Major redevelopment of former South Minneapolis Wells Fargo campus planned
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The Wells Fargo Home Mortgage campus. Photo: Nick Halter/Axios
A group of local investors and developers unveiled plans Monday to turn the massive former Wells Fargo Home Mortgage campus into a mixed-use community at a total cost of $100 million to $250 million.
Why it matters: This is a highly ambitious plan to finally breathe life back into the 25-acre campus vacated by Wells Fargo three years ago, when it exited the home mortgage business and consolidated employees in downtown Minneapolis.
Details: Plans call for 1,000 new housing units on existing green space at the South Minneapolis campus.
- A conversion of the historic Honeywell building in the middle of the site would be turned into residential, commercial and retail space.
- The more modern office building — which stands out on Interstate 35W — would be converted into medical offices and educational spaces.
This is not the type of development team you would expect for such a sizable undertaking. In previous years, a campus like this would be scooped up by one of the big local firms like Ryan, Opus or United Properties, but none of those is involved.
- A newly formed Minneapolis company, called Novarum Development Partners, is behind the project. The CEO is Dean Dovolis, a well-known architect and owner of DJR Architecture.
Others on the project team include Tonka Development Group, McGlynn Partners and George Group North, which is owned by former NBA player Devean George.
- George's modular construction company — based in North Minneapolis — intends to build some of the units. Modular construction is when entire apartment units are built inside a warehouse, then trucked to construction sites and stacked.
Between the lines: One thing that might explain why investors were willing to buy a large piece of land for multifamily development at a time when it's nearly impossible to pull off: There's an existing data center on the campus, which is worth big bucks.
- Dovolis said there's interest in that building for a variety of uses — perhaps as a training center or for low-volume data — but not AI. If they can generate strong revenue from that data center, it might allow them to be patient with housing development.
- Plus, the campus already has more than 4,000 parking spaces, and Wells Fargo has kept the building in good condition.
What we're watching: Dovolis said the group already closed on the acquisition last week, though the transaction and sale price were not yet public on the state's real estate filing system.
- He said developers will begin going for city approvals very soon and he expects work on the Honeywell building to begin "immediately."