Ryan Cos. to Buy Part of Thomson Reuters’ Eagan Campus
Minneapolis-based Ryan Cos. announced Thursday it has entered into a purchase agreement to buy 179 acres of Toronto-based Thomson Reuters’ 263-acre Eagan campus. The sale includes a 1,100,000-square-foot office building, three data centers totaling 333,912 square feet, and 90 acres of undeveloped land.
Thomson Reuters put the property up for sale in January last year. Six months later, the company announced plans to move into 300,000 square feet at Prime Therapeutics’ former headquarters, a property now referred to as “The Landing” in Eagan. Workers will move to the new office in the coming months, according to a news release announcing the purchase agreement. The company’s print manufacturing facility was not for sale and will continue operating at its current location.
Ryan said it will work with the City of Eagan, Thomson Reuters, and other area stakeholders to explore potential options for the site, according to the news release.
“Having access to nearly 180 acres within a major metropolitan area is rare and we believe there is tremendous potential in redeveloping this site to bring new jobs and opportunities to the City of Eagan,” Tony Barranco, north region president of Ryan Cos., said in the release.
Ryan isn’t providing any further details on possible future plans for redevelopment at this time, and declined to share the price of the transaction.
Thomson Reuters has been in its current campus since the 1996 acquisition of West Publishing Co., a provider of legal information and court records. West Publishing owns five conjoining parcels in and around its location on Opperman Drive. According to Dakota County property records, the total value between these parcels is about $91 million, though that figure includes its print facility, which it is keeping.
Located off Dodd Road, just south of the Interstate 494 and Interstate 35E interchange, the Thomson Reuters site features “tremendous accessibility and proximity to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as well as downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul,” Ryan officials said.
This project is Ryan’s third major redevelopment in the past year. Ryan partnered with C. S. McCrossan, Inc. as land partners and co-developers on the 100-acre Minnesota Science and Technology Center in Maple Grove in May of last year. On Jan. 16, the Ramsey County Board also approved the purchase and sale agreement with Ryan for a 40-acre parcel in Arden Hills.
Questions over what would happen to Thomson Reuters’ original Eagan campus have persisted amid massive fluctuations in the Twin Cities office market. When Thomson Reuters first announced plans to sell off part of the property, the company told TCB that the Eagan campus simply had more space than needed.
