Star Tribune Printing Plant Redevelopment

[BikesOnFilm]

I guess I'm not so much worried about whether they can fit 20MW in the building, or how much of the building they'd need. I'm more wondering whether the new ordinance would require them to keep the existing building as is (it allows minor additions, doesn't say anything about removing 3/4 of the building).

I can't imagine their talk about mixed use data centers would mean they want to use the existing building for housing, and hopefully enough people have warned them that we already have a graveyard of urban malls in Minneapolis.

[blo442]

Listened in on the North Loop Neighborhood Association meeting with reps from the data center developer, Legacy Investing, presenting last night. A summary of key points:

- Legacy intends to use the entirety of the existing printing plant building as a data center, with a 20MW "initial" capacity. They stated that the layout of the building was not easily convertible to non-industrial uses, and financial market conditions would not support a teardown of the building to rebuild mixed-use or residential development on the 13-acre printing plant property.

- The areas identified for potential mixed-use development are two parcels across 2nd St from the plant: the Cordia steam mini-plant at 8th Ave and the parking lot/fueling station/small warehouse building on the corner of 2nd & 10th. The glimpse of the site plan that was shown appeared to leave the parking lot and rail spur on the north side of the building as-is.

- Legacy has no expertise in non-industrial development so they would not be directly involved in the mixed-use portion of the site. They suggested they could develop a vision for the mixed-use sites with community feedback and then market the properties to local developers. They repeatedly emphasized that the data center could be an "economic engine" without which the mixed-use project would not be viable. After community members asked for clarification, they clarified that, being an industrial developer, they had no specific pro forma or business case to support the statement that a teardown & redevelopment was non- viable. However, the Star Tribune had structured the sale of the property in an "auction" format and no non-data center developer was able to match Legacy's bid.

- The data center would be air-cooled using rooftop fans (instead of evaporative cooling) and an internal closed-loop liquid cooling system. Legacy reps claimed the water usage would be equivalent to 2-4 homes, and they would love to share those metrics but would need a few weeks for the engineers to run the calculations.

- Legacy intends to submit their CUP for the Planning Commission to consider during September. Because the developer did not provide site plans for NLNA to review, the org felt they didn't have enough information to consider a letter of support at this time. NLNA asked them to consider a one-month delay in order to submit the site plans to the neighborhood, so they could vote on a letter of support at the September meeting and have the vote on record prior to the Planning Commission meeting. Legacy did not commit to the delay but said they would be very happy to send the site plans to NLNA but just needed to chat with their lawyer to confirm there weren't any issues.

- There was broad opposition to the data center development by essentially all attendees and skepticism voiced by the NLNA reps. Michael Rainville was not present. I spotted at least one City Council member (Aurin Chowdhury) listening in on the Zoom call.

[BikesOnFilm]

Sounds like a bait and switch to me. Especially saying that 20MW is their “initial” plan and not the actual scale of the project they ultimately foresee.

Now I am rooting for the city council to block this and Legacy selling the property to someone else. To try and play the mixed use development card and then immediately feint with “oh we don’t know anything about that, so let us do the disruptive unpopular use today and we’ll let someone else figure that out tomorrow” reeks of bad faith.