The Minnesota Star Tribune announced last week that it plans to shut down and sell its North Loop printing plant later this year and move production to an Iowa facility owned by USA Today publisher Gannett. The final locally-made edition will roll off the presses in late December. 

It’s a bittersweet if inevitable development for Minnesota’s media industry, which has digitized relentlessly since the 1990s, and difficult news for the roughly 125 plant employees who’ll lose their jobs in the transition. 

But for the North Loop and nearby communities on either side of the Mississippi River, the Strib’s decision to offload the 13-acre Heritage plant is a chance for the neighborhood “to think outside the box,” North Loop Neighborhood Association Vice President David Crary said in an interview.

“If you think big enough, it could be a really transformational site,” he said.

Graco Part 2?

The same could be said for Graco’s 40-acre manufacturing campus across and just up the river from the Heritage plant. In May, Graco said it would wind down operations at the Riverside plant by the end of 2027, closing the books on 80 years of near-continuous activity there.

The Star Tribune plant is about one-third the size of the Graco plant, limiting the scale of any eventual redevelopment. But that’s still plenty big for an ambitious, possibly multi-phase project — and the city sounds optimistic that something could happen soon after the Star Tribune vacates the property. 

“At this time, the City is not aware of any specific future plans for the property but would refer any potential buyers to the 2040 Comprehensive Plan and zoning guidelines, which would allow for either a redevelopment or reuse of the site,” Minneapolis city spokesperson Jess Olstad said in an email. “Because of recent updates to City regulations that support residential conversions, an adaptive reuse project could move forward very quickly when the time comes.”

Minneapolis officials’ openness to residential conversion clashes with the city enterprise’s apparent preference for the Graco site. 

Minneapolis Director of Community Planning and Economic Development Erik Hansen told Downtown Voices in August that “the expectation right now” is for the Graco site to remain industrial.

“Production and processing land is at a premium in the city,” he said, referring to zoning districts that permit certain types of industrial use. “It is important to have those kinds of jobs in Minneapolis proper.”

Hansen’s “expectation” is at odds with comments from Ward 3 Council Member Michael Rainville, who told The Northeaster in June that he’d like to see a walkable, mixed-use neighborhood replace the Graco site. In contrast, the City and North Loop neighborhood representatives — Crary, at least — seem to be on the same page.

“The North Loop is losing its industrial and transitioning to retail, entertainment and housing,” Crary said. The only other significant industrial site remaining in the North Loop is the Hennepin County Energy Recovery Center, the hulking trash incinerator and power plant near Target Field that Mayor Jacob Frey wants to close by 2027.

“Our position on the garbage burner is when and if it closes, it be repurposed for other than industrial use. I think we’d have the same feeling on the Star Tribune plant,” he said, adding that the North Loop Neighborhood Association had not yet taken an official position on the issue.

‘Let’s think bigger than industrial’

Official position or not, Crary said the North Loop Neighborhood Association has a message for prospective developers: “Come to us and talk to us and we’ll figure out how to make it work for the North Loop. We’re open to everything.”

They may not have to wait long.

“What I can say at this point is that we’ve seen tremendous interest in the space since making the announcement,” Minnesota Star Tribune Vice President for Brand and Communications Chris Iles said in an email.

The company plans to “finalize a broker relationship over the next couple weeks before we start to market the property in earnest,” he added.

Olstad said Mayor Frey would meet soon with Star Tribune publisher Steve Grove to discuss the site’s future.

Two local real estate brokers told Twin Cities Business last week that housing-anchored redevelopment was the site’s most likely future. 

“It’s the biggest opportunity the North Loop has seen or will see,” Brent Robertson, managing director and market lead for JLL, said to Adam Platt, the magazine’s executive editor. But Robertson told Platt there’s an outside chance of something truly transformational coming to the Heritage site or the Graco property nearby: a long-promised new arena for Minnesota’s professional basketball teams.

Both properties are far larger than the 3.5 acres occupied by Target Center, a notoriously cramped arena criticized for its odd design, lack of premium seating and underutilized upper deck. 

Earlier this year, Star Tribune owner Glen Taylor sold his majority stake in the Lynx and Wolves to entrepreneur Marc Lore and former MLB titan Alex Rodriguez. The new owners want to keep the teams in Minnesota but have made no secret of their intention to relocate to a more spacious location. While moving out to the suburbs is a possibility, sites in or near downtown — including the Minneapolis Riverfront Post Office, the area south of U.S. Bank Stadium and the Minneapolis Farmer’s Market district — have come in for the most intense speculation over the past year.

At the moment, both the farmer’s market and stadium areas have better road and transit access than the soon-to-be-former printing plant, which Robertson said could put the kibosh on a major entertainment redevelopment there. 

Whatever happens at the plant, it’s likely to change the character of the northern North Loop for good. On Reddit, one local suggested “daylighting” Bassett Creek, which tunnels under 8th Ave. N near the site’s southeastern boundary on its way to the Mississippi. Another floated the idea of “greenwayifying” the rail spur that runs along the site’s western edge and connects to a Canadian Pacific Kansas City trackway north of Plymouth Avenue. (As of press time, a CPKC spokesperson had not provided on-the-record comments about the spur’s ownership status or possible future.)

And a suitably ambitious redevelopment could also pull in underutilized sites nearby, Crary said. Across 2nd Ave. N, the Star Tribune owns at least three parcels totaling more than two acres. A long-vacant parcel at the southeastern corner of Plymouth Ave. and 2nd Ave. N is technically contiguous with the Heritage site, though the train tracks effectively separate the two.

“This could be a really dynamic area, which is why we’re saying, let’s think bigger than industrial,” he said.