Mayo Clinic Square

It is one block south of the Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue light rail station on the METRO Blue and Green lines.

The mansions on Hennepin between 6th and 7th Streets were gone at least by 1908 when the block acquired its row of small commercial buildings that remained largely unchanged into the late 1980s.

The block grew with buildings constructed at the beginning of the 1900s; arcades, pool halls, ice cream stores, credit agencies, a grocer (Great Northern Market), bars, restaurants and theaters were among the many businesses.

Fliegel and Winter were friendly with a number of pro athletes who would visit the restaurant and cocktail lounge throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s; during this period Winter and associates brought major league basketball and football to the city as co-founders of the Minneapolis Lakers (Fliegel was a silent partner) in 1947 and the Minnesota Vikings in 1960.

[3] By 1987, the city council voted to demolish the entire Hennepin side of the block, giving tenants a limited amount of time to relocate.

After a City-hosted party on Block E along Hennepin Avenue celebrating the impending demolition, crews began razing the structures on October 18, 1988.

Additional restaurant and retail chains included Jimmy John's, Starbucks, Hooters, Cold Stone Creamery, and GameStop.

The new Block E was accessible from street level, and loosely modeled itself after buildings which previously existed on the site (specifically on Hennepin).

[citation needed] Snyder's Drugs, one of the original tenants, closed its location just barely a year after the complex opened.

According to a February 12, 2010, article in the Twin Cities Business Journal, the Block E Hooters restaurant owed more than $350,000 in rent, utilities, taxes and penalties.

[9] A state run casino was proposed for Block E as a potential funding source for the planned U.S. Bank Stadium.

[10] Prior to the latest redevelopment effort, the unused sections of the development were supported by an artistic initiative by the Hennepin Theatre Trust titled "Made Here.

[13] On March 9, 2016, a new 10,000-square-foot restaurant and pour house, City Works, was opened to the public,[2] hoping to encourage further redevelopment and enterprise on the block.

It was also announced that Jack Link's had signed a lease for office space and storefront in Mayo Clinic Square.