Lakewood Welcome Center

The Lakewood Welcome Center is a 2 story, 21,500 SF building located at the entrance of Lakewood Cemetery, a 220 acre legacy property located in southwest Minneapolis overlooking the eastern shore of Bde Maka Ska. Founded in 1871, Lakewood Cemetery is home to over 200,000 monuments memorializing many of Minnesota’s most revered figures including political leaders, philanthropists, business titans, and celebrated artists. Additionally, the cemetery is home to distinguished works of architecture, including a chapel by renowned architect Harry Wild Jones (listed on the National Register of Historic Places.)

The new Welcome Center was designed by Snow Kreilich Architects in collaboration with Miller Dunwiddie and TEN x TEN to accommodate a growing staff and visitor needs that could no longer be met in its current neoclassical administration building. The ground floor is laid out to serve a range of visitors and families with an information desk, gallery and lobby, meeting rooms, and multipurpose room for the cemetery’s ever-growing events program and meetings of its board of directors.  A second floor contains open and enclosed offices for staff, a break room, conference rooms, and office support spaces.

The compact footprint is topped with a flat roof and ringed by a cast stone colonnade. The building is clad in a light stone and wood accents, with windows strategically placed to create visual connections to the cemetery’s pastoral scenery. An exterior terrace overlooks the cemetery grounds and is directly connected to the adjoining landscape by an exterior stair. Consistent with the Lakewood’s long-standing commitment to stewardship of its finite resources, the building has been designed to achieve Net Zero Carbon Building certification through the use of ground source geothermal mechanical systems, a high-performance building envelope, and roof top photovoltaic array.

Extensive landscaping is planned to connect the Welcome Center with the nearby Administration Building (to be re-purposed in a future phase) the Chapel, greenhouses, as well as the cemetery’s extensive network of winding roads and pathways. The realignment of the drive north of the existing Administration building re-orients and directs visitors to the new building while creating room for new landscape features, including walking paths, seating areas, and water features.