Talk Radio Network Buys Former Coldwell Banker Burnet Building for $1.4 Million

After a six-year hiatus, Genesis Communications Network is heading back to Burnsville.

Genesis Communications Network is talk radio network which produces shows with a conservative and libertarian bent. Their lineup includes the likes of Alex Jones, Jason Lewis and Bradlee Dean, a Minnesota pastor who is best known for the ruckus that ensued after he implied President Barack Obama was not Christian while leading a prayer in the Minnesota House during May 2011.

GCN called Burnsville home until 2006, when the company moved into a single family home of about 10,000 square feet in Eagan. 

"It's a fine town, but originally when we moved into this building the city planning division said I could operate it here and five years later they changed their mind," said President and CEO Ted Anderson.

The house is in an industrial area on Sibley Memorial Highway. Anderson said that the city wanted to rezone the property as Industrial-1 and asked the company to make it fully handicap accessible. Anderson said a retrofit of that magnitude would cost more than the house itself, so GNC began looking for a new location.

After a search of the south metro, GCN found the old Coldwell Banker Burnet building, an office styled to resemble a colonial style home that sits in the midst of a series of strip malls near Interstate 35W. The building at 190 Cobblestone Lane offers 14,000 square feet and is fully complaint with all city, state and federal codes as is. Last week, the company purchased it for $1.4 million.  

Anderson founded GCN in 1996. It is a twin to Anderson's other venture, a gold and silver selling dealership called Midas Resources. He said he took to talk radio after gaining experiencing in the industry as client.

"I bought a lot of ads on various talk shows might want to produce one of my own shows," Anderson said.

Today, GCN produces 53 different radio shows for over 700 stations around the U.S. and Canada. However, much of their listening public tunes in via the Internet, which accounts for 85 percent of their audience. Anderson anticipates significant growth in the years to come.

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