New Tiny Village in New Ulm, MN

Minnesota’s “Polka Capital” is getting a new tiny home neighborhood.

The City of New Ulm, located about two hours outside the Twin Cities metro, recently approved a Planned Unit Development (PUD) for a new, tiny home development. The project, called GartenDorf Village, will include 15-units centered around a common garden/BBQ area. Each tiny home will be about 400SF in size and have Bavarian architectural features, a nod to the historic roots of New Ulm.

New Ulm was settled by immigrants from Ulm, Wurttemburg, Germany, and it continues to celebrate the strong German heritage in the area.

Like many cities in Minnesota and across the US, New Ulm has grappled with a housing shortage. The GartenDorf development is just one of several housing projects that the City has approved recently in an effort to boost the local housing supply. The City also approved a project for two dozen “shed houses” or barndominiums and a new 148-unit apartment complex.

Roughly half of New Ulm’s housing projects last year were products of PUDs, a legal instrument used to offer developers greater flexibility from the zoning code.

New Ulm’s approval of GartenDorf and similar projects demonstrates the City’s willingness to use PUDs to explore different and even unconventional housing types to combat the current housing shortage.