The Twin Cities Salvation Army received an unusual and unexpected year-end donation: an entire downtown St. Paul office building — the largest real estate donation to the nonprofit in recent history.
Basir Tareen, of Tareen Development Partners in Roseville, and Nick Walton, of Reuter Walton Development in St. Louis Park, donated the Gallery Professional Building, a former medical office building, last month. The Salvation Army is planning to move some offices into the building at 17 W. Exchange St., but it's too early for the organization to announce plans for most of the eight-story structure.
Adding more transitional or permanent affordable housing is a possibility, said Maj. Scott Shelbourn, who leads the Twin Cities unit of the Salvation Army Northern Division, which includes Minnesota and North Dakota. Such housing is urgently needed, especially in St. Paul, he said. It would be the nonprofit's largest permanent affordable housing downtown.
"This property could possibly be a very good way for us … to help people get on their feet," he said. "Our beds are constantly full because there is a demand out there."
The real estate firms bought the 108,277-square-foot building in 2021 and planned to convert it into affordable housing. But Tareen said rising construction costs, high interest rates and the pressing need to help a growing number of homeless adults prompted them to donate the building instead.
"There's this huge need, but we don't know anything about running a homeless shelter," he said. "And my 10-year-old said why don't you just donate it to someone who does."
While the firms could have sold the building for more money, Tareen said the two families behind the firms decided together to make a difference for Minnesotans living without a home.
"It sort of checked a lot of boxes. It did something good. We realized that was probably the greater need," he said. But developing affordable housing "was going to be much more of a challenge ... It was a win-win on many fronts."
