October Friday History: The Minnesota Vikings
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Written by Matt Goff, KA Historian / Archivist
In the summer of 2017 the Minnesota Vikings held their last training Minnesota State University Mankato. The final days of this camp were somewhat emotional for fans. Mankato hosted the Minnesota Vikings’ training camp for over half of a century, one of the longest such relationships in the league.
The parting was slightly more emotional because at the beginning of the summer it was still possible the Vikings might have returned the next year for one last camp. Construction on the Vikings’ new all-purpose headquarters and training facility in Eagan was running ahead of schedule, so the 2018 camp would take place in Eagan.
The new home of the Minnesota Vikings is the Twin Cities Orthopedic Performance Center.
The TCO Performance Center is a continuation of a relationship between the Minnesota Vikings and Kraus-Anderson that dates back more than forty years, when KA built the Vikings’ previous home base – Eden Prairie’s Winter Park.
In 1980, just when the Viking’s were preparing to make the transition from a cold weather team to an indoor one, moving from Bloomington’s Met Stadium to the Metro Dome, the franchise purchased a parcel of land, northwest of where County Road 18 crossed Interstate 494 (currently the northwest corner of US 169 and I494) to build a new team headquarters and practice facility.[/vc_column_text][vc_gallery interval=”3″ images=”30934,30925″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]
A New Home for the Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings’ new home was a sleek, low-profile structure built into a hill. The campus also included two and one half practice fields, which would allow the team to discontinue their usual practices at St. Paul’s Midway Field (RIP).
The Eden Prairie facility was never designed to accommodate the Vikings’ training camp. This was even true, in 1989, when KA added to Winter Park the enclosed playing field that now dominates the site.
Just like in 1980 when new (domed) playing facilities spurred the Vikings to upgrade their headquarters, so did the 2016 US Bank Stadium spur the development of a new home for the Vikings. This time the team happened to be owned by a major real estate developer.
[/vc_column_text][vc_gallery interval=”3″ images=”30927,30926″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]
A New Owner for the Minnesota Vikings
Zygi Wilf, a real estate developer from New Jersey, purchased the Minnesota Vikings in 2005. One thing that this new ownership added to the franchise was a vision for the team’s real estate footprint. The demise of an iconic Minnesota brand created an opportunity for this vision when Northwest Airlines was purchased by Delta. Delta’s headquarters in Atlanta Georgia made Northwest’s Eagan campus redundant.
Wilf purchased forty acres near the intersection of I494 and I35 left vacant by Northwest Airlines. This parcel gave room for everything the Vikings need plus more for the imagination. The new facility doubles the amount of square footage the team enjoyed in Eden Prairie and includes a 6,000 seat stadium, allowing the team to host a training camp within its campus.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”30928″ img_size=”large”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
CATEGORY: History