business

643 N. 5TH STREET

Minneapolis

Type: Redevelopment

Size: 88,000 square feet

Owner: Northern Auto Parts

Listed Price: $1.15 million

Details: The North Loop area around the Target Field transit hub and the new ballpark is scattered with older industrial buildings whose owners are looking for buyers interested in redeveloping them into transit-oriented developments.

But, because of a lending climate colder than a windswept February day on the prairie and a lack of demand from office users, the vast majority of the properties remain on the block, despite their potential to tap the synergies of the new ballpark and its transit hub.

One such property is the Northern Auto Parts building on N. 5th Street, just a little more than a block behind Target Field's third-base line, adjacent to a new Holiday Stationstore at the corner of 5th Street and 6th Avenue N. The 88,000-square-foot, 115-year-old structure sits on a 1.4-acre lot amid a gritty streetscape of nondescript, one-story industrial buildings.

After many years of serving as a bakery warehouse and more recently as an auto parts distribution center, its owner has hired Magnum Real Estate Services to find a buyer willing to pay $1.15 million to acquire the site and redevelop it -- perhaps as a company headquarters or a mixed-use development that would include housing for homeowners or renters seeking to take advantage of the light-rail, commuter-rail and bus-transit hub at Target Field.

Magnum sales and leasing associate Josh Floring said he has worked with Minneapolis city planning officials to make sure that any buyer's goals would comport with the uses envisioned in the city's North Loop Master Plan. That document foresees a moderately dense, mixed-use future for the "Freeway West" district, ideally with new buildings that are five to 13 stories high.

Given the tight lending climate and the abundance of vacant space for office tenants, Floring said the most likely buyer of a parcel such as his wouldn't be a real estate developer or investor who'd need to find office tenants but rather a corporate "owner-user."

"It's hard to find the bank financing out there to build new multi-tenant offices in this current market, and there's so much 'shadow space' in existing buildings that it's more likely a buyer would be an owner-user, a company that has outgrown its space, needs to be near downtown and has the income to finance something," he said.

DON JACOBSON

Don Jacobson, a freelance writer based in St. Paul, can be contacted at hotproperty.startribune@gmail.com.