Editor’s note: This story has been updated.
A 107-acre Eden Prairie business campus with a long and storied history is being offered for sale by its current owner, United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI).
The campus located north of Valley View Road, east of Interstate Highway 494, has shoreline on Bryant Lake and holds a three-story, 175,000-square-foot building that serves as the wholesale grocery distributor’s regional office.
The company said it will relocate to a smaller regional office in the Twin Cities. A location has not been identified.
The one-building Eden Prairie campus was established in the 1970s as the national headquarters for Supervalu, Inc., a Fortune 500 company that Providence, R.I.-based UNFI purchased in 2018.
It’s a site that ranges from hilly to wet, including large knolls that in decades-old city council minutes have colorful names like Old Baldy and Wooded Baldy.
“This is zoned for office, guided for office. It’s been an office campus since the ’70s,” city Economic Development Manager Dave Lindahl noted in a recent meeting. “Part of it is guided for medium-density residential, but it’s kind of in an area of the property that’s very difficult to develop.”
Nevertheless, he added, “It’s very likely that housing is going to want to be on this site” because of the current office market. Any request for additional boat docks on Bryant Lake is likely to attract opposition from existing homeowners on the small lake, he said.
Property taxes for the campus exceed $460,000, according to the real-estate listing by CBRE.
There is no timeline for the sale of the company’s Eden Prairie property, said Jeffrey Swanson, UNFI’s vice president of communications and media relations. UNFI expects the new regional office to open sometime over the next 12-18 months.
Contraction of office space is currently a common trend in Eden Prairie and elsewhere, as documented in a Feb. 22, 2023, story by Eden Prairie Local News. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies still have employees working at home, at least part of the week, and are looking to reduce their office space as a result of the ongoing hybrid work environment.
Swanson said a majority of UNFI’s Twin Cities-based associates currently work remotely, as do most of the 900 employees assigned to the Eden Prairie location.
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