Another of Bloomington’s Normandale Lake Office Park towers under foreclosure

A lender has moved to foreclose on another tower in the Normandale Lake Office Park in Bloomington, saying the owner has defaulted on more than $35 million in loans.

The lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County District Court, is the latest in a series of financial woes facing the owner of the largest multitenant office complex in the Twin Cities.

Iowa-based MidWestOne Bank last week sued the owner of the 281,552-square-foot property, Liberty 8300 Normandale LLC.

Also named as defendants are the property manager and Avrohom Prager, whose New York-based Opal Holdings bought the five-tower Normandale Lake Office Park in 2022 for $366 million.

The complaint regarding the property, at 8300 Norman Center Dr., seeks more than $35.5 million, including taxes and penalties. It asks the court for a judgment of foreclosure and to appoint a receiver to manage rents and operation of the property as well as pay all taxes on it.

MidWestOne is asking the court for immediate possession and control of the property and informing it might, at the bank’s discretion, immediately sell it.

The Hennepin County Assessor’s Office in 2024 estimated the property’s value at just under $60 million.

Normandale Lake Office Park and Opal did not immediately return requests for comment.

The action is similar to two taken last year in the Normandale complex, when lenders sued to foreclose on Normandale’s 8200 Tower and 8500 Tower.

Prager has purchased several other trophy office buildings across the country. He financed those properties, including Normandale Lake, using an unconventional and complicated structure that includes mortgages on land and ground leases tied to different entities.

In the latest suit, MidWestOne claims Prager unconditionally guaranteed full and prompt payment of any amount due. The suit said the owners are in default because they failed to make timely payments, and Prager failed to remedy the defaults on the property.

Despite the financial woes, many still consider Normandale Lake a premier office property in the metro area, which has experienced record office vacancies in the post-pandemic era of remote work.

Overall, according to a report from Twin Cities commercial real estate brokerage Colliers, vacancies in the metro area began to stabilize slightly last year and remained at about 22% from the end of 2024 through the first quarter of 2025.

The office vacancy rate along the I-494 corridor, where Normandale Lake is, was 24.4% in the first quarter of this year, higher than any other Twin Cities submarket outside of the downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul central business districts.