Now being built, office tower at the Mall of America is getting intense interest

The 10-story office tower rising at the Mall of America is the first a developer has risked building in the Twin Cities since the 2008 recession. The gamble already looks like it will pay off.

The mall's owner, Canadian-based Triple Five Group, is hearing from so many potential occupants that it may be able to be selective about who gets in.

"We are really trying to focus on tenants who will bring guests in to stay at our hotels, shop at our stores, eat at our restaurants, use our event space," said Kurt Hagen, the Triple Five executive in charge of development. "We are adding office space to feed the mother ship."

Among the firms interested in the building, which for now is being called the Offices @ MOA, are a company that would single-handedly swallow the entire space, another that would occupy at least four floors and many others with smaller space needs that, together, would fill the building.

The attachment of premier office space to a shopping mall is common in many parts of the world, but it's seen less in the U.S., and the Mall of America's project is the first in Minnesota.

A growing thirst for top-of-the-line office space, improved public infrastructure and shifting values about work culture are making it possible.

"When it comes to speculative office development, there has been none, zero, in the Twin Cities since the recession," said Tyler Allen, a Cassidy Turley research analyst. "The office market is doing well, but this site is just unique in so many ways."

"Companies are trying to capitalize by making an amenity-rich environment that attracts and retains employees," said Dan Gleason, executive director of brokerage services for Cushman & Wakefield/NorthMarq, which is in charge of finding tenants for the mall's office building. "That's the flight to quality we are seeing."

A transit-friendly location is increasingly important to companies, as is the ability to brand oneself through an office environment.

"The Mall of America really offers all of these," Gleason said. "It's an urban environment in a suburban location."

The first three floors of the tower will be dedicated to retail, while the top seven will be offices. Construction began earlier this year on the retail space and its steel frame is now in place. Just last week, the developer received a construction permit with the city of Bloomington for the rest of the tower.

Each floor has 26,000 square feet and 9½-foot ceilings. Floor-to-ceiling windows will offer views of downtown Minneapolis, St. Paul, the airport and the Minnesota River Valley.

"I think the perception, and I would call it my own, is that you think about the traffic that occurs as a retail hub," Gleason said. "But when you think about it, the peak traffic hours there are evenings and weekends, and that's opposite of the office hours, which are 8 to 5 on weekdays."

There are 13,000 free covered parking spaces on mall grounds, and it will be the only suburban office space with direct light-rail access.

Herb Tousley, director of the real estate program at the University of St. Thomas, said all of these amenities make the speculative project marketable.

"If it wasn't going to be at the Mall of America I would think building a speculative project out in the suburbs would've been a risky business," he said.

"I think that they are betting on the fact that the mall is such an intense center of gravity in terms of economic activity that they're going to get people who want to be in that building," Tousley said. "Tenants that would benefit from close proximity to the airport, you could bring people in from out of town and they could jump on the light rail and come over for meetings and everything else."

"The original plans for the mall included office towers and hotel towers adjacent to the mall," said Bloomington Mayor Gene Winstead. "It was always part of the plan going forward. It has just taken a decade-plus to get it caught up to the original vision."

A major roadblock to that vision was the physical road itself. Lindau Lane, which ran on the north side of the mall, had to be routed below grade to allow expansion of the mall in that direction.

"When you develop at this density, you are tremendously dependent on infrastructure in a way that public entities hadn't anticipated," Hagen said. "We had to move the road, so we had to have the political will."

The city of Bloomington gave preliminary approval in both 2006 and 2013 for an additional 5.6 million square feet of development at the Mall of America, adding to the original 4.2 million square feet. The city also authorized $34 million in tax-increment financing for construction of a 600-space underground parking garage and other related improvements that will be shared by office, hotel and retail users.

"There's been a lot of investment in that area recently — with the light rail, the Lindau Lane corridor and all the development popping up along that spine," said Schane Rudlang, administrator for the Bloomington Port Authority, which coordinates commercial and industrial development in the city.

"Obviously, when the Mall of America opened it was just a shopping and entertainment district. But now you have some high-class hotels, the addition of full-service conference facilities and nice restaurants," Gleason said. "So, I think it was a natural next step to add the office. I think it will really complement those components well."