Type: Mixed use, apartments/office

Apartment units: About 150

Office: 10,000 square feet

Developer: Bader Development

Architect: DJR Architecture

Details: Bader Development is laying the groundwork for its next project in St. Louis Park, which would mix housing and office space in the Triangle neighborhood along Hwy. 7.

The company, also based in St. Louis Park, has built 190 new housing units there in recent years with its mixed-use Ellipse on Excelsior and its second phase, e2. Now, it is buying and building in one of oldest parts of the city.

According to plans submitted to the city, Bader has agreed to buy the distinctive, round, 1950s-era building at 3907 Hwy. 7 known as ASAP Printing, as well as the neighboring Battlefield military antiques and bookstore. Those structures, as well as two single-family homes and a three-unit townhouse, would be demolished to make way for a housing-office project bounded by the Hwy. 7 frontage road, France Avenue, Glenhurst Avenue and 31st Street.

The apartment building would have about 150 units, including a yet-to-be-determined number of affordable units, with about 10,000 square feet of first-floor office space. Parking would be underground. The designs from DJR Architecture include stepped-back upper floors and walk-up units fronting France Avenue and 31st Street.

City planners said the ASAP building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright protégé James R. Dresser, could have been eligible for a listing on the National Register of Historic Places if ASAP had pursued it.

 

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