Leijona Apartments

Project Goal

For more than two decades, the former St. Louis County Jail sat empty in the heart of downtown Duluth

Built in 1903 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it had been dismissed by developer after developer as too complicated, too expensive, and too structurally unusual to touch. The 98 steel jail cells at the core of the building were not just a feature; they were load-bearing structures, and we could not simply remove them.

New History believed it could be done. They needed a builder willing to figure out how, and Gardner was delighted to be that partner.

Engineering a path forward

Some buildings hand you a clear set of problems to solve; this project handed Gardner a puzzle that needed to be pieced together daily

The jail's structural logic was unlike anything in a standard construction playbook. The steel cell blocks running through the building's core were integral to how the floors held together. Before Gardner could build anything new, we had to understand exactly what we were working with and rebuild the building's structure from the inside out.

LHB Corp's architects and engineers helped rethink the entire floor plan, moving residential units to the perimeter and routing corridors through the center where the cell blocks had been. That meant rebuilding the structural system while keeping a 120-year-old historic shell intact and satisfying the National Park Service's strict requirements for historic tax credit certification.

For New History, Gardner's ability to work through that complexity in real time, adapting in the field while holding the design intent, was what made the project buildable. What had made the jail impossible to reuse for 20 years became the framework for 33 homes unlike anything else in Duluth.

Preserving what made it worth saving

The best historic projects make you feel the past, and then they make it livable

New History wanted future residents to know exactly where they were living. That meant keeping the details that told the building's story, even when it would have been easier to remove them.

Gardner preserved the terrazzo floors of the original booking room, which now serves as the lobby. Steel window bars, rather than being cut away, were retained and repurposed as built-in fall protection. The carved stone lion's heads still watch over the exterior facade. Every one of those decisions required Gardner to find a way to make a historic element work in a modern building, and to do it without triggering a conflict with the preservation requirements the project depended on.

Delivering what the community needed

A blighted building is not just an eyesore; it is a missed opportunity for the whole city

At the time of this project, the city of Duluth was experiencing a housing shortage. It also happened to have a 120-year-old landmark sitting vacant in its downtown for two decades. This project addressed both at once, adding 33 boutique units, including affordable housing options, put residents into a building that contributes to the street rather than subtracting from it.

Pulling together the financing required to make Leijona work meant layering state and federal historic tax credits, securing a preliminary determination from the National Park Service, and coordinating across a complex ownership and development structure. Gardner kept pace with every step, delivering a building ready for its first residents in January 2023.

For New History, having a contractor who could solve problems on the fly without losing the thread of the project was not a nice-to-have, it was the only way a project like this gets built.

Recognition

Finance & Commerce Top Project of 2022
2023 Novogradac Journal of Tax Credits Historic Rehabilitation Award Winner
Minnesota REJournals Awards Finalist