Vail, CO-based Solaris Redevelopment Corp. is poised to start work on its first project in Minneapolis, a 300,000-square-foot, six-story building in the city’s burgeoning North Loop neighborhood.
The sleek black building will house 156 market-rate apartments and 22,000 square feet of retail space surrounding a public plaza. It will rise on a one-acre site at 128 N. Second St., a half-block chunk of land that has long been used for surface parking.
The developer secured a $41.4 million construction loan from Minneapolis-based Dougherty Funding in late May, according to a mortgage document filed with Hennepin County.
Richfield, MN-based Weis Builders is scheduled to start construction in early July, said Sharon Cohn, president of Solaris. Cohn declined to disclose the total development cost.
Plans for the site and others immediately adjacent to it have gone through several iterations over the last two years.
Until now, Twin Cities business publications have associated Howard Bergerud with the property. Cohn said on Friday that Bergerud did assemble the land for the company but is not the developer.
“The site was brought to us [by Bergerud],” Cohn said, adding that Solaris purchased the site in October 2016. “It’s an amazing property in an amazing area.”
Sales documents show that Solaris bought the property for about $7.4 million from entities tied to two individuals.
For his part, Bergerud said Thursday that Solaris has been involved in the project since “the beginning,” but could not be reached for further clarification.
Solaris is a boutique development company that was founded by Peter Knobel, an ex-New Yorker who made his fortune in East Coast real estate and telecommunications, according to multiple articles about him. When contacted, Knobel referred all questions to Cohn.
Solaris is known for a major redevelopment in its hometown: In 2010, the company finished work on a 500,000-square-foot mixed-use complex in Vail – The Solaris Residences, a luxury living complex, and The Shops at Solaris Plaza.
The Shops include a plaza that can be used as an ice rink in winter and a recreation area in summer, a three-screen movie theater, and a bowling alley. Retail tenants there include a furrier, a shop specializing in cashmere, and a sushi restaurant run by celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa, who is described by Eater as “the culinary world’s Madonna.”
Cohn was not yet ready to talk about who may fill up the retail roster for Solaris’ debut project in Minneapolis, but said the company hopes to bring something new to the market, an ambition reflected in the building’s design.
For the past year, Solaris has been working with Minneapolis-based Snow Kreilich Architects on the project. The firm’s design principal and partner, Matt Kreilich, said he and Cohn had an instantaneous rapport when it came to matters of taste.
“They are a very unique developer in that [Cohn] and Solaris really care about the aesthetics. They didn’t want to do what everyone else is doing,” Kreilich said on Monday.
Solaris’ brick and metal clad building will be a minimalist and restrained structure, that pays subtle tribute to the North Loop’s industrial past, Kreilich said. The team opted to use small number of building materials and a limited color palette.
“Recently [Minneapolis] has seen new construction that uses lots of different building materials, so that the end result is kind of a collage,” Kreilich said. “We wanted our project to stand out. It’s going to be sophisticated and elegant.”
Like many apartment buildings in the North Loop, it will have a rooftop deck for residents, he said, but the centerpiece of the development will be the public space on the ground floor.
“The site sits on this alleyway and we’re going to use the courtyard space as a portal that connects it and the sidewalk, which will cut through the building and give it an open and porous feel,” Kreilich said. “The design is intended to blur the public and private realm. We think it will be the new heart of North Loop.”
The building is on a 16-month construction schedule, Cohn said.
