Morgan Stanley has bought another slice of Fridley's Station Village development, paying $21.4 million for the 107-unit Aura apartment building, a market-rate complex reserved for residents age 55 and older. The deal works out to about $199,960 per unit for the property at 6000 Main St. NE, built by Sherman Associates in 2021.
The purchase, reported by Finance & Commerce, marks Morgan Stanley's second acquisition in the Fridley development in a matter of weeks. The investment firm also recently bought the neighboring 95-unit Altair from Sherman Associates for $19.9 million, or roughly $209,500 per unit, expanding its footprint in the transit-oriented district. Aura spans four floors and includes in-unit washers and dryers among its finishes.
Sherman Associates built Aura as part of a three-building push in Station Village that also includes Altair and the 73-unit Ursa, an income-restricted affordable property that opened in 2022. According to Sherman Associates, Aura was a $28.4 million age-restricted development for residents 55 and older that opened in May 2021, with amenities described on the property's website as a family room, game lounge, club room, fitness center, pool, yoga studio and pickleball court.
A Transit-Oriented District Minus the Transit
Station Village was conceived around transit access, but the commuter line that once anchored the area is gone. The Northstar Line, which opened in 2009 and ran between Minneapolis and Big Lake, was shut down in January 2026 and replaced with bus services, the outlet's report notes. Ridership on the line had plummeted after the pandemic and never recovered, according to the same report.
Despite that shift, investor appetite for the Fridley properties hasn't cooled. Sherman Associates sold both Aura and Altair to Morgan Stanley within weeks of each other, giving the firm control of 202 units across the two buildings in the same pocket of the city.
How the Price Stacks Up Against Other Senior Deals
Aura's per-unit price sits in the middle of a cluster of recent senior and affordable housing sales around the Twin Cities. Scott Weber purchased AbleLight Village in Victoria for $13.5 million, or about $259,615 per unit, while affordable senior apartments in Crystal and St. Anthony Village, both built in 2015, sold to LaSalle Investment Management for $200,000 and $195,266 per unit, respectively, the outlet's report states.
Those figures land against a broader market that has been climbing. The Twin Cities median apartment price hit $219,100 per unit in the first quarter of 2026, up 11% from the same period a year earlier, according to a separate Finance & Commerce report. That same analysis found Class C properties made up just 17% of metro multifamily sales so far in 2026, well below the five-year average of 33%, while average rent across the metro stood at $1,636 with vacancy at 4.7% at the end of the quarter.
Aura's sale adds one more data point to a Fridley corridor that has drawn repeated institutional interest even as its original transit anchor has faded. With Morgan Stanley now holding both Aura and Altair, Sherman Associates' remaining stake in Station Village centers on Ursa, the affordable building that rounded out the original three-property development.
