Real estate notebook: Update on some downtown Minneapolis apartments

Two updates on previously announced downtown Minneapolis apartment projects:

Dallas-based Invesco has joined Ryan Cos. and Excelsior Group, both of the Twin Cities as an investor in three apartment projects that are part of the Downtown East project that Ryan initiated near the new Vikings stadium.

There will be 195 apartments in the three buildings. Two will sit at the base of the twin 18-story Wells Fargo towers, facing south along S. 4th Street between 5th Avenue and Park Avenue. A third will be on 5th Avenue S. between 4th and 5th streets at the edge of the Commons, a two-block park that runs up to the stadium.

Public records show that Invesco paid Ryan Cos. nearly $7 million for the land on which the apartments are now being built. The apartments are being called "Edition," in a nod to the former owner of the land, the Star Tribune.

Ryan and Excelsior previously worked together on the 222 Hennepin luxury apartments and Whole Foods store. Ryan and its partners recently sold that project for $109 million.

Separately, Twin Cities-based Sherman Associates sold its recently completed Paxon apartment project in the North Loop to Clarion Partners, a New York firm, for $38.75 million.

Sherman built the 140-unit Paxon at the corner of 1st Street and 4th Avenue N. on the site of a stalled condo development called the Reserve. In 2003, Chicago-based Bejco called it quits on the project after several attempts to get approval.

Jim Buchta