Vacant Building to Become New Home for Sauk Rapids Company

SAUK RAPIDS -- A large vacant manufacturing building in Sauk Rapids is getting a new tenant. Inventure Properties recently bought the former Nahan Printing building on 13th Avenue Northeast. After about a $1 million renovation they will be leasing it out to Pinnacle Climate Technologies, which will be moving a short distance from their current location in the Sauk Rapids Industrial Park to this new location.

Pinnacle CEO Ron Ten Berge says they've been in the community since they acquired Schaefer Ventilation in 2015, and they've been growing ever since.

So we were finding ourselves with sort of a hodgepodge of a supply chain network in three different buildings in the Sauk Rapids/St. Cloud area.  This new facility allows us to consolidate into one building all under one roof.

The move will give the company about 40,000 square feet more than their current leases.  Ten Berge says there's also room for expansion at the new facility. He says they have about 85 employees in Sauk Rapids right now, and they plan to add more employees over time.

The company produces ventilation products here in town.

In that facility there we actually manufacture our ventilation products under the Schaefer brand name.  It's also the home of all of our design, engineering and test facilities for our heating products.

Besides Sauk Rapids, Pinnacle Climate Technologies also has a sales and marketing office in Eden Prairie, a distribution facility in Chicago, and a large manufacturing facility in China.

The 120,000 square foot building was built in 2001 by BI Performance, however, they never moved-in due to the economic downturn at the time. The building sat empty until Nahan Printing moved-in in 2006, they have since consolidated their business into their west St. Cloud facility.

Pinnacle is planning to move next month. Ten Berge says the company loves the community and they didn't want to leave.  He says he appreciates the support they've gotten from the city, county and state economic development groups.

Inventure Properties CEO and President Doug Boser says to date this is the largest project they've ever done.

Meanwhile, Pinnacle's current building is expected to have a new tenant by early next year, however, the name of that company has not been announced.