AtWater sells Normandale Place in Bloomington.

Byline: Matt M. Johnson

A Duluth-based investor has sold a well-leased Bloomington office building in the shadow of the glassy towers of Normandale Lake Office Park.

Two entities that share an address with New Ulm-based Upper Midwest Management Corp. paid $13 million for the 82,000-square-foot Normandale Place at 8201 Norman Center Drive, according to a recent certificate of real estate value. The deal closed Dec. 6.

The five-story building, completed in 1974, is at the southwest corner of Normandale Boulevard and American Boulevard West, and is adjacent to the five office towers at the 1.7 million-square-foot office park.

The seller is the Duluth-based AtWater Group, which paid $9.8 million for Normandale Place in 2013. Minneapolis-based United Properties sold the property to AtWater.

The purchase price in the transaction, which closed on Dec. 6, works out to $158.54 per square foot. Hennepin County values the property at $9.3 million for tax purposes.

Normandale Place's 94-percent occupancy rate is significantly better than the surrounding Interstate 494 submarket, which has an average office vacancy rate of 17.2 percent, according to the Minneapolis office of CBRE.

Once a Honeywell office building, the property has been able to attract and keep tenants, said Scott Pollock, an executive director with the Twin Cities office of Cushman & Wakefield who represented AtWater in the off-market transaction.

"It 'drafts' extremely well off of Normandale Lake Office Park," Pollock said.

Upper Midwest property manager Chad Thomas declined to discuss the transaction and deferred comment to Pollock.

Kansas City-based engineering and architecture firm Burns & McDonnell leases 21,000 square feet in Normandale Place, the largest tenant space in the building, according to CoStar. Burns & McDonnell opened its Twin Cities office in the building in 2007. Other tenants include Konica Minolta Business Solutions and several insurance companies, Pollock said.

Normandale Place was AtWater's first Twin...

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