YWCA Uptown building sold; job training center planned

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Tending the Soil, a coalition of five local nonprofits, has closed on its long-anticipated acquisition of the former YWCA Uptown facility on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis — a major milestone in its effort to convert the building into a workforce development center.

Tending the Soil MN LLC, based in Minneapolis, paid $4.25 million for the 80,000-square-foot Uptown YWCA building at 2820 and 2828 Hennepin Ave., according to a certificate of real estate value made public this week. The seller is YWCA of Minneapolis.

The YWCA announced in August 2023 that it planned to close the Uptown facility and a downtown fitness center at 1130 Nicollet Mall. In March 2024, St. David’s Center, a mental health services provider, agreed to buy the 124,000-square-foot Nicollet Mall building.

Also in 2024, the Minnesota Legislature agreed to allocate $9 million to “design, redesign, renovate, construct, furnish and equip” the Uptown space to house the job training facility, known as the Rise Up Center.

Emilia Gonzalez Avalos, executive director of Unidos MN, a partner in the Tending the Soil coalition, said the coalition is working with LSE Architects on designing the space for the Rise Up Center.

“We are very excited, and we’re just aligning our operators and our team for the next stage of this project, which is to go back to the drawing board with the architect, solidify some details, continue to launch our capital campaign and continue to bring this vision into a reality,” Avalos said Monday. “We want to have all our dotted lines for construction to begin late 2025 early 2026.”

The project has been in the works for more than a year.

In March 2024, Finance & Commerce reported that Tending the Soil and its member organizations — Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL), United Renters for Justice, New Justice Project, SEIU Local 26 and Unidos MN — launched a fundraising campaign to match the state money with another $9 million from private sources.

RELATED: Job training center planned for former YWCA Uptown

Finance & Commerce previously reported that the project team was looking at a roughly $22.5 million overall investment in the facility. The total estimated project cost includes about $18 million for renovation, as previously reported, in addition to the building acquisition cost.

Avalos said one of the goals is to make the project as energy-resilient as possible, perhaps carbon neutral.

The project is a major investment in Uptown, said Avalos, who added that the Rise Up Center’s constituency is predominantly “low-wage workers and BIPOC workers.” The project, she said, will bring business opportunities, workforce development and training to Uptown.

“We’re excited about moving to Uptown, about the investment that we are bringing into the Uptown location. We know that it’s struggling. … So this is a good day. Monday, April 7, is a good day for us.”

For its part, YWCA Minneapolis is “excited about the work that Rise Up Center is going to be able to do” at the Uptown site, said Shelley Carthen Watson, president and CEO of YWCA Minneapolis.

“Green jobs are important, but to have something that’s a culturally competent and economically sustainable hub provide workforce development is going to be transformational in the Twin Cities,” Watson said Monday. “And we were really gratified to be able to sell the building to a nonprofit and one whose values mirror our own. And I think the neighbors will be very happy.”

At the same time, Watson said, the sale is a “bittersweet” moment.

“For the people who used their memberships there, it really was a community,” she added. “Our competitive swim programs were there. One person said to me, ‘This place has been my life every day for the last 28 years.’ So it’s hard, but it helps to know that the building is going to be used by someone that will continue to make a positive impact to the community.”