St. Louis Park’s West End bucks the trend with one of area’s lowest vacancy rates

A $6 million movie theater revamp, new mixed-use apartments and a wave of restaurants and shops are reshaping St. Louis Park’s West End — and shaping the next generation of one of the Twin Cities’ busiest suburban hubs.

With the new development over the past few years, the 49-acre district has become a bright spot in the metro’s struggling office market, with vacancy rates continually among the lowest in the Twin Cities.

“It’s really one of the only live-work-play-stay markets in the Twin Cities,” said Michael Gelfman, executive vice president at Colliers. “That’s what I think adds a lot to the relevance of the West End.”

While St. Louis Park lacks a traditional downtown, it is increasingly defined by a network of commercial districts, including West End, the Historic Walker Lake area and the Excelsior & Grand corridor. Together, they give the suburb an urban edge.

And while suburban centers from Maple Grove to Woodbury are adding urban-style density — pairing housing with retail, offices and entertainment — the West End has quietly evolved into one of the most dynamic. Once a suburban experiment in mixed-use planning, its modern office complexes are among the most leased outside of downtown, even as many post-COVID office markets continue to struggle.

Although the West End lost some shops, restaurants and office tenants during the pandemic, it quickly refilled those spaces — a sharp contrast to downtown Minneapolis, where vacant commercial space has been far harder to backfill. The district’s top-tier offices now post the metro’s highest occupancy rates, reflecting how tenants have gravitated toward newer, amenity-rich spaces.

As of the third quarter of 2025, only 12.8% of West End offices were vacant — the lowest rate of any major corridor — compared with 30.8% downtown and 22.1% across the metro, according to Colliers.

It was also one of the few submarkets to add tenants rather than lose them, recording nearly 12,000 square feet of new leases so far this year. By contrast, downtown Minneapolis saw roughly 243,000 square feet vacated.

Average asking rents tell a similar story: $41.53 per square foot in the West End vs. $38.63 downtown, signaling strong tenant demand and landlord confidence.

Tom O’Brien, vice chair of investment sales and capital markets at Colliers, said investors view the West End as “the best of all worlds.”

“You’re really close to downtown,” O’Brien said. “But you are in a first-ring suburb. You’ve got multiple access points, free parking, plentiful parking and walkable amenities.”

Those fundamentals, he noted, have allowed developers and landlords to push rents higher, a sign of strength rarely seen elsewhere in the metro right now. Colliers itself relocated its headquarters to the West End in 2020.

Hempel Real Estate, which purchased the Shops at West End in 2022, is moving forward with plans for two new mixed-use projects in and around the retail district. The Eden Prairie-based company is one of several developers reshaping the West End through a steady wave of acquisitions, redevelopments and new construction.

The company recently broke ground on the Terasă development at 5401 Gamble Drive, the former site of a West End Office Park building across from Punch Bowl Social. The six-story, 223-unit project will feature 21,000 square feet of retail space, with major construction expected to begin in early 2026. City documents describe Terasă as the first phase of a potential multiphase redevelopment of the broader West End Office Park.

Hempel is also exploring the redevelopment of a vacant corner within the Shops at West End, where preliminary plans call for ground-floor retail topped by four to six stories of office space, according to city filings.

“It’s where the suburbs meet the urban core,” said Ben Krsnak, Hempel’s executive vice president. “It’s that sweet spot of density — where you’ve got traffic, income and people all in one area.”

Krsnak said Hempel’s second-floor office space in the district is fully leased. He considers the center to have three key anchors: the Cub Foods grocery store, Marcus West End Cinema and the restaurants that line the property.

Hempel is also finalizing plans for a roughly $6 million renovation of the movie theater, which will include new recliner seating. As part of the project, up to four of the theater’s 14 screens could be repurposed for alternative uses, such as a rock-climbing facility or a small concert venue.

New restaurants and retailers continue to add to the West End’s vibrancy.

Since Hempel’s purchase, several other tenants have joined the mix, including Japanese steakhouse Boketto, Game Show Battle Rooms, Prenuvo, Kiddywampus and Glo Haus. The area has also recently attracted new arrivals such as Chi Chi’s, Anytime Fitness and Sota.

The West End’s “live-work-play” formula may offer lessons for other suburban and urban areas. But O’Brien and Gelfman caution that it would be difficult to replicate.

“It did come up somewhat organically,” O’Brien said.

“Downtowns will still have relevancy, but I think that they will need to be reimagined by the stakeholders,” he said. “These things like West End, I think you’ll see popping up in burbs, and you’ll see this recipe, if you will, being duplicated in other parts of suburbia.”

That will put more pressure on West End developers, boosters said, to keep its momentum going.

O’Brien, meanwhile, envisions a both-and future for the Twin Cities. He believes the reality is that in the Twin Cities, you can do business in the suburbs and downtown.

Still, he added, the West End’s combination of location, scale, and energy makes it stand out.