There’s a grand Art Deco sunbeam in the heart of Minneapolis. It stands proudly at the corner of Government Plaza, holding a watchful eye over the city’s center for democracy. This limestone structure has watched countless protests and rallies, echoing cries of the downtrodden back to the streets.
For me, the Lumen Technologies Building, formerly known as the Northwestern Bell Building or the CenturyLink Building, stands as a real-world representation of my favorite fictional structure, the Daily Planet.
Made from materials extracted from the state in which it stands, this large landmark was one for Minnesotans, by Minnesotans. That’s why I inquired about possibly touring the historic structure. I wanted to highlight the significance of such a building in a city that once saw over 60% of its constructions raised for development that would take over half a century to happen.
So, I reached out to Lumen Technologies’ Senior Director of Enterprise & Public Affairs Communications, Anita Gomes, and asked if the Daily Planet could schedule a tour of the nearly century-old high-rise. Gomes politely replied with a stern “no,” while expressing their appreciation for the Daily Planet’s interest.
“At this time, we are unable to accommodate a media tour of the building,” Gomes’ email response read. “While we’re honored by your request, we must be mindful of current operational priorities and resources.”
That last line, “current operational priorities,” sparked a concern in the back of my mind. Why were they being secretive? What are they doing there that would prevent public media from accessing the building? My mind went to current controversy, and a question surfaced: Is Lumen turning this building into a data center?
Homegrown high-rise
The skyscraper has gone through at least five major name changes in its 90-year history, reflecting the shifting phases of the communications industry over that time period.
Constructed in the 1930s for the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company, what is now known as the Lumen Building has always existed for communication needs. From switchboards to microwaves, this building’s infrastructure has constantly evolved to meet the needs of the era.
This beautiful building is literally homegrown, rising from the Minnesota soil like no other skyscraper in the city of lakes.
The steel for the structure of the Lumen Technologies Building came from the same place I do, the Mesabi Iron Range. The cement was manufactured in Duluth, the city where I studied journalism. The granite was taken from Morton, and the limestone came from Kasota, Minnesota. Even Minnesota architects were commissioned for the project.
Nokohaha, an independent local history blog that has been publishing consistently since 2010, records the original purpose of this historic structure.
According to Nokohaha, construction on the 346-foot-tall high-rise began during the Great Depression in 1930 and ended in 1932. It included 755 windows trimmed with steel and aluminum, bronze doors, and an entire main first floor adorned with marble. Still preserved architectural elements showcase the original intent of the building, featuring electric bolts and stylized thunderbirds over entrances. A common feature of the Art Deco skyscrapers of that period.
The 26-story complex designated the first floor for business use, with main business offices and public telephone booths available to customers. Floors 2-12 housed long-distance switchboards, telephone operation equipment, and employee facilities. The 14th floor was strictly mechanical, while floors 15-24 on the tower were designated for Northwestern Bell’s administrative offices. The top two floors were also used for mechanical purposes.
An article featured in a May 3, 1967, issue of the Star Tribune reported that a microwave antenna was added to the building’s rooftop. An additional tier was added in 1972. Both were removed in 2019, restoring the building to its original 1932 appearance.
Workers who dismantled that crown described it as having been built during the Cold War with enough steel reinforcement to be considered worthy of surviving a nuclear blast. The construction firm Kraus-Anderson served as construction manager for the removal, commissioned directly by CenturyLink.
“They couldn’t use torches up there because of the sparks, and the nature of the building, the fear of a fire, so they went through a lot of saw blades,” Project Superintendent Brian Nickolauson said in a YouTube video documenting the project.
According to Data Center Solutions, data centers are combustible due to their very nature. Their thousands of servers constantly whir through high electric currents to process data, and a complex environment of a live site, like Lumen’s, appears to significantly escalate fire risk.
The Daily Planet has reached out to Kraus-Anderson and is awaiting further clarification.
The proof is on the walls
Though visually similar to how it looked when it first opened, a subtle change can be observed when looking at the structure. White dome-style security cameras guard each entrance, which requires badge fob access to enter, with the exception of the lobby that connects to the skyway system on the corner of Second Ave South and S 5th Street. Security clearance is still needed to enter the actual structure.
Upon one of my multiple visits to the site, where I walked around the structure documenting everything in sight, I discovered at least 16 pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras, 12 of which were perceived to be full size, and all of which were hardwired into the building’s facade. That’s an excessive amount when compared to other downtown highrises.
