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Jostens settles in at Minnesota Center

Matt M. Johnson//October 15, 2018//

Jostens’ new corporate headquarters in the Minnesota Center tower at 7760 France Ave. S. is just across France Avenue from the company’s former office space. (Submitted illustration: CBRE)

Jostens’ new corporate headquarters in the Minnesota Center tower at 7760 France Ave. S. is just across France Avenue from the company’s former office space. (Submitted illustration: CBRE)

Jostens settles in at Minnesota Center

Matt M. Johnson//October 15, 2018//

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School yearbook publisher and class ring maker Jostens has moved its headquarters across the street to take up a big leased space in the Minnesota Center.

Jostens signed a lease in the spring for 58,600 square feet in the 14-story Class A tower, which is at 7760 France Ave. S. in Bloomington. The company previously leased a 67,000-square-foot space in France Place, which is on the west east side of France Avenue at 3601 Minnesota Drive in Edina.

Jostens’ new headquarters takes up three floors in the Minnesota Center, according to a press release from the Minneapolis office of CBRE. CBRE’s Brian Fogelberg and Mark McCary represented Jostens in the new lease.

Built in 1987, the Minnesota Center was renovated in 2015. The building has a 3.2 percent vacancy rate, according to CoStar. Houston, Texas-based Transwestern paid $31.5 million for the 276,000-square-foot building in 2014. The building was about 75 percent occupied at the time of the purchase.

Jostens’ new layout includes flexible workspace, collaborative areas, fewer private offices and more small conference rooms, according to CBRE. The space is more efficiently planned than the company’s previous space, allowing for a 16 percent reduction in leased square footage.

Common tenant amenities in the Minnesota Center include a conference center, a fitness center and covered parking.

Employee recruiting and retention was a major reason behind the move, said company CEO Chuck Mooty. He called the new offices “state of the art.”

“Recruiting and retaining the best talent is critical to the growth of our business and our organization, and our new headquarters is already helping us achieve both,” Mooty said in a statement.

Jostens, a manufacturer of memorabilia for K-12 schools, colleges and professional sports teams, had its new offices fully renovated. The company moved in at the end of June.

The vacancy rate at France Place is now about 39 percent, CoStar shows. All State Insurance Co. is the biggest space user in the 35-year-old building with 18,954 square feet of space. The building is owned by Edina-based Frauenshuh. Jostens previously occupied space on the second, third and fourth floors of the building.

The office space vacancy rate in the Interstate 494 corridor is 17 percent, according to CBRE. The office vacancy rate for the Twin Cities overall is 17.7 percent.

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