Land O’Lakes building gets new owner
Sports park raceway use could be step toward future
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The big building on Eighth Avenue South that was once the local office of Land O'Lakes will soon be a place where race cars will be stored and the administrative work for a local race track will be done.
The Better Way Project on Wednesday announced the sale of the building to Jeff Frevert, owner of Sports Park Raceway and the AutoDrive dealership in Fort Dodge.
"My initial goal is to get the building habitable again, restore utilities, repair and
replace broken windows, clean out the interior, and just get new activity there daily to
help prevent future vandalism," Frevert said.
He purchased the building via a real estate contract from 2521 FD Volunteers LLC, which is owned by local real estate investor Matt Johnson, of The Better Way Project.
The building has been vacant for at least a decade.
Frevert has started remodeling and repairing the building at 2827 Eighth Ave. S.
Portions of it will be used for Sports Park Raceway offices, race car storage, parts sales and tire storage.
"The property is a lot more than I actually need for myself, but I've been driving past and admiring that building for years and I just hated to see it sitting empty any longer," Frevert said.
He contacted Johnson to see if there was a way he could creatively buy or lease the property to start restoring life back into it.
The parties worked for several months to put a deal together and have recently
executed a real estate contract with some unique special terms. The contract
contains a number of agreements that build the framework for Frevert to work with The
Better Way Project to continue marketing the property to a new buyer or tenant that
would be an ultimate end-user.
"My use of the building is really intended to be a stepping stone," Frevert
said. "I will keep working to fix it up and make it viable again while Matt's team at
The Better Way Project keeps looking for a company or organization that would best
utilize the entire property and we would re-sell it or re-lease it to that ultimate end user."
Frevert said potential end users might include a corporate office, a medical
center, a school, government or nonprofit offices, an events center, a day care facility, or
office condominiums.
Johnson said he purchased the property in October 2025 from an owner in New York, and there were a couple of potential end users interested right from the start.
"One of the best and most obvious fits for the property was for the new Law
Enforcement Center to locate there," Johnson said. "The building is 25,000 square feet
and has good bones, so it could be remodeled for a fraction of the cost of building brand
new and could also be done a lot quicker than a new build."
"There's adequate site space to also add jail facilities, especially since the city
currently owns all of the vacant property surrounding this one, and there's already a
large existing parking lot that could be utilized," he added.
Johnson said city officials and law enforcement leaders all toured the building in
late 2025 and were interested enough to have their design and construction consultants
start exploring preliminary plans for the property.
"There was definitely some initial enthusiasm for that project, but it was scrapped
in early 2026 with the new city administration wanting the LEC and jail to only be
located downtown," Johnson said.
"We also had a private school organization looking at the property as a potential
home for a new private high school," Johnson said.
But that idea fell through, he said, because it "was going to be more of a project than they were ready for."
The agreed upon purchase price for the property is $229,000 with the seller carrying the financing at below-market terms, according to an announcement from The Better Way Project.
'With the money I've already put into repairs plus carrying costs and closing costs at this point I'm still losing money on this property, but a big profit was really never the intention," Johnson said.
"My goal from the very beginning was to get the property back under local control so we could make something happen with it and not let it become yet another abandoned and blighted building in our community," he added.
Johnson said Frevert has "now surfaced as the new champion of the former Land O'Lakes property and a community we can all benefit from his efforts."