A piece of turn-of-the-millennium European architecture springing up in America's heartland. This skyscraper would be perfectly at home in Frankfurt, Berlin, or London. It's main feature is a glittering shaft that rises from a surrounding complex of complimentary, but more traditional, boxes. The eye is led up the building to its ornamental crown, which is illuminated at night. At the base is a 75-foot-tall wintergarden, a welcome refuge from the cold Minnesota winter. In spite of its nontraditional form, the people of Minneapolis have accepted this skyscraper as one of their own, though not without reservations. The building's negative aspects can be summed up most succinctly in a comment from James Lileks of the Minneapolis Past and Present web site: "It's too many buildings, and it doesn't seem to want to be any of them."

What doesn't make sense is why it isn't taller. This tower is 774-feet-tall -- just one foot shorter than the IDS Center. Would it have been so hard for someone to add another 12 inches to the façade? Or maybe cement a couple of bricks together on the roof? Or at least erect a flagpole. Isn't bragging rights to tallest building in Minnesota worth anything on the local real estate market? This is nothing short of an opportunity wasted.