Grain Belt Brewery development on tap for approval tonight

A Minneapolis City Council committee takes up a proposal today Tuesday to sell the remaining undeveloped portions of the old Grain Belt brewery to a development company hoping to build apartments on the site.

The city's housing director, Tom Streitz, says he's excited about the proposal, and expects it to be approved. The deal will include a vacant lot across the street from the brewery, as well as the brewery's 1890s-era office building, which will be renovated and converted into apartment amenities including a fitness center and community room.

"It's just a beautiful building, a lot of history there , operated as the offices for the Grain Belt brewery for, you know, 100 years, really fantastic," he says. "The site of course is right off the river in a burgeoning area right off downtown, north east."

St. Paul-based Everwood Development is offering to pay a little more than $1.5 million for the site, which Streitz desctibes as a fair price.

"Once it goes through committee it will go to council. I expect it to fly through within a month and they'll enter into a closing list on the property and the developer will go out an put together its funding package and that could take upwards of six to nine months," Streitz says. "I expect construction would start in the spring of 2013."

The main area of the old Grain Belt brewery was redeveloped about 10 years ago into space for artists.

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