A Familiar Face in East Phillips
For this interview, I sought out Dean Dovolis, CEO and managing partner of Novarum Development Partners. Most people know him as the owner and CEO of DJR Architecture. It struck me as odd that more stories haven’t been devoted to what Dovolis and his partners are trying to accomplish with the former Wells Fargo Home Mortgage campus. They’re calling it Iconic Plaza, and if they succeed, it’s a big deal: 1,000 new residences, childcare, a medical center, a school, a video production studio, multiple restaurants, a technology center, and a four-acre park.
Dovolis started his architecture firm with an office at 11th and Franklin. His roots in the Phillips neighborhood made him a resource to residents. “I started to learn people, and I became a resource to the neighborhood because of my architectural background, because not very many architects located their office in the neighborhood,” he said. His standing in the community helped him deliver several wins, including the Phyllis Place townhouses, the Franklin Avenue streetscape, and several other housing developments. There were disappointments too, such as the Metro Transit switching yard, a site the neighborhood had hoped to see become a transit village instead. I first learned of Dovolis through his involvement with the Roof Depot, a project that saw years of ups and downs but now appears to have a deal in place for the East Phillips Neighborhood Institute to own half the facility, which it plans to turn into an urban farm with local businesses and a community solar array. Dovolis credits most of these projects to the community itself: “They weren’t my invention. They’re really the neighborhood’s invention, and I sort of became the corporate hand, or the physical hand, that basically drew it up.”
From Home Mortgage Hub to Empty Campus
Wells Fargo purchased the Iconic Plaza site in 2000 to serve as its home mortgage headquarters and spent $723 million developing the campus. After an earlier buyer’s deal fell through, Novarum Development Partners raised $8 million this year to purchase the property. Wells Fargo, for its part, was eager to let the facility go. At its peak, the campus employed 5,000 people, and touring it now, many of the rooms look as though everyone left during a fire drill and never came back. Desks, chairs, kitchen equipment, phones, cabinets, even a hairdryer, sit in an untouched fitness facility that looks ready to use next week. The campus has been vacant for five years, but Wells Fargo kept it in excellent condition the whole time. The buildings are connected by skyways, and the property includes more than 4,000 parking spaces. Plans call for building new housing on top of the parking ramps, which would offer sweeping views of downtown Minneapolis.
Questions About the Partners
Despite the promise of the project, a few concerns are worth raising. The first attempt at a deal with Wells Fargo was led by Mohamed Amin Kahin, a figure formerly involved with the DFL who once accused Governor Walz of neglecting the East African community. Kahin argued the governor should direct part of Minnesota’s $841 million in federal CARES funding toward the community, telling Sahan Journal during Walz’s 2020 visit to Karmel Mall, “To be honest, we expect more from the governor. The East African community has invested so much in the DFL. The return is just zero.” His frustration may have made sense at the time, but it hasn’t aged particularly well in light of where things stand five years later.
Another partner in Novarum Development Partners is Faraaz Yusuff, also known as Faraaz Mohammed. Yusuff owns Zikar Holdings, which attempted to develop a former sod farm near Lino Lakes into Madinah Lakes, a mixed-use development aimed at Muslim homebuyers with more than 400 homes, a shopping area, and a mosque. The project is now tied up in lawsuits, and when neighbors pushed back, Yusuff’s team characterized the opposition as Islamophobic. Yusuff goes by that name rather than Mohammed because he believes his former name would limit his ability to do the work he wants to do. In 2013, he was convicted of theft by swindle for writing 16 unauthorized checks to himself and making four unauthorized electronic transfers from the account of a former employer, a company called Forevergreen in Eden Prairie.
A Medical Center Without a Track Record
The medical center planned for the campus would be developed by Dr. Irfan Sandozi, a gastroenterologist, and his wife, Dr. Afshan Anjum, a psychiatrist, who is on the faculty at the University of Minnesota Medical School. They may well be excellent physicians, but launching a medical center of this scale typically calls for administrative and development experience that neither appears to have. Sandozi told the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal that the team is “still evaluating different operating models for the healthcare and education component and is in discussions with potential healthcare partners,” though he did not name them.
The plans for Iconic Plaza are genuinely exciting, but whether this group can assemble the partners needed to pull it off remains an open question. It’s a small detail, but telling: the website listed on Dovolis’s business card, novarumdev.com, showed up as for sale when we checked it for this story. A working site with information about all the partners would go a long way toward building confidence in the project. Novarum is also involved in a second massive redevelopment, the Brooklyn Center Opportunity Site, which Brooklyn Center City Council Member Dan Jerzak called “a huge, huge undertaking.” The firm was only formed in December 2025 and is now trying to redevelop two enormous sites at once. At Iconic Plaza alone, the plan calls for leasing 250,000 square feet of retail space to 100 tenants.
Can They Pull It Off?
If, over the next five years, Iconic Plaza manages to deliver 1,000 apartments, townhomes, or other residences alongside a medical facility, a school, a movie production studio, a fitness center, multiple restaurants, and office space, it will be a remarkable achievement and a significant boost for the Phillips neighborhood and the city as a whole. The biggest obstacles are likely to be the partners’ limited experience developing projects at this scale, along with real economic headwinds. Even with a tremendous bargain on the purchase price, the team still has to convince outside investors to put money into the project, and with high interest rates, elevated building costs, and a struggling retail sector, leases may not materialize as quickly as they hope.
Watch the video and you’ll see that Dovolis has tremendous enthusiasm for the project. At times he’s almost giddy: “We’re open for business, as they say. Every idea that people bring just seems to strengthen and make this campus even more inviting.” Enthusiasm alone won’t build Iconic Plaza, but it may be part of what it takes. If the partners can bring the pieces together, this could be a real win for the city and the neighborhood.
