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.”
The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for nearly all of Minnesota and Iowa on Thursday, saying fires could spread quickly amid gusty winds and extremely dry air.
Burning brush piles or yard waste is banned while the warning is in place. It is expected to end at 7 p.m. and covers every part of Minnesota, except Lake and Cook counties along the North Shore.
It’s one of the more widespread fire warnings the weather service has issued in the Upper Midwest since it started giving red flag warnings more than a decade ago. That’s a testament to not only how unusually dry the current air mass is hovering over the state, but how arid the entire region has been for the last 45 days, said Kenneth Blumenfeld, the senior climatologist for the Minnesota Climatology Office.
There hasn’t been any measurable rainfall in the Twin Cities so far in October. And September was the driest ever recorded, with records going back to the late 1800s, Blumenfeld said.
“Then you add the immediate conditions of increasing temperatures decreasing the amount of moisture in the air and really gusty winds, all of those things are good at promoting the spread of fire if it starts,” he said.
Forecasts show temperatures in parts of the state climbing in the low 80s this weekend, with no signs of rain in the foreseeable future.
The dry spell has dragged most of the state back into drought for the first time in months, with nearly a third of Minnesota in severe drought, according to a Thursday update from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
It was only a short while ago that heavy spring rains caused damaging floods that threatened dams, overfilled manure lagoons and swamped sewage treatment systems throughout southern Minnesota.
A 20-year-old St. Paul man is now facing three murder charges in separate killings in Minneapolis in recent years.
Albert Jerome Lucas was charged Wednesday in Hennepin County District Court in connection with the killing of 20-year-old Antonio Vernon Harper, of Minneapolis, on Nov. 6, 2023, in Minneapolis in the 3300 block of Dupont Avenue N.
Lucas, who has been jailed since May and remains held in lieu of $2 million bail, is scheduled to appear in court early Thursday afternoon. He does not yet have an attorney listed in court records for this latest charge.
According to Wednesday’s criminal complaint, which charges Lucas with one count of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder:
Officers arrived to the scene and saw Harper on the ground suffering from a fatal gunshot wound to the chest.
A witness told police that she saw three males “hugging” the side of home and looking toward Harper and two of his friends. Gunfire from Lucas erupted, hitting Harper, and the suspects fled in a car. One of Harper’s friends shared with officers that the shooting was gang-related.
Officers saw the vehicle two days later and determined it had been stolen in St. Paul. The driver fled police, but officers soon found the vehicle. DNA on a cigar wrapper inside the vehicle was tested and came back as a match for Lucas.
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.
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