Art Petrie paid about $500,000 for the old Federal Reserve Bank building on Marquette Avenue in Downtown Minneapolis. But it had problems. The tower's floors were too narrow for the wide-open floor layouts now demanded by most corporations. And who but a central bank would want to lease the huge underground vault?

Renamed Marquette Plaza, the 120,000-sft bunker is leased out at some attractive rents (more than $20 per sf net) to 360 Network, Qwest, Allegiance Telecom and Cable & Wireless. Meanwhile, the tower is being doubled in size to nearly 400,000 sf--and will be outfitted with the power and wiring to house more telecom tenants, says Jim Montez of Minneapolis-based Grubb & Ellis, who is leasing the project. Petrie's firm will spend $60 million to redevelop and reopen the tower by the summer of 2002.

Likewise, the former site for Control Data's business incubator program near the Metrodome on the edge of Downtown Minneapolis is also filled up and its owner is expanding it as well. Now called the 511 Building, Minneapolis developer and investor Basant Kharbanda is expanding the 200,000-sf complex by 100,000 sf. Kharbanda, who also owns the Foshay Tower in Downtown Minneapolis, filled up the initial building with tenants like MCI Worldcom, Qwest, AT&T and McLeod--and is getting $30 per sf net in rent, about double what the average net rent of the finest office buildings gets Downtown, according to a recent survey by Colliers Towle.