Prudential/Target Credit Building - 3701 Wayzata Blvd

[LakeCharles]

Target selling their 394 building:

http://www.startribune.com/target-to-se ... 321755091/

Been rumored for a long time, of course.

Jumping ahead a bit, do you think someone'll tear it down and put in houses, or apartments, or just keep it as an office?

[Anondson]

I've long wished for Cedar Lake Road to get connected past the JCC's south side to the Target building parking lot and then up to the 394 Frontage road. Turn that Target campus into apartments with a nice public dock on Brownie Lake.

It could make a nice string of apartments for a bus line.

[grant1simons2]

Wow that's a massive parking lot. I've never actually looked too much in the area of that campus because it's not too interesting but now looking at it I can see a lot of potential. I'd be happier if all of those jobs were moving downtown but what can yah do with a bad CEO.

[MNdible]

That's a flat-out gorgeous building in a great location, and has been very well-tended. I think it still would work really well for prestige offices, and it would be a shame if it got gobbled up into apartments.

It would be nice if they could figure out a way to improve the circulation through the site, but I'm sure all of the SFH owners would go ballistic if they made the obvious connections.

[mattaudio]

So, the Target talk can stay in the "Target Talk" thread, or in the Target BP Campus thread.
But clearly this site on Wayzata Boulevard will see significant changes. Whether reused for office space by a different company, or redeveloped into something new, we'll see.

I'd like to see the buildings, or at least some significant parts, preserved: This was really a game changer for office real estate. It was built in the early 1950s, not only as an early example of modernist architecture in our city, but also as one of the first examples of large-scale office space being located in a suburban-style campus setting accessible by car.



This is also a former MPRB park, per their history site:

Brownie Lake (partial). Theodore Wirth Park west of Brownie Lake and south of Highway 12, 32 acres. The land was sold in 1952 to the Prudential Insurance Company for $200,000 and some additional land.

The park board bowed to intense public pressure to sell the land beside the lake. Prudential had made it clear that the site adjacent to the lake was the only site it would consider for its offices in the city. Ultimately the park board was convinced that the benefit to the Minneapolis economy was a greater good than keeping the land as a park. The board justified its action in part by asserting that with the growth of traffic on Highway 12 (now I-394) and the widening of that road, the land west of Brownie Lake had already been isolated from the rest of Wirth Park anyway.

[Wedgeguy]

Find it hard to believe that they would tear the building down. Compared to what could get built instead I'll take keeping this building around. I agree with MNdible that this is a great looking building. Will say that who ever buys the building can always build a parking structure and use some of that parking to build some housing, over looking the lake, with the left over parking lot. Much prefer that to another ugly apartment building facing 394.

I'm sure Target has kept the building updated so that is not an issue. They are just moving to consolidate their employees to DT and BP.

[seanrichardryan]

Perhaps, we could get that France Ave ROW opened up, with a nice connection back to Cedar Lake Road while we're at it.

Also, it drives me bonkers that the frontage road turns into that campus making all traffic turn left to continue eastbound.

[seanrichardryan]

The offending site plan:

[MNdible]

In the site plan's defense, that campus probably generates 80% of the traffic on that stretch of frontage road.

[amiller92]

I'd like to see the buildings, or at least some significant parts, preserved: This was really a game changer for office real estate. It was built in the early 1950s, not only as an early example of modernist architecture in our city, but also as one of the first examples of large-scale office space being located in a suburban-style campus setting accessible by car.

While I see some case for preservation, I'm not sure I want an monument to those things, which I consider to be pretty darn bad.

To make things even more subjective, it's a nice looking buildings from the freeway. If they can't find another tenant, maybe it can be re-used and the giant parking lots replaced with something of higher value.

[Nathan]

This is definitely in my top 5 favorite suburban buildings. An adaptive reuse of this area and that building would be amazing.

[twincitizen]

Here's the site on Hennepin County's map: https://gis.hennepin.us/property/map/de ... 2924320004
24 acres

I really don't see any major changes happening. Most likely just an office re-use. 394 corridor has the lowest vacancy in the metro, IIRC. I wouldn't at all be surprised if someone further out on the corridor took this opportunity to move closer in (or, gulp, if someone downtown wanted to move out and own their space).

At best, with the right investor, someone would add a new parking structure and build luxury apartment building(s) on the surface parking lot portion. The excess surface parking area that could be developed is roughly one full city block (figuring in separation from the office building, private drives, walkways, etc.) Still, that would require a pretty massive up front investment in a parking structure for the office building. Somehow I doubt that selling off a parcel for development would even come close to recouping the costs of a $20MM+ parking structure (600+ spaces x $30k/space). A more likely case might be no parking structure and they just sell off the excess parking at the south end of the site, though that is obviously less ideal for residential due to the RR track proximity.

To Sean's comment about connecting France, it would look nice on a map but it wouldn't really *do* anything that Cedar Lake Pkwy doesn't already accomplish, and it's not like that road is super congested or anything. That extra redundancy would not be worth the expense of a new bridge over the RR tracks.

[MNdible]

Related to our property tax discussion, notice that Market Value on that property is an absurdly low $15m.

[LakeCharles]

Note that this building is 3701 Wayzata, not 701, if anyone is trying to google map this.

[seanrichardryan]

Oh look, the city already has the ROW for France Ave. Now if JCC could open up an easement.

[MNdible]

Regarding that $15m market valuation, note that a collection of 6 unremarkable office buildings in a much less prime location, totalling 420k SF (just a hair more than the 400k SF at 3701 Wayzata) just sold for $40m.

[nordeast homer]

Having worked in the building when it was the home office for Prudential and visiting it when Target Financial was in the building I can say that there were no major renovations needed for Target. With the separate wings on the building it could easily be split into 3 tenant spaces (or more) along with a common area in the middle. Even when Pru was there we had different divisions in each wing.

[Kirtis]

Does anyone know the architecture firm for this building? I'm trying to discern if Liebenberg & Kaplan designed it. Thank you.

[LakeCharles]

Magney, Tusler & Setter according to this link: http://www.placeography.org/index.php/P ... _Minnesota but I have no actual knowledge that it's true.

[MNdible]

Opus will be buying the building, intends to keep it as office space.

No word as to whether they'll pursue any additional development on the site.

Hard to believe it took this long to find a buyer.