Fire at vacant Kmart in Minneapolis expected to accelerate demolition plans

A fire ripped through the former Kmart on Lake Street in Minneapolis on Friday morning, destroying part of the vacant building and accelerating city plans to demolish the structure for a long-planned redevelopment.

The blaze brought "newfound urgency" to plans to raze the building next spring, a city spokeswoman said. She said quick approval will be sought from the City Council for demolition work to begin in the coming weeks.

Investigators have not yet determined the cause of the fire, which started before dawn and burned through much of the morning.

Fire crews scrambled to the boarded-up building at about 5 a.m. as clouds of smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the sky. Firefighters on three ladders poured water onto the nearly block-long structure, extinguishing "the bulk of the fire" in about 5½ hours, Assistant Fire Chief Melanie Rucker said.

Fire crews remained on scene throughout the day.

Arriving firefighters found the blaze concentrated in the back of the building, where heavy smoke was "puffing through the bricks," Rucker said. Later in the morning, they searched the parts of the building that had not collapsed, but did not find anyone.

The Fire Department said no one was injured.

In recent years and since the store closed in 2020, the Kmart site has drawn homeless encampments just outside the building and near the property's perimeter.

Antonio Gonzalez, who lives with his wife under a tarp behind the building, said he knew the couple had to act quickly once he realized that the structure was ablaze no more than 50 yards away.

"We started hearing big machines, like vroom, vroom," Gonzalez said. "I wake up and started seeing all this fire. I was hearing explosions, a lot of explosions."

Water from the firefighters' hoses pelted his shelter in the dark. "I think it's raining," Gonzalez said. "Then I said to my wife, 'Let's go! The building is on fire.' "

On Thursday morning, the city had started clearing a different homeless encampment near the Kmart. A few hours later, the space was empty, except for city trucks and employees cleaning up belongings left behind.

Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge volunteers helped displaced residents of the encampment move their remaining possessions.

City spokeswoman Blair Loose said about 30 people were given roughly a half-hour to "gather their stuff and medicine" before the encampment was cleared.

Shutting down such sites is necessary, Loose said, because they "pose public health and safety risks for those living in community in them as well as those in surrounding areas."

With a Metro Transit homeless response team and other outreach groups standing by, Loose said, public works employees cleaned up about 60,000 pounds of garbage before private contractors fenced the area.

Officials have not said whether removal of the encampment is related to Friday's blaze. Fires have broken out at encampments in the city in recent years. This month, one person was found dead at the scene of a fire between the Minnesota Firefighters Museum at 664 22nd Av. NE. and the Edison High School bleachers.

Kmart opened on the 10-acre site in 1978 and was part of a revitalization effort for the Nicollet Avenue and Lake Street area. The decision to close Nicollet to build the store was controversial from the start.

In 2020, Minneapolis agreed to pay $9.1 million to buy out Kmart's lease and proceed with plans to demolish the building. The planning process has been time-consuming, but the city expected this year to begin demolition next spring. This month, the city began actively seeking community feedback on redevelopment of the site into a high-density mix of homes and businesses.

Some of that work will now begin sooner than expected; crews were already knocking down unstable walls inside the structure Friday. The City Council is expected to approve a previously bid contract, and abatement of hazardous materials at the site will begin in the coming weeks. The fire should not affect the redevelopment timeline, city spokeswoman Sarah McKenzie said.

Kaley Brown, executive director of the Whittier Alliance neighborhood group, said she is confident the city will do whatever it takes to "make the site as safe as possible as soon as possible."

Demolition is the first step in what is expected to be a yearslong project. Construction of the roadway to reconnect Nicollet will likely begin in 2025. Other development is not anticipated until 2027.

The Kmart store was in its final weeks of business when George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police in May 2020.

When riots erupted after the murder, demolition plans were put on hold to allow the U.S. Postal Service to temporarily lease space at the store because the nearby Lake Street post office was among the more than 1,500 buildings damaged in the unrest.

Staff writer Christopher Magan and Hannah Ward, a University of Minnesota student reporter on assignment for the Star Tribune, contributed to this report.