Each entrance also possessed 3milllD readers, black fob or proximity devices typically used in high-security facilities including government buildings, data centers and defense installations. The reader is mounted directly into the building’s original granite facade. My observed security measures, such as the PTZ cameras and 3milllD readers, are a necessity for Lumen to remain compliant and eligible for government contracts, according to GTC 360° Advisors.
Further street-level observations revealed darkened window panes, replaced with metal. On floors 2-12, the stories that once housed long-distance switchboard operations, approximately 176 windows have been replaced with industrial-grade louver ventilation systems.
Ketchum & Walton Co. is a 100% employee-owned specialty engineering firm founded in Columbus, Ohio, that provides HVAC, indoor air quality, noise control, and engineering services across commercial, industrial, and institutional facilities, including for data centers. Their website stated that this level of louver ventilation systems is necessary for the controversial technology infrastructure.
According to Ketchum & Walton Co., these specific louvers are considered “acoustic” and are standard data center infrastructure, designed to manage the high-volume airflow required to “cool server racks, industrial chillers, and backup generators that run continuously.” The firm noted that the low-frequency noise generated by such equipment is among the most difficult to contain, often penetrating surrounding neighborhoods.
According to datacentermap.com, Lumen mentions data centers in Minneapolis, but this building isn’t officially listed.
This addition to the Lumen Building would cancel out the noise, but I can’t determine when they were added. Google Maps imagery shows many of them beginning to appear as far back as 2007, but publicly accessible online permits are not available for this time bracket, so I decided to follow a different trail.
If not a data center, why data center shaped?
Despite being a prominent feature of the Minneapolis skyline since its construction in 1932, the tower appears to sit mostly empty. The appearance isn’t a startling one when compared to its other downtown counterparts in a post-pandemic world, but what is interesting is the energy consumption the structure indulges in.
Compared to the nearby Capella Tower, the Lumen Technologies building is dwarfed. The 58-story Capella Tower, owned by MetLife Investment Management, is about 80% leased, according to CoStar data, yet its carbon footprint is significantly lower.
According to the city of Minneapolis’ website, it is mandatory for owners of large commercial and multifamily buildings (typically over 50,000 sq ft) to track and submit energy and water usage to the city.
That publicly accessible benchmarking data shows that Capella Tower’s water usage fluctuated during the pandemic and spiked when workers began returning to in-office work. Despite this metric, the tower, which houses 1,636,050 square feet of floor space — nearly twice the size of Lumen Technologies’ building’s 812,848 square feet — consumes significantly fewer resources.
Taking up only half of their city block, juxtaposed to Capella’s footprint of an entire downtown block, you’d suspect Lumen to use less water and energy to power their building, especially when you consider Capella’s thriving usage, opposed to Lumen’s absence of tenants. That’s not the case.
Energy Star data on the Lumen Building reports that the structure nearly doubled its water usage from 2022 to 2023, and there is no publicly accessible information on 2024 or 2025 despite other buildings reporting their energy usage for those years.
The Minneapolis penalty for non-compliance with the benchmarking ordinance is only $200 per violation. A somewhat modest fine when it comes to a company that reported a revenue of over $12 billion in 2025. There’s also the extension or exemption request that allows property owners the chance to file a request if they provide evidence that helps city officials understand their failure to comply, such as a rental report showing a less than 50% occupancy rate, evidence of a request for pending data, or anything else that could explain their need for extension or exemption.
| Metric | Capella (2023) | Lumen (2023) |
| Property Type | Office | Other |
| Building Size | 1,636,050 sq. ft. | 812,848 sq. ft. |
| ENERGY STAR Score | 90 | No score listed |
| Site Energy Use Intensity (EUI) | 40.8 kBtu/sq. ft. | 105.3 kBtu/sq. ft. |
| Weather-Normalized Site EUI | 42.9 kBtu/sq. ft. | 106.7 kBtu/sq. ft. |
| Source EUI | 89.6 kBtu/sq. ft. | 253 kBtu/sq. ft. |
| Weather-Normalized Source EUI | 92.1 kBtu/sq. ft. | 253.3 kBtu/sq. ft. |
| Water Use | 7.97 million gallons | 12.76 million gallons |
| Greenhouse Gas Emissions | 7,210.2 metric tons CO2e | 10,023.6 metric tons CO2e |
Even though Capella is twice as large, documentation suggests it uses significantly fewer resources while Lumen Technologies consumes about 2.6 times more energy per square foot. Another significant find in the public filings also lists Capella Tower as an “Office,” whereas Lumen is titled as “Other.”
