The interwebs are abuzz that FloCo Fusion, the massive apartment project of real estate fanatic Clark Gassen and his CAG Development team, is on the fritz and recently pulled down its website, Craigslist ad and momentarily its Facebook page.

Ever since the Minnesota Daily ran an expose in January, the Stop the Destruction of Florence Court group has gained traction in its protest over alleged infractions by Gassen’s construction crew as the project attempted to barrel its way into a September opening. When the City Pages finally took notice of the project, it ran a most damning article (“Florence Court near U of M: World’s worst apartments?“).

The battle over the 124 year old structure started in June of 2008 when Gassen proposed demolishing five historic buildings on the site, of which the Minneapolis HPC calls the earliest living example of urban planning. The historic designation only applied to the facade, leaving a loophole appeal for Gassen which residents were able to defeat at a HPC meeting. A Star Tribune story by Steve Brandt details the struggle that year. Despite the defeat, Gassen went ahead and began remodeling of the interior, never mind that architectural drawings by BKV Group stated a luxury apartment building was to rise at the site of the now barren but still standing BP Amoco Station.

The history of Florence Court doesn’t just apply to the logging era. Richard Ryan of Audubon Park (Nordeast) kindly gave us a history of the BP Amoco Station in the mid-20th Century.

My family was associated with this gas station for about 40 years. My father Ken Ryan started working there shortly after WWII when he was attending the U of M on the GI Bill. He worked as a mechanic for the owner, Frank Churchill, who leased the property from Josiah Chase. After Churchill died Ken acquired the franchise from Standard Oil-Amoco-now BP. I worked there in high school and on weekends in college than full time for about 8 years. We had a busy repair business and served an eclectic mix of clientele from law professors, Congressman Fraser, students, working class, immigrants and everyone else under the sun. Customers loved Ken and were very loyal to him. The recession of the early 80′s along with my father’s failing health caused him to sell the business in 1984.

And the fate of FloCo and Gassen’s transgressions are all part of a larger story we’re working on. Here’s a snippet:

In the midst of the condo-conversion controversy, the New York Times took interest and commissioned an expose on Gassen. It detailed his sudden rise in property development after succeeding on his first investor return in 2003 at the young age of 28. Authored by local writer Judith Yates Borger, the piece appeared at the right time when real estate was bubbling across the nation and such conversions became more plague than profit. Borger sought Gassen’s tenants who had suffered under Financial Freedom Realty’s zeal to buy and essentially flip. Run of the mill early 20th century apartment buildings became condos overnight. Even before dust could settle on one purchase, FFR bought another across the street. How the funding maneuvered so quickly and easily might owe to having a family of wealth and connections. Borger somewhat satirized Gassen, quoting him as saying he wanted to “transition Uptown (into) a little Manhattan.”