Star Tribune
Former Sears store at Burnsville Center declared hazardous building
Burnsville city officials have declared the vacant former Sears store at Burnsville Center a hazardous building, citing nonfunctional sprinkler and fire alarm systems and only a metal gate separating the empty store from the rest of the mall.
Sears was one of the south metro mall’s anchors until it closed in 2017. The company has dramatically downsized in recent years, closing hundreds of stores over the last two decades and declaring bankruptcy in 2018.
Should a fire start at the old Sears building, “Smoke would propagate to the mall in a heartbeat. That’s a huge problem,” said said BJ Jungmann, Burnsville’s fire chief.
Typically, water from the sprinkler system would trip the fire alarm, but the city hasn’t seen documentation that those systems are working. That means the fire department wouldn’t be notified if a fire started.
As a result of the city’s declaration, officials from Seritage — the real estate arm of Sears — have 30 days from the day they receive the resolution to fix the building’s issues. If they don’t, city officials can enter the building and make repairs, Jungmann said.
“We don’t know what the corrective solution is just because we haven’t been in there,” Jungmann said.
Seritage should have someone actively patrolling the building — on “fire watch” — if those systems aren’t working, he said.
Seritage officials haven’t been communicating with the city lately, Jungmann said. Several months ago, company officials said the problems would be fixed in three weeks but the city hasn’t heard from them since.
“It’s left us with really no option but to go to this point,” Jungmann said.
The building’s foundation may no longer be safe, he said, in which case the city could eventually get permission to demolish it.
“We’re basically babysitting their problem,” said City Council member Dan Kealey. “They’ve let it go.”
The problem’s root
The building’s current woes began in late December 2022 when its sprinkler system’s main pipe froze and cracked, sending thousands of gallons of water gushing into the store. The leak was under control by that evening, Jungmann said.
Sears had only intermittent heat during the winter months, city officials said.
Burnsville Center manager Kevin Eisenhut said a frozen pipe in the vacant Gordman’s store also broke that same week.
“Between the two [stores], we lost 300,000 gallons of water,” he said.
Eisenhut said he believes the building is structurally fine, but he doesn’t know what maintenance has been completed there. The store tested negative for mold, he said.
He hopes a new buyer will come in and revitalize the old Sears space. Last fall, it was temporarily home to a textbook distributor, he said.
Kealey, however, said he believes there may be mold and mildew lingering inside the property. The city would like to see it demolished, he said, which would create enough space to extend Aldrich Avenue, a local road.
“That would be the ideal scenario,” he said.
Seritage did not respond to a call seeking comment.
Other tenants respond
Burnsville Center was nearly empty Wednesday, except for a trickle of customers visiting open stores like J.C. Penney’s, Macy’s, a Victoria’s Secret and two vision centers.
The mall, owned by Kohan Retail Investment Group and 4th Dimension Properties, is under contract for sale.
That’s according to Felix Reznick, a principal with 4th Dimension Properties. Anchor stores aren’t included in the purchase.
Kohan bought the mall in 2020 for about $17 million at auction, a massive decline for a property once valued at $135 million. In 2022, Kohan sold part of Burnsville Center, including the Dick’s Sporting Goods and Kirkland’s Home spaces, to Pacific Square Burnsville, a developer. They plan to remodel the old Gordman’s store into an Asian grocery store and food hall and add a new two-story structure that would become two restaurants.
Pacific Square Burnsville officials said they’re “genuinely concerned” that Sears was declared hazardous.
“We strongly urge them to promptly collaborate with the Burnsville Fire Department to address the potential risks,” said Marshall Nguyen, a Pacific Square Burnsville partner.
Yuval Atias, who opened his Customize It store selling custom-printed items eight years ago, said the mall has “a lot of issues.” He makes most of his sales online.
At Escapology, an escape room franchise next door to Sears, general manager Sara Beck said she finds it “concerning” that Sears may have no working fire alarm.
