Doran Buys Seven Points Parcel, Plans 228 Apartments in Uptown

The retail block at Hennepin Avenue and West 31st Street has spent years in redevelopment limbo. That changed when Doran Companies paid about $3 million for a roughly 1.6-acre parcel at the Seven Points center, the property formerly known as Calhoun Square, giving the Bloomington-based developer the control it needed to move.

Doran plans a five-story, roughly 184,000-square-foot building with 228 apartments at 3045 Hennepin Ave., on the southern portion of the site, working with Northpond Partners, the Chicago-based owner of Seven Points. Designed by Kaas Wilson Architects, the building wraps a central courtyard, and 46 of the units, or 20%, would be reserved at or below 50% of area median income for 30 years. Construction is expected to begin in 2026, with completion anticipated in the third quarter of 2027.

The project is a scaled-back version of earlier ideas. A 2022 proposal imagined a grocery store, restaurant and apartments; the plan that advanced trades some of that retail ambition for a more straightforward residential building. The Minneapolis Planning Commission amended the site's planned unit development on July 21, 2025, clearing Doran to demolish part of the structure and build housing.

That shift sits at the center of a debate about Uptown's main intersection. Architecture professor Molly Reichert appealed the commission's decision, arguing the plan to demolish the former Kitchen Window and CB2 spaces violated city code requiring ground-floor retail along Hennepin Avenue. On Aug. 13, 2025, a City Council committee unanimously denied the appeal, siding with planning staff who said the broader Seven Points development already met the retail requirement.

Supporters say hundreds of new residents are what a thinned-out district needs, generating the daily foot traffic struggling storefronts have lost. The benefits, though, are years out, and demolition will displace a handful of small businesses that kept the lights on through the long wait. Whether the building becomes the catalyst its backers envision will be among the defining Uptown stories of the next few years.