City Approves Expansion for $150M Office Plan

Building B, at seven stories and 260,000 sf, was completed in June and is being fully leased to Cargill for rates that are close to $16 to $17 per sf. In February of this year, IVG Institutional Funds GmbH bought the facility from Opus, before completion, for about $50.3 million.

Cargill also plans to lease the 268,000-sf Building A that's now under construction by Opus. "It got a little goofy, us completing Building B before Building A," says Tom Shaver, VP for real estate for Opus. He says Opus will likely sell Building A as well, and hopes to get more than $50 million for it.

In another twist, Cargill bought the property for Building C, and is having Opus build the facility that Cargill will own. Shaver says it's likely that the third building will be worth the same as what IVG paid, and that the complex is worth more than $150 million. "I don't' know if Cargill will sell Building C when it's complete," he says. "I know they're moving up their plans. Building C had a projected completion date of 2013, and now they're asking us to deliver by March 2010."

Cargill says taking the total complex will help consolidate offices throughout the Twin Cities area. "Decades ago, we outgrew our office center in the Minneapolis suburb of Wayzata and started renting space in other office buildings," a company spokesman tells GlobeSt.com. "We needed a second world-class office complex. This location was chosen for many reasons, among them the fact that our demographic data shows its almost perfectly central to where most of our employees live."

Shaver tells GlobeSt.com that he knew that Cargill would want another building, but didn't expect it to want so much more space. "It was a big surprise; I know that they are moving here because of expansion and organic growth, but I thing the latter came sooner than expected," he says. "This market is doing well if a major driver such as Cargill can leave 220,000 sf and take down more than 800,000."