U.S. Bank home mortgage employees to relocate to Hopkins complex

U.S. Bancorp is leasing one of the three buildings at Excelsior Crossings, an office park in Hopkins that is a key site for Cargill Inc. in the Twin Cities.

The bank company next year will move more than 1,000 employees in its home mortgage business, now housed in several buildings in the metro area, to the complex close to the Hwy. 169 and Excelsior Boulevard interchange.

U.S. Bank signed a long-term lease on the seven-story building at 9380 Excelsior Blvd., which has 258,000 square feet of space.

That represents one of the largest leases signed in the Twin Cities in several years. Last year, Sleep Number signed a lease for 211,000 square feet of space in a building in downtown Minneapolis that it will soon fully occupy.

"This move is really about getting home mortgage employees in the Minneapolis area under one roof," said Tom Wind, president of U.S. Bank Home Mortgage, in a statement. "At U.S. Bank we put people first, and we believe that this central location will offer a great opportunity to improve both employee collaboration and satisfaction."

U.S. Bank's lease gives it the ability to expand in the complex. The move will take more than a year to complete.

Cargill vacated the building this summer, moving workers to reorganized space at its headquarters complex in Wayzata. It continues to lease other space in Excelsior Crossings. Cargill in 2008 hired Opus Development to construct the three-building campus.

Opus later sold the buildings to other real estate firms and Cargill continued to lease them. Cargill is paying a $9.5 million lease termination fee to leave the 9380 Excelsior building, according to Trepp, a real estate data company. U.S. Bank will begin paying rent on the building next summer, Trepp said.

Nicole Norfleet • 612-673-4495

Twitter: @stribnorfleet