Golden Valley's Shopping Center Is Being Remade One Lease at a Time

Dale Hoffman started working at Kuipers Ace Hardware when he was 9 years old. He went on to own and manage it. This fall he is running its closing sale.

CCX Media reported on November 4 that Kuipers, an anchor of the Golden Valley Shopping Center since 1954, is closing because it could not reach a lease agreement with the center's new landlord. Hoffman told CCX the decision came down to sustainability once lease talks with the new management fell through. "Everybody's going to miss it. It's the go-to place," he said.

The closing also shows how the center along Highway 55 is changing. The renovation promised in 2025 is happening mostly through leases: which tenants sign on, which ones leave, and what goes into the spaces they leave behind.

Seven Decades, Then a New Owner

The center has turned over slowly for most of its life. The past 18 months moved faster.

Because the center went up in 1953, Bring Me The News noted that Kuipers was likely its longest-standing tenant. The center went seven decades with Kuipers in place. Its closing sale started about 17 months after the ownership change.

What the New Owner Says It Is Building

When Minneapolis-based Paster Properties bought the property, city leaders described plans for exterior upgrades, new landscaping and parking lot improvements. Emily Goellner, Golden Valley's community and economic development director, put the stakes plainly in CCX Media's June 2025 report: "This property is crucial to the success of Golden Valley's town center."

Paster's own page for the property describes more than a facelift. It lists 87,000 square feet of retail, marks the center as "currently under repositioning," and calls the work a renovation and remerchandising effort, "curating a new mix of tenants that better serve the neighborhood."

Remerchandising is the part shoppers notice first. New paint and parking lot work leave the tenant list as it was. A new tenant mix means some leases get renewed on new terms, some don't, and the empty spaces go to tenants that fit the owner's plan. Kuipers is the most visible lease that didn't carry over. CBRE is now marketing small, mid-size, box and pad spaces at the center.

The First New Arrival Set the Tone

For a sense of where the mix is heading, look at the one tenant that has opened since the sale. When Kitchen and Rail opened on Feb. 23 in part of the freestanding building that once held Mort's Deli, the Minnesota Star Tribune described it as the beginning of a revamp of the 70-year-old strip mall.

The restaurant is an expansion from Eagan, run by Victor Salamone and Joe Newhouse, two nonprofit executives who, the Star Tribune wrote, see hospitality as another kind of service. They kept a cluster of gold spray-painted candelabras from the Mort's era. Salamone explained the idea to the paper: "Even though we're in a strip mall, and we just happen to be friends with a Chipotle, you're walking into a restaurant. It's a nice sense of arrival."

A sit-down dining room with a party room is a different use of the center than quick lunches and errands. That's the direction the "new mix" language points. Kitchen and Rail's posted hours for the Golden Valley location:

• Monday, 3 to 10 p.m.
• Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
• Saturday, 2 to 10 p.m.
• Sunday, noon to 8 p.m.

The restaurant's site also advertises a fall seasonal menu.

The center's restaurant lineup shifted on both ends early this year. Love Pizza, at 509 Winnetka Ave. N., ended restaurant service on Jan. 4 to focus on making frozen pizza. About seven weeks later, Kitchen and Rail opened down the street at 525 Winnetka.

Who Is Still Under the Same Roof

The center is spread across four buildings: the main strip, a building that has housed Chipotle and Love Pizza, the Lighting Outlet Center, and the All Strings Attached music store. In its Oct. 30 report on the Kuipers sale, Bring Me The News listed these other shops in the strip mall:

• Down in the Valley, the record store, in the center since 1986
• Ragstock
• Liquor Barrel

All Strings Attached lists its Golden Valley store at 8224 Olson Memorial Highway, with hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Down in the Valley has the most to say about the change of ownership, because it has the most at stake after Kuipers. "We've been in this mall since '86," general manager Scott Farrell told CCX Media after the sale. "This is our home base." Farrell said the new owners had asked for the store's input and shared ideas about what was coming. He named the long-running worry of tenants in an aging center: "One of the things that's always been a worry is that some developer would grab this property and maybe just level it and we wouldn't have a home anymore."

That worry helps explain the moment. Paster chose to renovate and re-lease the center, which kept the buildings standing and kept tenants like Down in the Valley. A re-leasing approach also means every lease comes up for new terms over time, and that is the same process that ended Kuipers' run.

Finishing a Project After Kuipers

For now, the store is still a place to pick up supplies. Bring Me The News reported that the closing sale began the week of Oct. 30, with window signs advertising many items at half off. CCX reported that the liquidation was set to run through the end of the year or until the remaining stock sells. Shelves at a closing sale thin out quickly, so anyone counting on a specific furnace filter or fastener size should go sooner rather than later.

After that, the nearest Ace stores in Ace's own directory are:

1. Robbinsdale Ace, 4140 W. Broadway, Robbinsdale
2. Gopher Ace, 1865 W. Wayzata Blvd., Long Lake

Hoffman described what he thinks will be hardest to replace. "When people need help on something," he told CCX, "you're going to get it from the small hardware store." Residents have been saying the same thing online. Bring Me The News cited one resident's Facebook post about a family that has shopped at Kuipers for more than 50 years, and another who wrote on Instagram, "Truly the end of an era."

Local sellers have another place to show up this winter. The Market in the Valley moves indoors to the Bassett Creek room on the second floor of Brookview, 316 Brookview Pkwy. S. The organizers list more than 20 Minnesota vendors selling food, crafts and gifts. The December market is Sunday, Dec. 13, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and admission is free. Earlier that month, on Friday, Dec. 4, the city's free Blizzard Bash runs at Brookview from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

If you own near the Highway 55 corridor and are wondering what a changing town center could mean for your own plans, Sara Moran is following these Golden Valley leasing changes closely and is glad to talk them through with you. Let's talk about your next move.