Listen to this articleThe southern suburbs of Shakopee have been one of the fastest growing communities in Minnesota in recent decades, due in large part to the opening of Canterbury Downs (now Canterbury Park) horse racing track.
Shakopee-based Greystone Construction built the 11,000-square-foot multi-tenant building, which will house Badger Hill Brewing Co.'s new taproom and brewery, as well as Bravis Craft Mexican Kitchen restaurant, in a prime location overlooking the track.
To bring the project to fruition, Greystone partnered with Canterbury Development LLC to form a separate private equity LLC, according to Bryce Hotzler, Greystone's development and construction manager. Hotzler said the builders used “mixed-use” structural materials, using wood trusses for some of the brewery and restaurant's roof structures and moving away from a traditional steel truss design.
Hotzler said the ceiling truss design used in the building “uses large prefabricated wood trusses that allow for more space between the structural components, creating more open space.” The ceiling truss design resulted in significant savings of more than $250,000, Hotzler said.
The builders also practiced material conservation by reusing leftover materials from other projects, and paneled some of the interior using surplus cedar from the owner's family farm.
Construction began in late October 2022, with construction crews working through the winter of 2022-2023. The use of exposed wood trusses, rather than steel, which is more commonly used in commercial buildings, presented some challenges. “We had to protect the trusses and take other precautions during our wet winter,” said Tyler Hartman, project manager for Greystone. “Once in place, the trusses had to be sanded down to remove any imperfections.”
Like many other construction projects completed in the post-COVID-19 era, the contractor had to deal with delays in materials. In this case, several rooftop HVAC units were not available on time. The contractor ended up changing RTU suppliers just a month before completion in order to get the units installed on time, Hartman noted.
*All photos published by F&C Magazine
Badger Hill Brewing and Bravis Craft Mexican Kitchen
address: 2801 Winners Circle Drive, Shakopee
Project Cost: $4.3 million
Project scale: 11,000 sq. ft.
owner: SW Gateway LLC
Contractor: Greystone Construction Co., Ltd.
architect: RSP Architects
engineer: ERA (structural); ISG (civil engineering)