The hazardous declaration might make their customers wonder if the mall is actually open, she said. Regardless, the long-empty store is problematic, she said.
“Having a dilapidated building next door, it’s not a good image for our business.”
Amid the cacophony and chaos of the pregame preparation before a recent Minnetonka High School football game, an exceptional group of six girls is gathered together among the school’s deep and talented cheerleading and dance teams.
The cheerleaders, a national championship-winning program of 40 girls, dot the track around the football field. As the clock ticks down to kickoff and their night of choreographed routines begins, the six girls, proudly wearing Minnetonka blue T-shirts emblazoned with “Skippers Nation” and shaking shiny pom-poms, swirl around the track, bristling with excited energy.
Their circumstances are no different from any of the other cheerleaders with one notable exception: The girls on this team have special needs.
They’re members of the Minnetonka Sparklers, a squad of cheerleaders made up solely of girls with special needs.
A football game at Minnetonka High School is an elaborate production. The Skippers’ recent homecoming victory over Shakopee brought an announced crowd of 8,145. And that is just paying attendees; it doesn’t include school staffers, coaches, dance team, marching band, concession workers, media members and others going about their business attached to the game.
The Sparklers program, now in its 12th season, was the brainchild of Marcy Adams, a former Minnetonka cheerleader who initiated the program in her senior year of high school. Adams has been coach of the team since its inception, staying on through her tenure as a cheerleader at the University of Minnesota.
She started the program after experiencing the Unified Sports program at Minnetonka. The unified sports movement at high schools brings together student-athletes with cognitive or physical disabilities and athletes with no disabilities to foster relationships, understanding and compassion through athletics. Many Minnesota schools offer unified sports.
“I grew up in a household that valued students with special needs and valued inclusion,” Adams said. “I saw a need to give to those students. At Minnetonka, we have a strong Unified program, and this was a great opportunity to build relationships and offer mentorship opportunities.”
Elite runners are in a league of their own.
To get a sense of how far ahead elite runners are compared to the rest of us, the Minnesota Star Tribune took a look at how their times compare to the average marathon participant.
The 2022 Twin Cities Marathon men’s winner was Japanese competitor Yuya Yoshida, who ran the marathon in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 28 seconds, for an average speed of 11.96 mph. He averaged 5 minutes and 2 seconds per mile.
That’s more than twice the speed of the average competitor across both the men’s and women’s categories, of 5.89 mph, according to race results site Mtec. The average participant finished in 4 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds. That comes out to an average time of 10 minutes and 11 seconds per mile.
And taking it to the most extreme, the fastest-ever marathon runner, Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, finished the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds, for an average pace of about 13 mph. Kiptum averaged 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile.
Here is a graphic showing these differences in average marathon speed.
The school said in its lawsuit that both Hugo and May Township consider the land rural residential zoning, and that the codes identify a school as a conditional use. Hugo officials have generally supported the LCA plan, granting a building permit in 2022 that allowed LCA to invest $2.1 million into the former Withrow school for renovations.
The school said in its lawsuit that the existing septic system is failing and needs to be replaced, regardless of expansion plans.
The school said it notified neighbors of the property in 2022 and again in 2023 about its land purchase. About 50 residents in total attended those meetings, and just two expressed concerns over the issues of traffic and lights, according to the suit. The school met with the May Township board in May of 2023, and minutes from that meeting show that the board had no concerns beyond lighting at the time, according to the suit. The board asked if the school could use “down lighting” for its athletic fields and the school said it would.
In June, Hugo City Council approved a conditional use permit for the school, but the May Township board voted to extend the decision deadline to early August.
The suit says it was at a subsequent meeting in July that May Town Board Chairman John Pazlar objected to the plan for the first time, saying “the main concern, based on public comment, is to keep Town of May rural.”
The school said its plans for the May Township portion of its property had been submitted eight months prior to the July meeting, and that its plans met requirements of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
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