Project profile: Great River Energy Headquarters

Great River Energy (GRE) is a not-for-profit, member-owned electric utility cooperative. As Minnesota's second-largest electric wholesale supplier, GRE generates and transmits electricity to 28 distribution cooperatives serving more than 620,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers.

GRE's headquarters is housed in a 166,000 square foot, four-story office building with a concrete frame and glass curtain walls. The headquarters anchors Elm Creek Boulevard, a major thoroughfare in suburban Maple Grove, Minnesota, and overlooks Arbor Lake, a man-made lake resulting from gravel excavation. The site was designed to link GRE with Main Street, Arbor Lakes Retail District, and a metro-wide transit terminal, completing Maple Grove's community masterplan, which was created in the late 1990's.

The 12.5-acre site is designed to accommodate expansion of an additional 120,000 square feet. A future parking deck will fit within the surface lot without reducing green space, increasing runoff, or reducing existing bioswale capacity.

GRE's new office environment was designed to showcase workplace productivity, energy-efficient technologies, and a collaborative culture within the most electric-energy-efficient building in the state.
(2009 AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Projects recipient)