Minneapolis’ hulking City Center is officially up for grabs now that Target has agreed to pay nearly $110 million to end its long-running lease. The payout frees the building’s owner, an entity tied to South Korea’s Samsung, to finally market the 51-story tower that anchors a big stretch of Nicollet Mall. For downtown Minneapolis, the sale is shaping up as a high-stakes test of whether buyers still believe in refurbishing giant office blocks or would rather chase costly conversions.
As reported by the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal, Target’s payment, described as nearly $110 million, will go toward paying down the building’s mortgage and other obligations, removing a major obstacle to a sale. The outlet noted that the owner has been advancing monthly operating costs while lenders weigh their options.
What Brokers Say
Ryan Watts of CBRE, one of the brokers preparing to market City Center, said the payoff reshapes the equation for potential buyers. “I think what it does is it opens up the opportunity to explore additional uses,” Watts said, as reported by the Star Tribune. Brokers say any buyer will have to decide whether to keep large swaths of office space intact or push the property toward some version of a mixed-use conversion.
Downtown Market Backdrop
The sale comes as downtown Minneapolis wrestles with heavy vacancy. Colliers’ Q3 2025 market report showed overall market vacancy above 22 percent and downtown Class A vacancy north of 30 percent. Those numbers have pushed buyers to demand steep discounts and turned office-to-housing conversions into a regular topic in planning meetings and brokerage pitches.
Debt and Ownership
Samsung bought City Center in 2018 for roughly $320 million. The company failed to refinance a roughly $200 million mortgage when it matured in January 2025, and a loan servicer report shows most of Target’s buyout, about $97 million, was applied to reduce outstanding debt, according to the Star Tribune.
Some local observers have floated bold redevelopment ideas, including tearing down or dramatically reimagining the complex for other major civic uses, an option explored by Axios. Industry sources caution that large-scale conversions or demolitions would come with very steep price tags…