Type: Mixed use, apartments and retail

Units: 60

Size: 100,000 square feet

Developer: Confluence Development

Architect: 292 Design Group

Details: The long-planned transformation of a former manufacturing plant along the Mississippi River into a mixed-use showpiece is near final approval.

The Hastings City Council is scheduled to vote Nov. 16 on the final plat, special use permits and the development agreement that would let local businessman Pat Regan's Confluence Development buy the onetime H.D. Hudson Manufacturing building from the city and rehabilitate it into a $22 million downtown destination.

Plans submitted by Regan and his partner, City Properties Group of Louisville, Ky., call for the 100,000-square-foot building — just southwest of the rebuilt Hwy. 61 bridge — to be converted into 60 units of market-rate apartments and a 20,250-square-foot retail-and-event space.

The city's Planning Commission last month signed off on a lengthy list of key approvals, including a purchase agreement with Confluence in which the developer is to buy the property for $1. The increased subsequent tax revenue generated by the development will be captured and used to pay off the city's original $3 million purchase of the property in 2010.

Built in phases between 1909 and 1945, the "backward F"-shaped building is the last remnant of what was once a buzzing riverfront industrial district in Hastings. Two later additions, built in 1966 and 1974, have already been demolished.

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