With 1.2 million square feet, 114 years of history, and 14 eras of construction, the Dayton’s Department Store was an exceptionally complex reuse project in the heart of downtown Minneapolis—and a place deeply embedded in the city’s collective memory. The challenge was not only to adapt a massive, layered building for a new generation of mixed-uses, but to do so at a site that carried enormous cultural and emotional significance for generations of Minnesotans. Then, just as redevelopment was underway, a global pandemic upended downtown activity, retail, hospitality, and the very assumptions shaping the project’s future.