Need a new place to relax? The Twin Cities is getting a communal bath house

This used to be the time of year when the creepy basement of an old factory building in Minneapolis was the place to go if you wanted to make your hair stand on end.

But now the industrial space formerly housing the Soap Factory's Haunted Basement Halloween is where you can go to soothe your nerves.

The building in the St. Anthony Main neighborhood is now the home of Watershed Spa and Baths, a watery oasis that bills itself as the only communal bathing and spa center in the Twin Cities.

Founder Nell Rueckl said her 11,000-square-foot facility aims to re-create the therapeutic and relaxing communal bathing traditions and rituals seen in European spas and Asian bathhouses, where you can rotate through a series of experiences including a sauna, a steam, a soak and a scrub.

The bathhouse features an 8,200-gallon soaking pool set at 104 degrees. It can accommodate up to 25 people, so it's a lot bigger and deeper than a typical hotel or health club hot tub.

"It gives you opportunity to have space, but you're still in community," Rueckl said.

While it's designed to be a communal experience, "Silence in the bathing area is requested, and we ask that you speak in a low voice to ensure a reflective environment," advises the Watershed website (watershedspa.com). Instead of noisy water jets, projectors will beam calming images on the wall.

The sauna is designed as a long room with benches on just one side so shy Minnesotans can sweat side by side without directly looking at each other.

There's also a steam room, sea salt scrubs and a Vichy shower, which is where you lie on a table and multiple shower heads mounted on a moving horizontal bar shoot water down on you. It's sort of like being in a touchless car wash, except you're the car.

Two Japanese-style soaking tubs clad in cedar will also be available. You can book one for a solo experience or do a side-by-side soak with a friend.

There's also a cold plunge pool, so people can take advantage of a "hot-cold restorative cycle" after getting out of the sauna or steam room.

After you're done sweating, soaking and scrubbing salt on your hide, you can relax in a lounge chair or on a body-sized pillow in a "Zen zone," while you rehydrate and maybe nibble on some fruit.

A $52 day pass will give you a three-hour ticket to cycle through as many of the bathhouse experiences as you like. A 10-admission package will cost $42 per ticket, and an annual membership with unlimited visits will be $250 a month. The bathhouse will be 18 and up and coed.

Rueckl said Watershed will have the first "non-binary locker room" in the state. But there are private changing rooms, and unlike many European spas, swimsuits are required. Watershed provides the towels and flip-flops.

The bathhouse may also schedule nights for women only, men only or BIPOC only patrons.

An ala carte menu of spa treatments available includes massages, facials, acupuncture, vibrational sound therapy, cupping, reiki and yoga therapy.

Capacity in the bathhouse will be limited to 20 people. Or you could book the whole place for the evening or an entire day for a birthday party or corporate retreat. Prices for that will range from $1,200 to $9,000 depending on the timing and whether spa treatments are included.

Rueckl is an old pro in the spa business. She was a massage therapist at the Aveda Spa Retreat in Osceola, Wis., before starting her own business, the Spot Spa in Minneapolis in 2001.

But she said she's long been interested in getting people into hot water. She immersed herself in bathhouse research, spending time working at the Kabuki Springs bathhouse in San Francisco's Japantown, and visiting spas in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Budapest, Amsterdam and Germany.

Bathhouses have been springing up in other big cities in the U.S., including San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Chicago. She's convinced Minnesotans will embrace the bathhouse ritual, as they have saunas.

"There's a huge movement for being in community but not having to go to a bar," she said.

Rueckl said Watershed will be the first communal bathhouse in the Twin Cities in at least 20 years. She started fundraising for the project in November 2020. Delays arose when she had to address some environmental remediation issues, a legacy of the giant soap vats that used to be in the basement of the building when it housed the National Purity Soap Co.

Now the spa and bathhouse combine industrial exposed brick walls and wooden beams with soothing artwork, candlelight, plants and textiles.

"This is about experiencing a ritual to change your vibration," Rueckl said. "You can quiet down and get into your own space."

The space was previously used by the Soap Factory arts nonprofit starting in the 1990s until the organization ceased operations in 2019.

The 139-year-old building at 514 SE. 2nd St., was purchased by Buhl Investors of Edina and redubbed the Switch House, after its original use as a Union Railway storage building. Besides Watershed, other tenants include the Spoke & Weal salon and the Foundry Home Goods store.

Watershed is currently open for spa treatments on its ground-floor level. The lower-level bathhouse pools, sauna and steam room are scheduled to open Oct. 15.