LEXINGTON, Minn. – (Aug. 30) – The old Lovell building in Lexington is finally getting an upgrade. The Lexington city council unanimously approved for a new development at the Aug. 16 meeting.
“I think it’s going to be a great addition to the community and it’s going to really dress this area up a lot,” said Lexington City Administrator, Bill Petracek.
The building will soon be a new home to many. What was once a school and the city hall building will now be Landings of Lexington, a 180 unit affordable apartment complex.
“This community is very well established but we have areas of the community that needs some dressing up and this is definitely one of the areas,” Petracek said. “The main thing is back when the city council was really looking at this building, they decided this is one area we really need to dress up and it was just no point in us putting a lot of money into this existing building,”
Dominium Development and Acquisitions will be spearheading the project. The complex will include a clubhouse, underground parking, and up to three bedroom units.
“The next steps are closing on the property with Dominium of course all the current leasers in the building will need to vacate by Oct. 31 and they all are aware of that, we’ll need to close on the property and basically, they’re hope is by the end of the year this building will be torn down and construction will be ready to begin,” Petracek said.
With the new development, Petracek hopes the businesses here can still find a place in the community.
“We’ve been working with them ever since the building was up for sale, we’ve been notifying them along the way and some of them can stay some of them can’t, that’s one of the challenges of being in a small community like this,” he said.
Petracek said the building will add significant value for the city and its new residents.
“This is an estimated $32 million of construction and our community overall is less than $100 million valuation, so we’re going to add roughly one third of our community’s value with this development,” he said.
The project will take about 14 to 16 months to complete and the new apartment complex should be completed by winter of 2020.
