Historic landmark up for sale has checkered past

Historic landmark up for sale has checkered past
By Tim Spitzack | Editor | October 2025

A new era is coming for South St. Paul’s most iconic landmark but time will tell what its latest iteration will be. In June, the historic Stockyard Exchange Building at 200 N. Concord Exchange was listed for sale, for $2.8 million. While a buyer has yet to surface, historic preservationists are holding their breath to see how plans unfold.

Built in 1887 by the Union Stockyards Company, the building first housed commission firms and other businesses related to South St. Paul’s bustling stockyards, which eventually flourished as the largest stockyards in the country. It also was home to the city’s first post office and bank – Stockyards National Bank. Architect Charles A. Reed designed the Richardsonian Romanesque building, and he and partner Allen H. Stem went on to gain national prominence for designing at least 100 railroad stations across the country, including collaborating with another firm on Grand Central Station in New York City. They also designed the St. Paul Hotel, built in 1910. The 30,000 square-foot Stockyard Exchange Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Since its heyday, the building has had a checkered history. After the largest meat packing companies left town in the late 1960s and ’70s, the city sunk into depression from the loss of jobs, livelihood and tax base. After the dust settled, city leaders turned to redevelopment with great vigor and eventually razed more than 135 buildings in the Concord Street area. The Exchange Building survived that fate when the South St. Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority purchased it in 1976, a move that was met with mixed reaction. According to Dakota County Historical Society documents, some city council members were against buying the “white elephant,” while others saw an opportunity to turn the building into an interpretive center highlighting the stockyards history and immigrant experience in the city.

In October 1979, Colonial Properties purchased the Exchange Building for $10,000 and agreed to invest $1.2 million to transform it into office space and a restaurant. However, it couldn’t fulfill its redevelopment obligation and sold the property to Morris Kloster, who also failed to complete the work. The property suffered a blow in January 1980 when vandals broke in and turned on two firehose hydrants in the attic, causing $100,000 in damage.

According to research by Andrew Elm, who runs historictwincities.com, the property returned to the South St. Paul HRA after Kloster’s death in January 1991 and the following spring the HRA spent thousands of dollars to repair the roof, remove toxic materials and remove thousands of dead pigeons and rodents. In 1994, the HRA tore down the 1917 annex on the building’s north side, which housed the Stockyards National Bank and had been extensively renovated in the 1950s and 1970s. 

In 1997, Duane and Martha Hubbs invested more than $3 million to renovate the building as the 30-room Castle Hotel. The ambitious project opened in the fall of 1998 but was short-lived. In January 2000, the Castle Hotel declared bankruptcy and closed. Richard DeFoe purchased the property in October 2001 and reopened it as a catering center, Valentino’s night club and II Trevino Restaurant. That, too, didn’t last long. Today, Castle Hotel Development Corp. operates the Concord Exchange Event Center there, hosting weddings and other events. The space features an expansive main hall with seating for 300, multiple private party rooms, a commercial-grade kitchen, modern restrooms and 14 boutique hotel rooms.

South St. Paul now has five buildings in the National Register of Historic Places, with the recent addition of Luther Memorial Church.

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