunity to travel all around the state,and also to various travel destinations to write articles for the Motorist.