The next wave of development will usher out the era of manufacturing in downtown Minneapolis. If all goes well with Hunt Associates' purchase of
Merit Printing in the Warehouse District, a residential tower will one day rise where a lowly, one-story printing plant now stands.
"We are the last manufacturing firm in the downtown area," says Ron Boerboom, co-owner of Merit Printing, which has outgrown its longtime home and is looking for a new site, either in Minneapolis or an inner-ring suburb. "I'm sure the city would like to see us out of here," Boerboom adds; trucks backing up to loading dock doors create congestion on the street.
But the modest structure at the corner of Second Street and First Avenue North is known for more than occasional impediments to traffic. For more than 15 years, the company has hosted one of the largest and most celebrated mural walls in Minneapolis.
Sometimes called a legal graffiti wall, Merit Printing's ever-changing mural started with the full sanction of the city, a project of the Minneapolis Youth Coordinating Board. Within a few years, YCB handed off the wall to Juxtaposition Arts, the North Minneapolis hip-hop art school. Since then, Juxtaposition has completely repainted the long wall on the building's First Avenue side every year or so.
"It's a good thing," says Boerboom. "It put Merit on the map." He often sees people stop to take pictures and fashion shoots take place in the company parking lot "on a weekly basis."
Source: Ron Boerboom, Merit Printing
Writer: Chris Steller