Northeast Minneapolis artist, metal fabricator and architectural signmaker Ben Janssens is best known for his big public art installations and his eye-catching marquees adorning some of the Twin Cities' trendiest restaurants.

But there's a more prosaic side to Janssens and his business SignMinds. Janssens is aiming to enhance his portfolio of projects with the purchase of a 104-year-old commercial storefront last month on Central Avenue in northeast Minneapolis — a building that also has become his new family home.

Janssens, 34, bought the two-story space at 2544 Central Av. NE. in July for $195,000, making a bet on a part of the city that had long suffered from neglect and high vacancies and is now seeing a wave of new energy and re­investment. He plans to use the first-floor space to create a walk-in retail presence and design studio for his business, which for five years has operated out of an industrial shop at 1400 Quincy St. NE. At the same time, he'll be fulfilling a dream to establish a true live-work lifestyle by renovating and moving into the upstairs apartments with his wife, J'Von Sims, and two sons, ages 15 and 11.

"Putting a space in here will give us a better place to meet with clients, and a bit of a showroom," he said. "It will also put kind of a focus on some of the smaller stuff we do, such as business cards, postcards, fliers, T-shirts, banners, posters and large-format printing."

That everyday element of SignMinds is easy to miss when visiting its Quincy Street shop, which is filled with larger-than-life fabricated metal art and signage projects. In one part of the shop is a huge new sign for a St. Paul shopping center, disassembled into pieces and stacked high, while another spot features a sheet metal sculpture that will serve as a logo and sign for a North Loop residential loft building.

Janssens has made a name for his company and himself as an artist with those kinds of attention-grabbing commercial efforts. His illuminated signage portfolio includes marquees for the Bulldog Northeast Restaurant and Bar, the SoHo Lofts, the Chatterbox Pub in St. Paul's Highland Park, Hell's Kitchen Restaurant, the Acadia Cafe and the Wedge food co-op.

He has an ongoing business relationship with Minneapolis developer Peter Remes, and among his most recent works is an illuminated smokestack at Remes' building, the Broadway, a former mattress factory at Broadway and Central avenues that is now home to the 612 Brew brewpub.

Janssens also is heavily involved in public art projects. Two years ago he teamed with landscape architect Marjorie Pitz to create a Metro Transit bus shelter in north Minneapolis that in reality is a work of sculpture art called "Blossoms of Hope," made up of five aluminum flowers in primary colors rising over a shelter designed to look like a flowerpot.

The two are working together again to produce the public art elements for the city's renovation of a 10-block-long stretch of Nicollet Avenue south of Lake Street.

But while his noisy and bustling Quincy Street fabrication shop has been perfect for those big projects, Janssens said it's not the best for generating walk-in traffic or providing the right atmosphere for creative designers — thus his expansion to Central Avenue.

"It's a ton of work to move into a building like this, and I wasn't really ready for a move, but I felt I had to jump on the offer," he said. "I've always been a fan of the live-work situation. I'll still be working predominantly out of my other shop for fabrication, but the fact that I'll have a full-service design studio downstairs from my residence is going to be nice."

Don Jacobson is a St. Paul-based freelance writer and former editor of the Minnesota Real Estate Journal. He has covered Twin Cities commercial real estate for about a decade.