Opus Northwest said Tuesday that it has been hired to design and build a $58.5 million student center at the St. Paul campus of the University of St. Thomas, not far from where the Minnetonka developer is working on a new sports and recreation center.
Construction of the Anderson Student Center is expected to begin in April or May, said Opus Northwest CEO John Solberg. The 210,000-square-foot building, which will have meeting rooms and offices, an art gallery, a sports cafe, coffee shop and resident dining facilities, is expected to be completed in December 2011.
The student center and sports and recreation complex both are named after St. Thomas Trustee Lee Anderson and his wife, Penny, who contributed $60 million for the buildings and a new parking ramp.
The student center and sports and recreation building are the latest of several projects Opus Northwest has done over the years for St. Thomas, including its downtown Minneapolis campus. Both current projects make up part of Opus Northwest's increased focus on design-build work where it collects fees from clients. Speculative development has all but disappeared for Opus Northwest and other developers in the depressed commercial real estate market. Solberg said Opus Northwest has completed about $115 million in such fee-based building projects this year.
Opus Northwest and Chicago-based Opus North are the two surviving regional development arms of Minnetonka-based Opus Corp., which earlier this year announced plans to shut down. Three other regional operating companies based in Atlanta, Phoenix and Washington, D.C., all filed for bankruptcy this year.
Opus Corp. officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday but other industry sources said they believe the parent company's workforce is down to fewer than 20 people, a fraction of what it was a couple of years ago.
Opus Northwest also has cut its workforce, Solberg said. It's now about 95 employees, compared with about 385 several years ago. But Solberg said his firm has continued to be profitable amid the industry-wide downturn. He said revenues this year should be about $480 million compared with about $500 million in 2008.
Susan Feyder • 612-673-1723
