Pentagon Park Developer Presents Six Plans to Fix Site 'Synonymous With Failure'

A Minneapolis developer is looking to breathe new life into Pentagon Park.

Hillcrest Development presented six potential plans for renovating the 11-building, 659,000-square-foot office park to the Edina Planning Commission last week.

Hillcrest, a company that specializes in fixing up dilapidated properties, bought Pentagon Park’s two West 77th Street parcels in September 2012 and January 2013. The office park had been foreclosed in 2009.

Scott Takenoff, Hillcrest’s owner, told the planning commission that Pentagon Park, built in the late 1960s and early 1970s, has become "synonymous with failure."

“It’s a little bit of a labor of love,” he said. “It’s had a lot of neglect, a lot of not very good management, not a lot of great ownership, and we’ve made a concerted effort to try to reverse that, change that, and put the pieces of a meaningful development together.”

Hillcrest’s six plans for the property (shown in the photo gallery above) look to incorporate green space into the concrete expanse of Pentagon Park’s parking lots.

Describing Pentagon Park as a “secluded property that’s bounded and almost gated,” Takenoff said he wanted to “unlock” the property’s potential and turn it into a space that “connects neighborhoods and connects public and private uses.”

The Edina City Council gave input on the 42-acre site in September, and Hillcrest held neighborhood meetings in September and October.