Flanked by elected officials and employees, Toro Co. CEO Mike Hoffman scrambled atop Toro's new construction backhoe and tore through the parking lot Thursday to make way for a new $25 million addition at the Bloomington headquarters.
The three-story add-on will span 75,000 square feet and be completed by the summer of 2014, just in time for the lawn mower company's 100th anniversary. Ryan Cos. is leading the construction project, which will give Toro more office space and additional room for testing and new product development, officials told a cheering crowd Thursday.
Toro currently has 400,000 square feet of office, R&D and manufacturing space at the site, which houses nearly 950 workers.
The buoyant Hoffman said "this new building will help take us into the next century." He credited the need for new space to the "anticipated growth of our business." The company has expanded in recent years beyond Toro's traditional lawn mowers and underground sprinkler systems and into construction and utility-tunnel digging equipment.
Toro's newly acquired line of backhoes, trenchers and ground compactors/power trowels will be used to build the new project, Hoffman said.
The addition will sit just off Lyndale Avenue between W. 82nd Street and American Boulevard W. Once complete, the entrance to the headquarters will be relocated so it faces American Boulevard instead of 82nd Street.
Toro first opened a research and development facility in Bloomington in 1952. It eventually relocated its St. Paul headquarters to the Bloomington site in 1962. The last major addition to the building was done in 1997 and led by Ryan Cos.
On hand to celebrate Toro's decision to stay and expand in Minnesota were Gov. Mark Dayton, Rep. Erik Paulsen, Bloomington Mayor Gene Winstead and officials from Ryan Cos., Greater MSP and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
