Rendering of the 75,000-square-foot facility at 9200 75th Ave. N. in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
Credit: Scannell Properties
A company that specializes in upgrading battle tanks and other armored vehicles has signed on to be the tenant at a new facility in Brooklyn Park, a suburb north of Minneapolis that is in the midst of an industrial building boom.
NAPCO International plans to move from its current home in Hopkins to a $5.6 million, 75,000-square-foot warehouse and office building at 9200 75th Ave. N., to be constructed by Indianapolis-based developer Scannell Properties, according to materials presented to the Brooklyn Park Economic Development Authority on Monday.
The next step is to submit an application for job creation funds to the state of Minnesota.
If successful, NAPCO would be the sole tenant, said Erik Hansen, economic development and housing director for the city.
The company, which caters to foreign militaries, has 51 employees and banked about $45 million in annual sales, according to its application for job creation funds from the state. All but $81,000 of that total came from outside Minnesota.
NAPCO is currently located at 11055 Excelsior Blvd. in Hopkins, Minnesota.
Its new building would go up on an 8.2-acre stretch of land that is one of the last remaining vacant sites in the Northland Interstate Business Center. The land was platted in 1996 but has gone undeveloped due to poor soil conditions, which will require about $500,000 to correct, according to Scannell, which is asking the city for $450,000 in tax increment financing (TIF).
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Scannell, which paid $240,451 for the site in late 2017, says the project would not be economically viable otherwise.
Hansen said that other developers have attempted to build on the site without success.
“This is the third proposal we’ve had for this land in three-and-a-half years,” Hansen said. “It probably has to do with this being the last site in Northland Business Center to be developed. The substandard soil removed from the other project sites was likely deposited there.”
The ground is wet and mossy, not contaminated, Hansen said, but to make it stable enough to support the building Scannell will have to excavate much of the site and replace the damp dirt with hardier materials.
Nevertheless, the spot is a desirable one, Hansen said. It is well connected to public transit and sits just off the intersection of Interstate 94 and Highway 169. Most important, it was priced low enough to accommodate a smaller, single-tenant building in a market that is regularly sprouting industrial buildings of 250,000 square feet or more.
“It was one of the few spots where the land values made sense for a project of this size,” Hansen said. “That’s getting harder to find.”
If all goes according to plan, Scannell will begin earthwork this September, Hansen said, with the hope of completing the building by the end of 2019.
Once installed in Northland, NAPCO plans to add 18 full-time employees over three years’ time.
Neither NAPCO nor Scannell could be reached for comment.
The leasing agents are Mark Sims and Noam Newman of Cushman & Wakefield’s Minneapolis office. A spokesman for Cushman & Wakefield said that interest in leasing at the facility is high but otherwise could not comment on the matter.
