business

LAKE AND KNOX APARTMENTS1724 W. LAKE STREET, MINNEAPOLIS

Units: 55

Height: Five stories, 56 feet

Size: 62,696 square feet

Developer: CPM Development

Details: Minneapolis property owners Nick Walton and Daniel Oberpriller have gotten approvals for a two-part development at a highly visible "gateway" into the Uptown neighborhood.

The pair say they intend to demolish three aging rental homes and a fourth house that has been converted to office use on the northeast corner of Lake Street and Knox Avenue S. and replace them with a 55-unit apartment building and an accompanying 9,000-square-foot office-retail structure.

The Minneapolis City Council gave final approval Friday to the projects, over the objections of two neighborhood groups that challenged the U-shaped apartment building as being too tall and contrary to the spirit of the Uptown Small Area Plan. Walton said his group reduced the planned height of the building from 66 to 56 feet in an effort to reach a compromise, and cut the number of units from 65 to 55.

The plans are meant to transform the intersection, which is the first that pedestrians and motorists encounter when heading east from Lake Calhoun into the Uptown business district. As a key transition point from the city's most popular recreational area into one of its most thriving retail zones, the Lake-Knox corner deserves to have an attractive development featuring wide sidewalks, a courtyard with a café and much-needed new rental apartments, the developers say.

Noting that other new market-rate apartment buildings in Uptown have high occupancy rates, Oberpriller said he expects that pattern to continue in the new development.

"There were intense condominium conversions in Uptown during the condo craze, and a lot of apartments disappeared," he said. "So there's still a strong interest in additional apartments in the neighborhood."

Minneapolis-based BKV Architects designed the building, which the developers say uses stepped-back massing and will pull in pedestrians to establish a better connection between the lake and the Uptown neighborhood.

Walton and Oberpriller said the project will cost $10 million, adding that, while their financing is not finalized, they have "strong interest from equity partners" and hope to launch construction in the spring.

DON JACOBSON

Don Jacobson is a freelance writer based in St. Paul. Contact him at hotproperty.startribune@gmail.com.