Building History and Use
Renewable Energy Partners was founded by Jamez Staples, a North Minneapolis native and solar entrepreneur who recognized early on that the clean energy economy was leaving behind the communities that stood to benefit from it most. In 2017, Staples purchased a 22,000-square-foot former state workforce center at 1200 Plymouth Avenue North, with a vision to turn it into an accessible, community-rooted hub for clean energy workforce training.
That vision became reality over the following years through a network of public and private partnerships, including $2.5 million in state funding from the Minnesota Legislature’s Commerce and Energy Conference Committee. Today the Regional Apprenticeship Training Center offers training in solar installation, HVAC, and other clean energy disciplines, with courses designed specifically to bring residents of North Minneapolis and other historically underserved communities into careers in the growing clean energy sector. Programs are structured to remove barriers to access, including paid attendance and transportation support for students.
The facility hosts multiple partners and tenants alongside REP’s own programs, including Minneapolis Climate Action, CenterPoint Energy, Avivo, and Minnesota STEM Partnership, making it a genuine hub for clean energy education and community development in North Minneapolis.
Why Geothermal?
For a building dedicated to demonstrating what the clean energy economy can look like, the HVAC system was an obvious opportunity to put that mission into practice. REP’s retrofit goals included eliminating fossil fuels from the building’s energy systems, maximizing efficiency, and creating a real-world example of integrated geothermal, solar, and storage technology that students and visitors could see operating in the building around them.
Darcy was selected to design and install the geothermal component of the retrofit. The site presented a constraint common to urban buildings, in that it had limited space for a conventional wellfield. After evaluating the site’s boundaries, a single Darcy well installed in the western portion of the parking lot proved sufficient to deliver the full heating and cooling capacity the building required. The compact single-well footprint preserved the facility’s parking and left no above-grade disruption to the building’s street presence on Plymouth Avenue.
The system also took advantage of the Investment Tax Credit available through the Inflation Reduction Act, meaningfully improving the financial case for the installation.
Design and Construction
The 2022 retrofit went well beyond the geothermal installation. Building equipment and temperature controls were significantly updated throughout to modernize operations and support the integrated energy system. The geothermal plant works in tandem with the rooftop solar array and battery storage system, creating a building that generates, stores, and distributes clean energy from multiple sources in coordination.
The result is a facility that functions as both a training environment and a live demonstration project. Students learning HVAC, solar installation, and energy systems work alongside and within the very systems they are being trained on, giving the learning environment an immediacy and authenticity that a conventional building could not offer.
Training the Workforce That Builds Geothermal Everywhere
The REP training center and the Pipefitters Local 455 Apprenticeship Training Center in St. Paul represent something meaningful in the Darcy portfolio. Both geothermal systems were installed specifically because the people who build, maintain, and teach about these technologies wanted to work in buildings that run on them. At 1200 Plymouth Avenue, the geothermal system has become both a mechanical upgrade and a key part of the educational infrastructure, a daily demonstration that clean energy systems work, that they are accessible, and that the careers built around them are real and available to anyone willing to learn.