Seagate Technology's plan to grow its semiconductor plant has cleared the city. The Bloomington City Council voted 6-0 to approve preliminary and final development plans for a roughly 64,000-square-foot addition. It passed with no debate on the consent agenda. The mayor pointed out that it completes a trio of local chip-plant expansions, after Polar and SkyWater.
City of Bloomington@CityofBloomingtonMNCouncil approved preliminary and final development plans for a roughly 64,000-square-foot expansion of Seagate's semiconductor manufacturing facility.06/29
The money side is still moving. The council held a public hearing on a resolution supporting Seagate's application to the Minnesota Investment Fund, and no residents spoke. It then voted to back the application. If the state approves it, the city would pass a $5 million zero-interest state loan through to Seagate for the buildout.
The city didn't approve these in the order you might expect. The building plans came first, on June 29, and the loan resolution followed on July 20. Before that, on June 18, the Planning Commission voted 5-0 to recommend the project. The plans call for a 2-story manufacturing addition and a pad for a nitrogen storage tank at the campus at 7801 Computer Ave S and 7850 Nord Ave S. The site will have 1,118 parking stalls, 31% below the 1,625 the code requires. City staff and an independent traffic study found that acceptable, since peak demand reached only 818 stalls. Seagate also has to plant 43 extra trees to meet landscaping standards.
Seagate wants the space for more wafer fabrication and recording-head production, to keep up with demand for data storage from AI workloads at big cloud providers. The company asked for preliminary and final approval at the same time to save time on the schedule. It reported about $9.1 billion in revenue for fiscal 2025, up roughly 39% from the year before, and attributed much of that growth to shipments of mass-capacity storage to cloud customers. The idea of growing the Normandale campus isn't new either: a 2022 concept proposed an 81,000-square-foot, 2-story expansion.
Bloomington had competition for the project. City staff told the Port Authority that this was Seagate's second Bloomington expansion and that the company was comparing the city with 2 other possible locations. Staff said a state incentive package and the Minnesota Investment Fund application were both in the works at the time.
City of Bloomington@CityofBloomingtonMNStaff reported Seagate is weighing a second Bloomington expansion competing against two other locations, with a state incentive package and a Minnesota Investment Fund application before council.07/21
Next comes the state. The city has done its part on both the building permits and the loan. The $5 million now depends on whether the state approves Seagate's Minnesota Investment Fund application, and the city's sources haven't given a date for that decision.
From the meetings: Port Authority Meeting, July 21, 2026, City Council Meeting, July 20, 2026, and City Council Meeting, June 29, 2026.
