MANKATO — The North Riverfront Drive area might be the less charismatic little brother of Mankato’s downtown business district and its east-side shopping hub, but relentless private-sector investment is steadily remodeling and reimagining the chaotic mix of properties on the north side.
“We’re seeing more and more start to get remodeled and revamped,” said Jay Sallstrom, a real estate agent who owns 1215 N. Riverfront Drive.
Downtown tends to get the big-dollar private and public investments, including a nearly $100 million hotel project under construction at Riverfront and Main Street. The resurrection of the once-dormant city center began with the taxpayer-backed creation of an arena and convention center but also included subsidies for building remodels, construction of the Hilton Garden Inn, the addition of large office buildings and substantial outlays for streetscapes, skyways and public art.
The historic Old Town business district along Riverfront between Plum Street and Madison Avenue has been revitalized by private businesses supplemented with city projects. The latter includes the creation of Riverfront Park and a complete makeover of the Old Town portion of Riverfront Drive reduced traffic lanes to make room for more amenities for shoppers and other pedestrians.
And a huge public investment in the road network on Mankato’s east side over three decades supported that area’s rise as a regional retail center.
Meanwhile, Riverfront Drive north of Madison Avenue has more quietly seen millions of dollars in remodeling projects in the past 25 years.
Investors sweet on North Riverfront
For generations of Mankatoans, Sallstrom’s building is still “the former Ginny May Donuts” even though the shop closed around 1998.
The building, like so many on North Riverfront, has been a little bit of everything over the years. While the front was once visited for pastries and sandwiches, the garage-like units stretching behind the cafe space signaled the site’s past as a car dealership.
Since Sallstrom purchased the 1955 structure three years ago, it has received more than $250,000 in fixes, according to building permits for remodeling projects conducted in 2024 and 2025. Its units are now home to offices, a heating and air conditioning business, a cleaning company and Kato Karate. A couple of other potential tenants appear close to signing on.
“And then we’ll be totally full,” he said.
Sallstrom said his willingness to invest in the building was partly encouraged by what was occurring around it.
In 2022, a $2.6 million project across Riverfront turned buildings dating to 1950 and 1983 into the new Kitchen, Baths and More store. The project doubled the taxable market value of the site, which had previously been Honda and Kia dealerships and a pontoon boat retailer.
Also nearby, the $3.17 million Minnesota Standard Showplace plumbing supply warehouse was constructed in 2023. Immediately north of Sallstrom, the home of Ferguson Plumbing, owned by Ramy Properties, received more than $140,000 in remodels and improvements between 2006 and 2018.
Just north of that building, other Ramy-owned structures underwent $37,000 in improvements along with a $179,000 addition in 2017.
“I kind of saw money being pumped into the area,” Sallstrom said.
Diverse range of businesses
Elsewhere on North Riverfront, a $300,000 project a decade ago transformed a 1963 building into the new Graif Clothing, $320,000 was invested in 2006 in the 1946 Music Mart building and more than $80,000 remodeled the neighboring structure that’s home to the Pappageorge Restaurant and Bar.
Peter Trocke built the $525,000 Riverfront Liquor store in 2023, the $400,000 Riverfront Studio Suites hotel arrived in 2014 and Graybar Electric constructed a $1.5 million warehouse the same year. The owners of 1522 Riverfront Drive, which houses the Kato Athletic Fitness Center and Brandt Screen Printing, spent nearly $250,000 to modernize and remodel the 1952 warehouse over the past 11 years.
The building doing business as Kendell Doors and Hardware has undergone $261,000 in remodels and upgrades since 2012, and the C&S Supply hardware store invested in a $363,000 addition in 2009. A closed candy-packaging business became a Rooms and Rest Furniture Outlet following $390,000 in remodeling over a 13-year period.
In many cases, the cost of the remodeling, repairs and new HVAC systems reached a third or more of a building’s estimated market value, according to Blue Earth County tax records.
That was the case with the Ginny May building, Sallstrom said. It was worn down enough that he considered just tearing it down and building new. While most of the original structure is gone, he ultimately decided the steel frame was worth reusing.
A business incubator
The latest upgrade is at 1416 N. Riverfront Drive in a previously vacant building that dates to 1950.
Various records show the site as home to a lumber yard, possibly a one-time location of Tractor Supply Company, a boat retailer, a paper company and as Don’s Hobby shop, among other things. Since 2007, it was owned by the industrial and construction supply company Northern States Supply, doing business as Kato Tool.
Northern States was acquired by a longtime competitor — Ramsey-based B&F Fastener Supply in 2023 — and now operates locally out of a site on North Mankato’s Howard Drive.
Aaron Hatanpa, whose State Farm Insurance agency has been in that area of Mankato for 17 years, decided he was ready to invest in another North Riverfront property when the Kato Tool building became available.
A complete makeover is now underway with about two-thirds of the space dedicated to offices.
