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Doran Cos. and CSM Corp. just broke ground on The Expo, a $100 million-plus multifamily development in Northeast Minneapolis, but the partners are already floating concepts for the rest of the site — and their ideas could be described as big, bigger and biggest.
The Expo is a 368-unit luxury apartment complex going up on what was previously a two-acre parking lot at 215 Second St. SE. Plans for the project, which began construction in mid-June, call for a 25-story tower containing 199 apartments, flanked on two sides by a six-story building with 157 apartments and 12 street-level townhomes. The Expo is expected to open in 2020.
However, the current development will only take up a quarter of the large site package food giant General Mills sold to Bloomington-based Doran and Minneapolis’ CSM in April 2017. Immediately to the east of The Expo is a 6.2 acre-site at 311 Second St. SE currently occupied by General Mills Riverside Technical Center, a research and development center built in the late 1960s.
General Mills leases the building from the Doran-CSM joint venture, but the sequel to The Expo is already underway. Next Thursday, the companies are scheduled to present five possible plans for developing the remainder of the site at a meeting of the Planning Commission Committee of the Whole.
The proposed buildings outlined in the upcoming project narrative range from six- to 30-stories tall, which would surpass The Expo in height and further alter the Minneapolis skyline.
The project concepts are as follows:
Concept A: Two Separate, Six-Story Developments, Divided by a Private Street.
Concept B: Two Developments Consisting of a 12-Story, Midrise Building, Partially Encircled by Six-Story Structure.
Concept C: Two Developments (much like The Expo) Consisting of Two Towers, 25- to 30-Stories in Height, Flanked by Low-rise, Six-Story Bildings.
Concept D: Similar to Option C, but Footprint of Tower on East Side of Block will be Scaled Down to Make Room for a Separate Building with 100 to 150 Units of Affordable Housing.
Concept E: Scaled-down Version of Concept D with a Six-Story Development on West Side of Block and Another Tower on the East Side Flanked by a Six-Story Structure, and an Affordable Housing Component.
Doran declined to comment on the master plan ahead of its planning commission presentation. Executives at CSM were not immediately available for comment.
