Nestled between train tracks and modern apartments in Prospect Park sits an abandoned grain elevator with its colloquial name spray-painted across the top visible from miles away: United Crushers. 

Also known as the Del Mar 4 Grain Elevator, the century-old structure has resisted the renovations, demolitions and reconstructions that have swept the neighborhood. 

Yet the elevator is anything but forgotten.

Its unaltered architecture has attracted urban explorers and developers from around the Twin Cities to the United Crushers site, turning it into a lively landmark for the neighborhood.

Expanding over time

United Crushers is huge and unsightly. Standing at 209 feet tall, the elevator was built as two buildings between 1925 and 1931, said John Wall, president of development company the Wall Companies who owns United Crushers. 

The complete Del Mar Complex was the largest elevator facility in the U.S. at its construction and was owned by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).

Flaxseed millers like ADM settled in Minneapolis to take advantage of seed supplies and reduced freight costs. The final grain product was used in many trades, including upholstering, saddling, construction, painting and glazing. 

The Wall Companies purchased United Crushers in 1999, intending to build a 65-acre science research park it would make available to the University of Minnesota. The project failed to take off due to a lack of university support. The last tenant, General Mills, left in 2006.

The Wall Companies continued to buy adjacent land over the years. Today it owns about 20 acres. 

Wall said he has built two apartment buildings since—the Station at Malcolm Yards and the Flats at Malcolm Yards—in addition to a food hall, the Market at Malcolm Yards. United Crushers, however, has remained untouched.

Wall said he is reluctant to tear down the grain elevator, although he is considering solutions that might involve the structure without directly building into it. For now, he sees its role in Prospect Park’s history as worth the cost of allowing the structure to remain in place as he decides what to do. 

“To add floors, windows, and all the other stuff you have to put in there would be so much more expensive than simply tearing them down and building what you wanted in their place,” Wall said. 

“But I’m just reluctant to do it,” Wall added. “They’re a part of the history of the area, and they bring character if nothing else to the neighborhood.”

Urban explorers

United Crushers has caught the eyes of more than just developers. Urban explorers flock to the abandoned building in hopes of entering and exploring. “It’s really cool going to abandoned places nobody’s ever touched before or few people know about,”  said CurbiStompi, an urban explorer who identified himself only by his tag. 

United Crushers is such a popular location for urban explorers partly because of its proximity to the University of Minnesota campus, said CurbiStompi, 22. Urban explorers, however, have had difficulties entering the elevator. 

“For right now it is sealed, and very well and very annoyingly,” CurbiStompi said. “There are these giant cinder blocks that block every viable entrance. All of the iron doors are welded shut.” 

It’s also typical to see a police car driving along the University of Minnesota Transitway to keep an eye on the property, more than in other areas around campus, he said.

For Wall, keeping urban explorers out of United Crushers has been a battle.

Wall spends more than $10,000 a year trying to keep people from breaking into United Crushers and going to the top. “I don’t blame people for wanting to go up there,” said Wall. “But I don’t want to be the one that has to call their parents and tell them their child fell to their death while they were climbing around in my building because I didn’t keep it secure.”

Despite the clash between Wall and the young urban explorers, both see the elevator as something worth maintaining. 

“I hope it doesn’t get developed,” said CurbiStompi. “I hope it continues to regress a little bit.” 

Development ahead?

Improvements aside, holding onto the grain elevator isn’t cheap. The Wall Companies has to pay a mortgage, property taxes, stormwater fees and insurance for the abandoned structures on the property.

Wall is working with a developer who has proposed to build on the roof of the United Crushers grain elevator.The proposal places apartments on the roof and a parking structure north of the elevator, with other retail spaces on top of the parking. It leaves the elevator intact.

At least one local resident would like to see the grain elevator saved. “I would like to see them preserved,” said Peter Holbrook, 74. “But it’s not a strong feeling.” 

Holbrook moved to the Prospect Park neighborhood in 1997 and has seen other grain elevators transformed into condos. “I’m not sure how successful they were, or even if they’d be practical here in Southeast Minneapolis,” Holbrook said. “I hate graffiti so I’d like to see it scrubbed off if they’re going to keep it.”

The city has no position on the future of United Crushers. Celeste Robinson, policy aide for Ward 2 representative Robin Wonsley, said the city will work with the owner to support any changes.

When the Wall Companies bought United Crushers, the area was dominated by run-down industrial buildings with railroad tracks, smoke stacks and dirt roads. Today it still looks mostly the same, standing defiantly as a deteriorating reminder of Minneapolis’ industrial past.