Star Tribune
YWCA Minneapolis sells downtown fitness facility to St. David’s Center in Minnetonka
Downtown Minneapolis’ longstanding YWCA building on Nicollet Mall is about to get a new owner.
St. David’s Center for Child and Family Development, a Minnetonka-based nonprofit that provides mental health and autism services to children, announced Saturday that it’s buying the 120,000-square-foot building.
The sale comes more than six months after the YWCA shocked the community with the news that it was closing its Uptown and downtown fitness centers and pools. The YWCA has existed on Nicollet Mall for nearly a century.
St. David’s Center, which works with 5,000 children a year in its preschool, mental health and autism services, plans to expand its programs to serve an additional 1,500 kids a year in the new building, helping it meet the rising demand for mental health help, leaders said.
“Families are struggling and children are struggling more than they ever had,” said Julie Sjordal, CEO of St. David’s. “We have to increase capacity in order to meet community need.”
The YWCA closed its downtown and Uptown buildings on Nov. 1. Some members urged the city, park district or county to buy the buildings to keep them open to the public, but city and Park Board leaders said they couldn’t afford to do so.
YWCA CEO Shelley Carthen Watson said in a statement that the nonprofit received three offers for the downtown building, including from private developers and other nonprofits, but the organization prioritized a deal that would keep its early childhood center open on site, which St. David’s will do. She declined to disclose any details on the potential sale of the Uptown facility, which is in the high-profile Hennepin Avenue corridor near W. Lake Street.
St. David’s and the YWCA signed a purchase agreement for the downtown building in February and hope to close the sale by summer, pending approvals from the state and Hennepin County due to previous bonding funding.
The two nonprofits declined to reveal the price of the one-acre site and building; property values aren’t listed in county records because the YWCA is tax-exempt.
The corner of Nicollet Mall has housed YWCA programs since 1929, though the current building dates to 1976 and was remodeled in 2016. The 80,000-square-foot YWCA Uptown opened in 1987.
As a result of the closures, the YWCA, which still operates a building in Midtown, laid off 45 employees — about 13% of its workforce. Like other nonprofits struggling financially after the COVID-19 pandemic, YWCA leaders said they faced membership declines, staffing shortages and rising expenses. The organization decided to move away from health and fitness to focus on child care, racial equity and youth programs.
The building closures also sent about 300 swimmers in the YWCA’s Otters and Masters swim teams scrambling to find new swimming clubs at pools including South High School and Southwest High School.
For St. David’s, the new building will be the largest site it has owned in its six decades. The nonprofit, which started in 1961 as a preschool at St. David’s Episcopal Church, has grown to one of the largest child mental health providers in Minnesota.
Sjordal said the organization started looking a year ago for a new building as mental health crises spiked during the pandemic. St. David’s also leases space from Westminster Presbyterian Church downtown and owns a 65,000-square-foot former school building in Minnetonka.
Both buildings are full, Sjordal said, and there are 1,800 children on a waiting list for programs, with some kids waiting six months to more than a year.
“In the last several years, we have just seen a growing need across the community for children’s mental health, for autism treatment, for pediatric therapies,” Sjordal said. “We’re out of space.”
Renovating YWCA Downtown
St. David’s will seek tax credits for the project, Sjordal said, while embarking on its largest capital campaign ever to drum up an estimated $9 million to renovate the YWCA facility, which also has 28 parking spots and a rooftop patio.
Most of the fitness areas will be converted into classrooms or treatment spaces and St. David’s may keep the pool to start aqua therapy, Sjordal said. St. David’s will lease about 20% of the building back to the YWCA to continue to operate its early childhood center.
Some of St. David’s programs will launch there later this year, but the building won’t be fully used until 2026 after a renovation starts next year, Sjordal said. She added that St. David’s plans to go to the Legislature next year with a state funding request while working to draw donations and grants.
St. David’s is still recovering from the pandemic, which caused its programs to shut down in early 2020. With program fees and medical assistance bringing in most of its revenue, St. David’s had to furlough about 200 employees. Now, the organization has about 520 employees and is still rebuilding to return to 2019 staffing levels, she said. St. David’s has increased pay, Sjordal added, to attract and retain employees as many nonprofits struggle with turnover.
The new downtown building will have 150 employees, including existing staff and new hires. The nonprofit, which had about a $27 million annual budget in 2023, has hired fundraisers and boosted efforts to obtain more grants as it moves into a new chapter with its expansion downtown.
“It’s a big change [for the YWCA building],” Sjordal said. “And yet I think the legacy will live on through the kind of work that will happen in that building.”
The trial included testimony from a Towson University marketing professor who conducted a survey about the advertisements.
The pictures are actually tightly controlled by contracts negotiated between the models and the magazines, said Chamberlin, a modelling agent who testified during the trial. A 30-year veteran of the industry who has represented Brooke Shields, Tyra Banks, Claudia Schiffer and others, Chamberlin during his testimony pulled back the curtain on the high-stakes negotiations that take place for supermodels, saying none of the images that the Cajun Club used were intended for strip club advertisements.
“We know exactly what they’ll be shooting, what product, and what type of work, and then we know how that’s going to be distributed and any other questions. It’s all negotiated before the model sets foot onto the set,” he testified.
Even if the women had consented to the use of the photographs in Cajun Club advertisements, Chamberlin said, it would have cost the club more than $1.2 million in fees.
The jury ruled in favor of the women and said they were owed amounts ranging from $1,500 to $15,000.
A freeway ramp in downtown Minneapolis used by thousands of drivers each day closed Monday morning and won’t reopen for five weeks.
Minnesota Department of Transportation crews shut down the ramp from northbound I-35W to eastbound I-94 at 5 a.m. Monday and it won’t reopen until Nov. 29
In addition, both directions of I-94 will be reduced to two lanes between 11th Avenue S. and Franklin Avenue.
The closures will allow crews to construct crossovers that motorists will use in 2025 when MnDOT begins maintenance work on five bridges along I-94 between downtown Minneapolis and the Franklin Avenue bridge that crosses I-94.
Drivers needing to get from northbound I-35W to eastbound I-94 will be directed to go north on I-35W to Hwy. 36 and south on I-35E.
Next year, both directions of I-94 will be reduced to two lanes between Hwy. 55/Hiawatha Avenue and the Franklin Avenue bridge.
The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
City Council members criticized MPD for their handling of the case, expressing outrage at the department’s inability to protect a resident “from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
The Moturis have reported to police at least 19 incidents of vandalism, property destruction, theft, harassment, hate speech and other verbal threats, including threats of assault, involving Sawchak since last fall — shorty after the couple moved in. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
Over the weekend, as frustration continued to boil over about the lack of a resolution in the case, several more council members released statements demanding that MPD move in to make an arrest.
“Our Chief of Police is hiding behind excuses, and our Mayor…is just hiding,” Council Member Emily Koski wrote on X.
Less than two hours later, from the scene of an unrelated fatal shooting at a homeless encampment, O’Hara acknowledged that his police force failed to protect Moturi and issued an apology.