The improvements to the exterior include new windows, doors, lighting and a wide range of architectural accents on the southern and eastern sides of the building that face Riverfront Drive. Additional landscaping is also planned.
“We’ve owned our current building since 2008, and we’re just running out of space,” Hatanpa said.
That property, at 1613 N. Riverfront and consisting of about 20,000 square feet, was also pretty worn out when Hatanpa purchased it. The agency set up offices in a portion of the building and remodeled the other spaces over time to meet the needs of various tenants.
“The whole building is full,” he said.
Building permits show $217,000 in improvements to that building from 2008 to 2017, and other adjacent Hatanpa-owned buildings have benefited from more than $200,000 in additional upgrades.
While his agency will be moving a couple of blocks south along North Riverfront, he had no interest in moving to a different part of Mankato.
“As far as accessibility and visibility, from the standpoint of running a business, it’s worked out well for us,” he said. “So we wanted to stay in the north end area.”
The new building, with about 9,000 square feet of space, allows Hatanpa to accomplish that goal and also offer two additional leasable units to other businesses with an affection for that end of town. Current tenant Ruth Ebertowski, whose hair salon has outgrown its existing location, will be moving with the insurance agency to the new spot. Hatanpa is still looking for a tenant for the third suite.
Five different businesses got their start in the current Hatanpa building, often ones that were looking for a small footprint to start and then grew in size, including the Body Concepts Spa, Otto Media Group and Ebertowski’s Collective Artistry Hair Studio.
So Hatanpa essentially turned mostly vacant spaces into something of an incubator for small businesses, building out locations to meet the needs of each.
“And they grew from brand new to some pretty healthy businesses,” he said. “… It worked out really well with pretty much all of them.”
Spotting the hidden value
Hatanpa also will be repeating another task that he accomplished at 1416 — bringing a declining property back to life.
The project aims to recapture some of the character of the 75-year-old building, uncovering its brick and showing off the hand-assembled trusses.
“So we can highlight some of the old brickwork and these old trusses that somebody put a lot of time into,” Hatanpa said.
North Riverfront is probably always going to require some searching to find its attractive elements. The area developed at a time when little attention was being paid to setback requirements, zoning rules, design standards or even the idea that streets should meet at 90-degree angles.
Mankato Community Development Director Mark Konz said a couple of factors play a role in the somewhat haphazard nature of the area. He notes that North Riverfront was a highway corridor — serving as the one-time route through Mankato for Highways 60 and 22 — when most of the buildings were built.
“The zoning of the area has changed over time, which is reflective in the variation in the front-yard setbacks over the area,” Konz said.
But for anyone paying attention, many of the district’s property owners and businesses have made a genuine attempt to spiff things up.
“Most structures in this area were built between the mid-1950s and the late-1960s, with significant reinvestment occurring over the past five to 10 years,” Konz said.
The improvements along North Riverfront haven’t been a coordinated effort, because the district doesn’t have an association or Downtown Partnership the way Old Town and the city center do. It’s just happened as property owners recognized the area as being ripe for investment.
“There’s been a lot of redevelopment and people improving the buildings up and down that north end of Riverfront,” Hatanpa said.
The public sector involvement has been comparatively minor. The Kitchen, Baths and More project received $203,000 in tax-increment financing from the city, and Konz notes the North Riverfront Drive corridor is eligible for commercial rehabilitation funding through the Community Development Block Grant, Valley Opportunities and Economic Development Authority loan programs.
“Since 2008, four properties along this corridor have participated in these loan programs,” Konz said.
Municipal revitalization plans generally haven’t included North Riverfront. The City Center Renaissance plan approved in 2007, for example, stretched from Sibley Parkway to Old Town.
“Everything’s kind of stopped at Madison,” Hatanpa said, wondering if the time has come to try to consciously push the initiatives farther north “and kind of get the whole Riverfront Drive revitalized.”
Even without civic or municipal leaders at the forefront, there seems to be sense among property owners that the north side has real potential for a continued resurgence for anyone willing to finance a bit of modernization.
“The buildings are a little older and little underused for one of the major thoroughfares of Mankato,” Hatanpa said.
And now might be a good time to recognize the advantages an area such as North Riverfront offers. With construction costs skyrocketing in recent years, reusing existing spaces makes financial sense, he said. Plus, North Riverfront puts a business in the thick of things rather than at the edge of town.
“We’re close to downtown, we’re close to Old Town, we’re close to Madison Avenue,” Hatanpa said of the advantages of staying on the north side. “… It made economic sense to us.”
For Sallstrom, it doesn’t matter much if North Riverfront isn’t picturesque or overly charming because the area has readily available parking, easy access and great visibility.
“The big thing for me is the amount of traffic that goes down Riverfront,” he said, noting that average daily vehicle counts hit 18,000 in the area. “It’s a main artery in Mankato.”