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DULUTH — When the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa broke ground Thursday on its new downtown Duluth cannabis development, the architectural assignment went to a firm that has quietly built one of the region’s deepest portfolios in tribal and community development.
Meyer Group Architecture, the Duluth-based firm founded by veteran architect Tim Meyer, is designing the Band’s new Anang Native Cannabis Co. project near Fond-du-Luth Casino, adding another Fond du Lac assignment to a body of work that stretches across northern Minnesota and Wisconsin.
The project is significant for Fond du Lac as the Band expands its cannabis enterprise into downtown Duluth, but it is also another marker of Meyer Group’s emergence as a prominent regional firm for projects involving tribal governments, public agencies, community organizations and historically significant properties.
Meyer founded Meyer Group Architecture in Duluth in 2009 after working for several architectural firms, including DSGW Architects and Krech Ojard & Associates. A graduate of North Dakota State University’s architecture program, Meyer has spent nearly four decades working in architecture, with much of his career centered on what he describes as community development.
That specialty has increasingly included Native American communities.
Meyer Group previously worked with Fond du Lac on the expansion of the Min No Aya Win Human Services Center in Cloquet, a 25,000-square-foot addition that expanded family practice medical services, behavioral health and other clinical programs. The project established the firm as part of an important Band development well before Thursday’s groundbreaking in Duluth.
Fond du Lac is hardly the firm’s only tribal client.
At Red Lake Nation, Meyer Group helped redevelop the former Red Lake Tribal College into the Adaawe Wigamig Business Incubator, an estimated $4.2 million project designed to house small businesses, offices, an art gallery, maker space, commercial kitchen, classroom and other entrepreneurial programs.
For the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Meyer Group served as lead designer for the $3.6 million Gii-Ishkongigewag Pow Wow Grounds near McGregor. The multi-phase project incorporated ceremonial and gathering spaces, circular seating, arbors, camping facilities and other elements developed in consultation with the Band.
At Nett Lake, Meyer Group designed the Bois Forte Veterans Memorial, working with veterans, elders, spiritual advisers, Band members and tribal staff on a project intended to recognize Native veterans while incorporating cultural and spiritual elements into the site.
In Wisconsin, the firm worked with the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa on restoration of the historic Kinnamon School near Hayward. The 1925 building was preserved and converted into a visitor center, museum and gift shop while maintaining its historic character.
Meyer Group’s tribal work also has included a childcare facility at Grand Portage, part of a broader portfolio that Meyer has described as focused less on simply constructing buildings than on helping communities create places that serve long-term needs.
That philosophy helps explain why tribal work has become such a visible part of the firm’s identity.
"I was really honored at today’s ceremony when a Tribal Council member talked about my 35 years of work with them," said Meyer. "I was shocked as I never have been recognized in this way."
Meyer Group is headquartered on the 16th floor of the Alworth Building at 306 W. Superior St. in downtown Duluth and also maintains offices in Minnetonka and Ashland, Wisconsin. Its work extends beyond tribal development into government buildings, housing, commercial development, historic preservation, education, recreation and community facilities.
Among its other regional projects are the rehabilitation of Superior’s historic Empire Block, renovation of Ely City Hall and restoration work at Duluth’s Lincoln Park Pavilion.
The Empire Block project transformed the former Lurye Furniture building in downtown Superior through an approximately $4.3 million historic rehabilitation that included retail space and upper-floor residential units. Meyer Group also renovated Ely’s historic Art Deco city hall and worked on restoration of the Lincoln Park Pavilion in Duluth, a project later recognized with a preservation award.
That range of work has allowed Meyer Group to occupy an unique niche in the regional architectural market. It is a relatively small Duluth-rooted practice with a footprint extending into the Twin Cities and northern Wisconsin, yet much of its portfolio involves public, tribal and community projects requiring more than conventional commercial design.
For tribal projects in particular, that work often requires architects to understand sovereignty, culture, community participation and the significance of a building beyond its physical footprint.
Meyer has spent much of his professional career in that environment.
Born in Little Falls and raised in several central and northern Minnesota communities, Meyer studied pre-engineering at St. Cloud State before entering North Dakota State University’s professional architecture program. He earned a bachelor's degree in environmental design in 1986 and a professional architecture degree in 1987.
After working in St. Cloud and Brainerd and briefly with Cold Spring Granite, Meyer moved to Duluth. His experience eventually included DSGW and Krech Ojard before he started Meyer Group during the economic downturn in 2009.
More than 17 years later, the company that began during one of the most difficult periods in the construction industry has developed offices in three cities and a portfolio extending across much of the western Lake Superior region.
Thursday’s groundbreaking adds another chapter.
The Anang project is relatively modest compared with some multimillion-dollar facilities Meyer Group has designed, but its location gives it unusual visibility. It sits within Fond du Lac’s established downtown Duluth presence and connects two organizations that already have a history of working together.
For Meyer Group, it is another tribal assignment. For Fond du Lac, it is another investment in downtown Duluth.
And for Meyer’s Duluth architecture firm, it reinforces a professional identity that has been years in the making: designing buildings not simply as structures, but as pieces of larger community-development strategies.