That designation indicates it is either a mixed-use infrastructure, houses industrial systems, holds a hospital/lab, supports data-heavy operations, hosts government infrastructure, or has tenants not easily benchmarked against normal offices.
Lumen has contracts with the Federal Government
That official building designation led me down quite the rabbit hole. In my research, I discovered that Lumen Technologies Government Solutions, a branch of Lumen Technologies, holds significant contracts with the United States Government, according to publicly accessible information provided at usspending.gov.
The company holds an active master contract with the General Services Administration (GSA), designated “GS00Q17NSD3006,” recognized as the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract.
The United States General Services Administration defines the EIS as a $50 billion, 15-year multiple-award contract managed by the U.S. GSA, serving as the primary, Best-in-Class government-wide vehicle for federal agencies to purchase enterprise telecommunications, IT infrastructure, and networking solutions.
Under this master contract, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the Pentagon’s combat support agency for “classified and sensitive government communications” have placed delivery orders for Ethernet Transport Services with Minneapolis listed as the place of performance.
In 2017, AT&T explained Ethernet as “a standard communications protocol used to connect devices, including computers, routers, and switches, in a wired or wireless network. Ethernet connects large enterprise sites, distributed branch offices, data centers, and even local or smaller remote locations. It can operate as a single WAN network for a business while enabling a range of applications and access to other network technologies, such as virtual private networks (VPNs).”
The Minneapolis-specific contracts for Ethernet carry the designation “Unlinked Award,” meaning the federal procurement system cannot connect the orders to their parent contract. Unlinked Awards sometimes occur with sensitive or restricted procurement vehicles. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) holds one contract under this same vehicle with Lumen Government Solutions, with a performance period running through September 2032. Two additional DISA contracts for the Twin Cities metro were awarded in December 2025 and activated on April 30, 2026, with what appears to be a combined value of $531,628.
Lumen itself confirms on its public website that it maintains a dedicated market segment for defense and intelligence community clients, listing it alongside federal, state, and local, public safety, and higher education as a named sector it serves. Lumen also shared an update on their planned artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Lumen announces plans for AI amid investigation
New official company news was released last week by Lumen Technologies while I was conducting my thorough investigation into their Minneapolis building. The company announced on May 12, 2026, the launch of NorthLine, a new fiber route connecting Seattle to Minneapolis, built specifically for AI data movement. They’ve even launched an aggressive advertising campaign that has found its way onto my social media feeds, depicting a person walking amongst data center processing towers.
“The route will support 100G and 400G wavelength services and be delivered through Lumen RapidRoutes — pre-engineered routes with validated capacity and a 20-day service level agreement for qualified deployments,” their press release reads. “This will enable customers to move faster from design to deployment and scale connectivity more predictably across key U.S. markets.”
Lumen also included a map with their announcement depicting the projected route of the “NorthLine,” which appears to weave through tribal lands and areas with freshwater resources. The route originates in downtown Minneapolis — home to the Lumen Technologies Building — and travels northwest toward Monticello, Minnesota, before continuing in that direction through what appears to be Willmar. It then heads north along Highway 9 before branching west again toward White Rock, South Dakota.
From there, the line stretches westward across the northernmost portion of the Lake Traverse Reservation and near the Tewaukon National Wildlife Refuge, then dips south toward South Dakota’s Columbia Road Reservoir before turning west again through a chain of North Dakota lakes toward Fort Yates and the Standing Rock Reservation. The route then follows Lake Oahe northward, ending at Bismarck, before reaching what appears to be Mandan and zigzagging past the Heart River. Hettinger, North Dakota, appears to serve as a focal point before the route travels north along Route 12, crossing the border into Montana toward Miles City.
It bypasses the Crow Reservation and Yellowstone but weaves through the Custer-Gallatin, Helena-Lewis and Clark, Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Bitterroot, and Kootenai National Forests, also touching the Flathead Reservation. The route then dips toward Spokane, Washington, looping west toward Seattle through the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forests, just north of Mount Rainier. It appears Lumen is expanding through some of America’s most complex biodiverse landscapes.
“NorthLine is being built for long-term scale,” said Lumen Chief Commercial Operations Officer Kye Prigg. “We’ll deploy the very latest optical technologies that maximize fiber efficiency today while creating a clear path to future 800G and 1.6 terabit wavelengths as demand continues to grow.”
