Fire burns former Lake Street Kmart building in Minneapolis

Updated: 11:45 a.m.

The vacant, long-embattled former Kmart building on Lake Street in south Minneapolis went up in flames Friday morning.

Fire crews responded to the call at about 5 a.m. and found flames and thick smoke coming from the vacant department store at Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue, just west of Interstate 35W.

Crews remained at the scene for hours, using multiple aerial ladder trucks to pour water on the flames.

“There is a partial collapse in the rear of the building, all of our fire crews are away from that collapse zone to make sure that they are safe,” Assistant Fire Chief Melanie Rucker told reporters at the scene at about 8 a.m.

At that time, Rucker said, crews hadn’t been able to access the interior of the building to search for anyone who might have been inside. But she said a check of all the doors to the building showed them to be secure. She said further checks would be done once the fire was under control.

Utility crews also were at the scene to shut off gas and electric service to the building.

“We’re still working to extinguish the fire,” Rucker told reporters at the morning news conference. “And with the collapse, there’s going to be pockets where we’re going to have to figure out how to get into those pockets underneath the collapsed roof and some of the collapsed debris in the back.”

The Kmart store was built in the 1970s, infamously blocking off a portion of Nicollet Avenue.

In 2020, Minneapolis paid Kmart’s corporate owner $9.1 million to end the store’s lease early — it was scheduled to expire in 2053 — and close the site. It was the last Kmart in the state to close.

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Since then, planning and discussions have been under way for redevelopment of the vacant building and property. The building was scheduled for demolition next March. There was no immediate word on whether the fire would change that timeline.

The building temporarily housed a U.S. Postal Service facility after two south Minneapolis post offices were burned in the unrest that followed the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. That temporary location closed once a rebuilt Lake Street post office reopened in Oct. 2022.

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