7400 EXCELSIOR BLVD. The S&L Building

This building near the western edge of the city was built in 1951 for Salkin and Linoff, Inc. The architect was Liebenburg & Kaplan. S&L was a retail clothing company started by Samuel F. Salkin and Joseph Linoff. The building boasted 125,000 sf of warehouse space and 20,000 sf of office space. The building opened for business in July 1951. The company declared bankruptcy in 1990 and an auction was run out of the warehouse in 1991.


1956

In 1993, the building was purchased by Appliance Recycling Centers of America (ARCA), which recycled used household appliances. The company was started in 1976 in St. Paul by Jack Cameron, mostly as a fix-or-dump operation. When scrap dealers stopped accepting old appliances in 1987, Cameron created his recycling operation. Many types of hazardous materials must be removed from old appliances before sending them to scrap dealers. The building represented a consolidation of four divisions previously in NE Minneapolis, St. Paul, Wisconsin, and Georgia.

Click here for an aerial photo of the area taken in 1962.  7400 is the smaller building in the upper right-hand corner of the photo.