Mankato’s historic Ardent Mills plant shuts down

Ardent Mills has shut down its historic facility in Mankato, a company representative said.

“We are no longer operating the mill as of today,” Kelley Kaiser, a spokeswoman for the Denver-based company, said on Thursday.

Some employees will remain at the site to decommission equipment and clean the mill, but the company considers the facility closed, Kaiser said in an email.

Visitors driving into downtown Mankato are greeted by the plant’s 135-foot-tall grain silos, which feature a gigantic mural of dancing Native American children.

The company is exploring “options for the future of the property with the city, including how best to honor its history and the significance of the mural,” Kaiser said.

The company said in November that it was closing the Mankato mill because of difficult market conditions “driven by excess capacity in this market and declining regional volume.”

The mill employed about 44 people at the time. Some of those employees transferred to other jobs in the company, and the company is hosting career fairs for other former employees, Kaiser said.

Among the discussions has been how to protect the historical building known as Mill A, Jessica Potter, director of the Blue Earth County Historical Society, said in December.

The mill in Mankato dates back to 1878, when it began milling wheat into flour using grindstones, according to a history on the Ardent Mills website.

The first telephone in Blue Earth County was installed in the mill in early 1880, linking the plant to Mankato’s City Hall, the website said. The mill also helped Mankato residents in 1908 when it shared clean water from its private wells during a typhoid epidemic.