After leasing a building for fourteen years, the owners of Biota Landscapes, an award-winning, Minneapolis-based residential and commercial landscape design-build firm, wanted to plant roots in their own building both for expanded, creative space and for long-term investment reasons. Jim Saybolt, Principal Affiliate. ASLA, CLP and Steve Modrow, Principal ASLA founded Biota Landscapes with a mission to create innovative designs that invite interaction and inspire the imagination using the highest-quality plants, materials and construction techniques with a focus on sustainable design. Their goal: a property that allowed them to combine their mission with the opportunity to develop a creative and functional workspace for staff as well as a progressive showcase where clients could gain inspiration and enjoy their design process experience.

Backed by a team of construction, real estate, financing, and development professionals, Brenda Nolby, owner of Jam Hops, the popular gymnastics, dance, and cheerleading gym, sold a building and designed and built a brand new, mega-sized special purpose facility in Ham Lake. Nolby says, "Every Project Has Little Bumps, but the Entire Team Worked Together to Make this New Building a Reality."

What do you do when you find a commercial property that has everything you’re looking for and you’ve started the process of buying it, but then through due diligence, you find it has environmental issues? It doesn’t have a nice ring to it for sure, but most properties that have desirable characteristics, are still valuable and very much worth the extra steps it may take to mitigate any environmental issue.