Two five-story apartment buildings are going up on Marshall Street NE this fall. Together they’ll add more than 270 apartments to the corridor. The projects answer the question of parking in opposite ways.
At 931 Marshall St. NE, Monarch Development Partners is building 89 apartments with 32 parking stalls. At 1500 Marshall St. NE, Exeter Management plans 184 apartments with 177 stalls for residents.
The city of Minneapolis has no minimum parking requirement for new buildings, as planning staff noted in their review of the Exeter project.
Ward 3 Council Member Michael Rainville, whose ward includes both sites, said parking is what he hears about most from constituents. Rainville disagrees with the city’s policy and would prefer “one parking stall for one apartment, as it is on the new development on Marshall and 17th,” the Exeter building. He said too little parking “puts a burden on the existing residents” and on residents who walk to their cars “through the rain and snow and darkness.”
Carl Runck, co-founder of Monarch, said residents without a stall will park on the street or in nearby lots, or rely on biking and walking. The building, he said, is aimed at young professionals, roughly 22 to 40, many of whom choose Northeast “because they like the walkability, bikeability and transit access.”
Construction has started on 931 Marshall St. NE and Silva on the River, 1500 Marshall St. NE. These building are expected to open in 2027. (Provided)
931 Marshall: 89 units, 32 stalls
Monarch’s building, at the corner of 10th Avenue NE in St. Anthony West, has been four years in the making. The Planning Commission first approved a nearly identical project in November 2022, but rising interest rates that year stalled it, Runck said. The approvals expired last November, so Monarch applied again this spring. The city issued a building permit July 31, with a listed construction value of $12.56 million, and a plumbing permit Sept. 28, according to city permit records. C70 Builders serves as the project’s contractor.
The building replaces two houses: a two-family house built around 1880 and a single-family house built in 1975. City preservation staff found neither had historic significance. The building will hold 57 studios, 30 one-bedroom and two two-bedroom apartments, with 32 stalls in a partial ground-floor garage and 82 long-term bicycle spaces. Seven of the 89 units will be affordable, as the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance requires, Runck said.
Monarch aims to open the building around September 2027, Runck said. It is built on a slab with no basement, which he said has sped up construction. A rooftop amenity space on the fifth floor, indoors and out, is meant to draw residents who work from home.
Rainville supports the development. “We need more housing,” he said. “In order to get affordable housing, it has to be built, and what starts out as market rate becomes more affordable as time goes on. This is good for Northeast.”
Not everyone agrees with that assessment. Before the May 4 hearing, the St. Anthony West Neighborhood Association asked the commission to require “a redesign of the building to reduce the number of units,” arguing the area “has already absorbed significant density.” Association members counted 554 units within about two and a half blocks once the building opens and asked that mature trees on the site be saved.
“Unfortunately, all of the trees were cut down,” Janet Lenius, the association’s treasurer, wrote in an email. They included a pine tree, two pear trees, an apple tree and a maple she estimated was “at least 200 years old.” Lenius added the board itself is divided on the project: “Some believe housing is already too dense, while others believe that more apartment buildings are needed to ease the housing shortage.”
“We would love to save those trees,” Runck said, but construction would have cut their root systems. Monarch will plant new trees, he said.
Runck, a former Northeast resident, thinks density is key to the neighborhood. “The more density of people you have living there, the more vibrant the city becomes.” Similar buildings nearby that opened in the last 10 years are 90% to 95% full or higher, he said. “We wouldn’t have done this if there were buildings that were sitting half empty.”
The dispute centered on a few feet of setback along 10th Avenue. Monarch sought a variance to build closer to the street than the required 12 feet (8.1 feet for the building and 4.2 feet for its balconies), and city staff recommended denying it. Holding to the 12 feet meant pushing the building toward the house next door. Janet Jordan, who owns that house at 915 Marshall St. NE, wrote to the city objecting that the shift would affect “privacy for my residents, their amount of daylight, and increased noise levels.”
The commission was not open to the variance, Runck said, so Monarch moved the building. “The same design that was approved in 2022 was reapproved in 2026 here and shifted five feet further south,” he said.
Rainville called the outcome “an example of the compromises that have to happen to maintain the integrity of our streets and sightlines setbacks with building this new generation of housing in the oldest part of the city.”
Construction has already been felt nearby. Lenius, who lives across the alley from the site, wrote that her house shook “as though an earthquake was happening on Main Street” while pilings were being driven, and that her pets and other neighbors’ pets were badly stressed by it.
1500 Marshall: 184 units, 177 stalls
Exeter’s site sits on the river side of Marshall in the Sheridan neighborhood, on land the city rezoned from industrial use. It replaces a house, a trucking warehouse and part of a commercial building. The city issued demolition permits in August and September, and Exeter broke ground Oct. 14.
The building will have 184 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments over one level of underground parking, plus 3,128 square feet of commercial space facing Marshall, according to the city staff report. Of its 185 stalls, 177 are for residents and eight serve the commercial space. There are 220 long-term bicycle spaces. Exeter also proposed a public trail along the former 15th Avenue right-of-way, connecting Marshall Street to the riverside trail on Park Board land.
The project drew no public comments before the city’s staff report was written, according to the report.
Exeter Management did not respond to a request for comment.
What comes next
Rainville sees the Monarch development as part of a broader shift. St. Anthony West has long been single-family homes and industry, he said, but “the industrial’s going away. You’re seeing the single-family home evolve into apartment buildings on transportation corridors.”
More change is coming. Graco plans to leave its Riverside campus, across Marshall from Monarch’s building, in 2027. Rainville would like to see it become “a really unique housing village,” with neighborhood services, green space and a green-energy campus.
Hennepin County also plans to begin rebuilding Marshall Street in 2027, from 3rd Avenue NE to Lowry Avenue, an area that includes both buildings’ blocks. Rainville was blunt about what the reconstruction will mean: “It’s going to be destructive, and it’s going to take time to drive, much less walk or ride your bicycle. It’s going to be noisy and dusty.”