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.”
Star Tribune
Palestinian officials say an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza killed 15
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike on a school sheltering the displaced in northern Gaza on Thursday killed at least 15 people, including five children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said the strike targeted dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who had gathered at the Abu Hussein school in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza where Israel has been waging a major air and ground operation for more than a week.
Fares Abu Hamza, head of the ministry’s emergency unit in northern Gaza, confirmed the toll and said dozens of people were wounded. He said the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was struggling to treat the casualties.
“Many women and children are in critical condition,” he said.
The Israeli military said it targeted a command center run by both militant groups inside the school. It provided a list of around a dozen names of people it identified as militants who were present when the strike was called in. It was not immediately possible to verify the names.
Israel has repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza. The Israeli military says it carries out precise strikes on militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often kill women and children.
Hamas-led militants triggered the war when they stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. Some 100 captives are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says women and children make up a little more than half of the fatalities.
Twin Amur tigers born at Como Zoo in August now have names — Marisa and Maks.
Two long-time volunteers who have worked with zookeepers to care for and teach the public about the zoo’s big cats came up with the names, the first to be born at the St. Paul zoo in more than 40 years.
Marisa, a name that the volunteers found to mean “spirited and tenacious,” call that a perfect reflection of her personality. The name also carries special significance for the Como Zoo community, as it honors a retired zookeeper of the same name who was instrumental in the care of large cats during her 43 years at the zoo, Como Zoo and Conservatory Director Michelle Furrer said.
The male cub has been named Maks, which is associated with meanings like “the greatest” or “strength and leadership.” The volunteers felt this was an apt description of the male cub’s confident demeanor and growing sense of leadership, Furrer said.
“Marisa and Maks aren’t just names; they’re a fun reminder of the passion and care that keep us committed to protecting wildlife every day,” Furrer said.
The newborns and their first-time mother, 7-year-old Bernadette, remain off view to allow for more bonding time, zoo officials said. The cubs’ father, 11-year-old Tsar, has been a Como resident since February 2019 and remains on view.
Fewer than 500 Amur tigers — also known as Siberian tigers — remain in the wild as they face critical threats from habitat loss, poaching and human-wildlife conflict, the zoo said.
Much of the wood waste in the metro area is sent to a processing site near Pig’s Eye Lake in St. Paul, where it is stored before being burned to produce energy at the St. Paul Cogeneration plant downtown.
Cogeneration provides power to about half of downtown and was originally built to manage elm-tree waste in response to Dutch elm disease. The plant burns approximately 240,000 tons of wood each year, according to Michael Auger, senior vice president of District Energy in St. Paul.
Jim Calkins, a certified landscape horticulturalist who has been involved in discussions about the problem, said he thinks using wood for energy is the most logical solution.
“The issue is, we don’t have enough facilities to be able to handle that, at least in the Twin Cities,” Calkins said. “So there has to be dollars to support transportation to get the wood to those places, or in some cases, to upgrade some of those facilities such that they are able to burn wood.”
Plans are in place to convert Koda Energy in Shakopee to burn ash wood, which could potentially handle around 40,000 tons of wood waste, but that would take around two years to establish, according to Klapperich.
In some areas of the state, cities have resorted to burning excess wood waste because they felt they had no other option. Open burning wood releases a lot of carbon into the air, Klapperich said.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings