Biz beat: Former Burnsville Menards store fills with new businesses

A long-vacant building in Burnsville that once housed a Menards store has a new owner that already has begun redeveloping the property.

A business entity of Green Bay, Wis.-based Fairchild Equipment paid $3 million for the 116,000-square-foot property at 3100 W. Hwy. 13, according to a listing from the CoStar Group. The building is on a site adjacent to a larger store that Menards now occupies.

Gary Fairchild said his business, which sells and leases construction and material handling equipment, will occupy most of the space once renovations are complete early next year. Fairchild said the company has an outlet in Ham Lake, but had long been interested finding a location in the south metro.

Durham School Services, the school bus provider for the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District, moved into renovated space in the building in October, Fairchild said. A NAPA Auto Parts outlet also has signed a lease and will move into its space in May.

Fairchild said he's looking for tenants for the remaining space, about 11,000 square feet.

Saks outlet store heading to Eagan

The developers of a high-end retail outlet center in Eagan have announced the first anchor tenant.

Construction of the shopping center is scheduled to begin next year and be completed in 2014. Plans call for about 100 shops in six buildings facing each other around an open-air pedestrian concourse. Paragon's centers typically feature such upscale brands as Saks, Barneys New York, Brooks Brothers, Guess and Coach. The center also would have a food court with six to eight fast-food outlets.

Planned trampoline park moves to Burnsville

The operators of an indoor trampoline park have shifted plans for the facility from Mendota Heights to Burnsville.

Curt Skallerup, the founder of Altitude Trampoline Parks, said he has finalized a lease for an 18,000-square-foot park in Burnhaven Mall and hopes to open it in April. He previously was working to lease a comparable amount of space in an 87,000-square-foot industrial building in Mendota Heights. The City Council last month approved a conditional use permit for the park at 2250 Pilot Knob Road.

The Burnsville park will be smaller than one Skallerup plans to open in suburban Dallas in February but will have similar features, like floor-to-wall trampolines and foam pits for tumbling.

Lofton Label, an Inver Grove Heights manufacturer of customized product labels, labeling equipment and packaging, recently announced new top management.

Micheal Lane, who joined the company in 2010 as a senior vice president of sales and marketing, has been named chief executive officer.

Before joining Lofton, Lane had been a senior executive at Minnetonka-based Cargill, Inc. for 27 years.

Mike Gaughan has been appointed executive vice president of manufacturing. Steve Braun, Bill Feany and Luther Galchutt have been named vice presidents.

Founded in 1978, Lofton has annual sales of about $20 million and has 80 employees at its 70,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Inver Grove Heights.