Erin Fitzgerald launches Minneapolis Renaissance Coalition

Anybody want to buy a skyscraper? There’s never been a better time. The Wells Fargo Center on Seventh Street—third-tallest tower in downtown Minneapolis—is on the market and could sell for little more than a Malibu mega-mansion at around $120 million, down from its $314 million purchase price in 2019. In St. Paul, your lowball offer on the First National Bank Building would likely be seriously considered—Madison Equities, the city’s largest property owner, put its entire portfolio of six downtown office buildings up for sale this spring.

Erin Fitzgerald, a senior director with JLL commercial real estate, firmly believes there are buyers out there with the courage to take on a transformation, but they need to be sold on doing it in Minneapolis. “They need a story,” she says. So Fitzgerald formed the Minneapolis Renaissance Coalition to “reimagine what’s possible for Downtown Minneapolis.” 

Didn’t know about this group? Me neither, until I heard Fitzgerald speak at architecture firm Gensler’s 2024 Design Forecast Live Twin Cities event in May. She was joined by R.T. Rybak, who leads the Minneapolis Foundation, which issued its vision for the future of downtown back in December. 

Both plans have a lot of merit, and exciting, seemingly doable ideas. But after serving on a planning committee for the Minneapolis Downtown Council’s Vision 2035 and witnessing firsthand an abundance of creative ideas get whittled into one fairly generic report (that I haven’t heard a peep about since our last meeting in February), I worry that we are becoming the land of 10,000 visions—without enough to show for it.

Fitzgerald says that’s exactly why she took her concerns to Mayor Jacob Frey, who, she says, encouraged her to help. The Minneapolis Renaissance Coalition built on Rybak’s theme of thinking about downtown as neighborhood “villages.” They evaluated said villages against three criteria: 

• Highest concentration of buildings facing mortgage default

• Highest concentration of buildings available for conversion

• Highest crime areas

From that, they set their sights on the Warehouse District as most ripe for revitalization. The city agrees—Minneapolis recently announced a $30 million reconstruction of First Avenue North into a more pedestrian-friendly corridor from Washington Avenue to North Eighth Street. Planning is underway, but the work isn’t likely to begin for another four years. Meanwhile, the Renaissance Coalition plans to get moving on smaller projects that could be completed relatively quickly and inexpensively, like a dog park and a skate park. The idea, Fitzgerald says, is to give developers the confidence to invest in the neighborhood. She thinks it can be done by finding underwriters—the Ryan Cos. Skate Park, perhaps? The larger goal is to make the Warehouse District downtown’s entertainment hub, drawing new attractions like a food hall and a speakeasy. 

“When cities need to be revitalized, what leads the way, historically, is entertainment,” Fitzgerald says. “The North Loop is maxed out. The Warehouse District could support more retail, residential, and office conversions.”  

The Renaissance Coalition calls itself a public-private partnership. Now 150 members strong, most come from the commercial real estate industry. And while it seems like their efforts could be a reaction to a lack of action from other downtown stakeholders, Fitzgerald says the coalition is working in partnership with the city and the Minneapolis Downtown Council. The group’s other big initiative is policy-related, lobbying for tax credits and incentives for conversion of underutilized buildings.

One cautionary note on the calls for conversion: a Gensler study of 1,300 buildings in cities across North America found that only 25% were suitable candidates to be transformed from office to residential. At the Design Forecast event, Sheryl Schulze, Gensler’s  global lead of building transformation and adaptive reuse, said we’re going to have to get comfortable with changing skylines. Not all rundown buildings will survive the current disruption, and in some cases, new construction could be cheaper, and more sustainable. 

But there are encouraging examples right in downtown Minneapolis, like the Northstar Center on Second Avenue, which is being transformed into a mixed-use project with apartments, office, and indoor/outdoor events space. It’s slated to open later this year. One of the more interesting ideas Schulze proposed is more senior housing in the downtown core—what a great way to make use of those skyways and create access for folks who might be reticent to go out in winter weather.

I left the event feeling hopeful—grateful that so many smart people care about this city and inspired by the creative visions for a downtown we’ll all want to use. Now let’s make it happen.