Ketchum & Walton Co., whose website provided the Daily Planet with information regarding the Lumen Building’s vents, serves this region. The Daily Planet will be doing a follow-up story on this subject.
Lumen’s own financial filings tell a story consistent with what the public records show in Minneapolis. According to the company’s second-quarter 2025 earnings report, Public Sector revenue, meaning government contracts, is the only major segment of Lumen’s business that grew year over year, rising 8% to $486 million while every other division declined. The company also announced the $5.75 billion sale of its consumer fiber business to AT&T in this report, deliberately shedding its public-facing identity to sharpen what it calls its “enterprise focus.” In its own words, Lumen positions itself as “the trusted network for AI.”
In a ‘City by Nature,’ what use is there for data centers?
Back in Minneapolis, where the city’s connection to their parks and wildlife is literally embedded within the city’s official slogan “City by Nature,” City Council Member Aurin Chowdhury of Ward 12 announced a moratorium on data center construction.
“Community members, legislators, and environmental advocates have shared the need for us to consider the risks and benefits of data center proliferation in our city,” Chowdhury said in her weekly newsletter. “I strongly believe that Minneapolis should pause data center development to better educate ourselves as policymakers, engage in dialogue with our community, learn about the risks and benefits, and build a strong regulatory framework that keeps the public interest and protection at its center.”
In a “City by Nature,” what use is there for an abundance of data centers? According to The Washington Post, 7 in 10 Americans are opposed to further data center development. Minneapolitans also share this sentiment, particularly after the City Council approved a six-month pause on May 21, 2026, with a vote of 8-5, ironically across the street from Lumen Technologies at Minneapolis City Hall. The moratorium takes effect immediately as an interim ordinance and does not need the mayor’s signature. A committee hearing is scheduled for June 16.
I met with Councilwoman Chowdhury, who stated that the concerns most cited to her include water usage, water consumption, zoning, and cumulative environmental impacts, while others hoped for community benefits. According to Chowdhury, this moratorium was presented to the full council on May 21.
The new moratorium exempts data centers smaller than 350,000 square feet located within the downtown core, bounded by Interstate 35W, Interstate 94, Plymouth Avenue, and the Mississippi River. This moratorium runs through Nov. 21, 2026. If the Lumen Building, which houses over 800,000 square feet, currently has a data center or plans to upgrade its facilities, this new ordinance would halt such construction for the next six months.
A sunbeam gone dark
The Daily Planet is not asserting that Minneapolis’ Lumen Technologies Building is a surveillance facility. However, what the public record shows is a documented pattern. This Art Deco masterpiece has transformed into a building classified as “other,” outside standard commercial categories. It’s consuming energy and water, inconsistent with its size and vacant appearance, with physical modifications consistent with active data center infrastructure. The company that owns the structure is holding active Department of Defense contracts for dedicated data circuits. Also, the structure was recently stripped of its above-ground communications infrastructure while apparently deepening its below-ground connections.
The building at the center of these findings was once owned and operated by Qwest Corporation, the predecessor company to CenturyLink and ultimately Lumen. In early 2001, then-Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio refused a Bush administration request to allow warrantless NSA monitoring of customer data. He was, by most accounts, the only major telecom executive to say no. AT&T, BellSouth, Verizon, SBC and Sprint all agreed to participate. The NSA canceled a major contract with Qwest following the refusal.
CenturyLink acquired Qwest in 2011. The building that once housed the company that told the NSA no may now be housing active Pentagon data circuits. The full arc of that history deserves to be part of the public record.
The Daily Planet submitted a formal press inquiry to Anita Gomes on May 8, 2026, containing five specific, evidence-based questions about the building’s current use, its unexplained water consumption increase, the absence of city permits, its federal energy classification, and any agreements with federal agencies. A five-business-day response deadline was provided and subsequently extended through May 19, 2026. As of publication, Lumen Technologies has not responded. A formal public records request is pending with the City of Minneapolis as well. A follow-up article will be published once both become available.
The building that once lit up the Minneapolis skyline as a beacon of regional communication now stands largely silent. Its windows have become vents. Its public entrance is locked. Its utility bills can no longer be paid at the front desk. This sunbeam has gone dark, and Minneapolis deserves to know why.
This is a developing story.
Good stuff, Zack! Keep digging!