Pickleball craze breathes new life into old downtown Minneapolis office buildings

In a fever-dream phase of the pandemic, commercial real estate broker Mike Marinovich used electrical tape to draw out three pickleball courts on the sprawling second floor of his vacant downtown Minneapolis office building. The space at 1200 Washington Av. S. had just been vacated by a supercomputing center, and Marinovich was having no luck finding a new tenant as COVID still raged. He'd get takeout and invite friends to play. Everybody was wearing N95 masks and scrambling around on the blazing white, non-conductive data center tile, balls bouncing off...