The (Almost) Daily Brief

Applications Close Oct. 19 on $100 Million for Airport Control Towers

By Megan Dayton · 9/22/2026

ENG  Minneapolis is repurposing 2.7 million square feet of office space, but the challenging buildings are still ahead. A dozen downtown buildings are being converted, on an August count from the brokerage CBRE, against 20 million square feet of vacant office space across the metro. Downtown vacancy is projected to keep climbing through 2028 on a second-quarter Newmark report. Steve Shepherd, managing director of Newmark’s local office, put the trend “in the middle of the first inning.” The two properties most often named as candidates, the 31-story Ameriprise Financial Center, empty since its tenant’s lease expired in 2025, and City Center, largely vacant since 2021, are among downtown’s largest and carry added architectural and engineering challenges. Carl Kaeding of Kaeding Development Group, who opened Saint Paul’s Stella in a former Ecolab office building with 178 units, said a conversion runs three times the work of new construction for similar returns, and that the easier projects have been taken. Sherman Associates puts Groove Lofts in the former Northstar Center near 80 percent occupancy with a 70 percent renewal rate, and Landmark Tower in Saint Paul nearly fully leased across 187 market-rate units. Chris Sherman credits the concrete structure for sound attenuation and larger units. Sherman expects to close soon on a $120 million conversion of part of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange into 232 apartments, stacking federal and state historic tax credits, tax-increment financing, low-income housing tax credits, and a Hennepin County environmental cleanup grant. Cray Plaza, the Hamm Building, the Flour Exchange, and the Spoon and Stable building are lining up for the same sources. Rethos returns to the Legislature next year seeking a 10 percent tax credit for repurposing underutilized buildings over six years.

Source: Star Tribune, Sept. 22

WORKFORCE  A labor agreement is in place on the proposed Google data center in Hermantown. A Google representative told the Hermantown City Council on Monday that its developer, Mortenson, and the Duluth Building Trades have reached a Labor Memorandum of Understanding committing the project to local labor. Members of Iron Workers Local 512 attended in support. Training coordinator Brent Harju said the project is “not just an investment on a site.” Members of Stop the Hermantown Data Center also attended and continue to raise the project’s potential environmental effects.

Source: Fox 21 News, Sept. 21

POLICY  A federal judge ordered the EPA to restore the $7 billion Solar for All program. Judge Mary McElroy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island vacated the agency’s termination on Sept. 18, finding that it exceeded the agency’s statutory authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The EPA had argued that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act converted the money into a lump sum subject to its discretion. The court found that Congress intended the agency to keep administering grants it had already obligated. The Minnesota Department of Commerce was awarded $62,450,000 in April 2024 for grants, loans and credit enhancements, interconnection, pre-development technical assistance, workforce development, energy navigators, and community engagement. The EPA obligated Solar for All money by a September 2024 deadline for use over five years, then ended the program a month after Congress repealed the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The Conservation Law Foundation, the Southern Environmental Law Center, Lawyers for Good Government, and the Lawyers Committee for Rhode Island brought the case.

Sources: Utility Dive, Sept. 21; EPA award announcement

POLICY  Texas regulators dropped a $50,000-per-megawatt interconnection fee on large electric loads. The Public Utility Commission of Texas voted Sept. 18 to adopt large-load interconnection standards that pull back from the rule it proposed in March. The non-refundable fee of $50,000 per megawatt of contracted peak demand is gone. Study fees, once tiered by project size, become a flat $100,000 for every large load customer. A transmission or distribution provider now has 24 months, measured against the energization schedule as a whole, before it must tell ERCOT that a customer has left capacity unused, against 30 days after a six-month miss under the proposal. Within 60 days of that notice the provider applies the customer’s financial security to amounts owed and returns the balance, replacing a 20 percent refund. ERCOT is auditing an interconnection queue of 474 gigawatts, 90 percent of it data centers. MISO, which runs the Minnesota grid, defines a large load as one above 50 megawatts and a computational load as a large load carrying at least 25 megawatts of information-technology demand.

Source: Utility Dive, Sept. 21

BIZ  Construction starts fell 24.8 percent in August. Dodge Construction Network put total starts at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.34 trillion in data released Monday, giving back July’s megaproject surge. Nonresidential starts dropped 32 percent on the month, manufacturing 80.8 percent, and office and data center work 31.3 percent. Nonbuilding fell 26.7 percent, with highway and bridge construction down 20.8 percent. Institutional slipped 18.1 percent on weaker education starts, down 14.3 percent, while healthcare rose 96.1 percent. Residential fell 5.2 percent. Through eight months, total starts run 15.2 percent above the same period last year, nonresidential 23.4 percent above and nonbuilding 22.2 percent above, with residential down 1.8 percent. Sarah Martin, Dodge’s director of economic research, said starts “largely normalized throughout August.”

Source: Construction Dive, Sept. 21

POLICY  Federal supply schedule ordering rules are moving out of the Federal Acquisition Regulation. The General Services Administration proposed on Sept. 22 to relocate Federal Supply Schedule ordering procedures from FAR subpart 8.4 into GSAR part 538, shifting them from chapter 1 to chapter 5 of title 48 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The companion FAR case 2026-003 rewrites FAR part 8 and strikes the ordering procedures from it, directing agencies to follow the procedures GSA publishes instead. GSA says the move gives it room to manage schedule ordering, and that the procedures are being reorganized alongside the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul the acquisition councils are running under Executive Order 14275. Comments on GSAR Case 2026-G501 close Oct. 22.

Source: Federal Register, 91 FR 60063

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