2770 GALE ROAD

Bob Lothenbach’s name carries weight in two very different worlds – Midwestern industry and American Thoroughbred racing – and the Lake Minnetonka estate he conceived at 2770 Gale Road in Woodland (Wayzata) is where those legacies meet in stone, glass, and water. Lothenbach launched his printing business from a garage in 1988 and built it into Imagine! Print Solutions, a national powerhouse; he also became one of Minnesota’s most accomplished owners and breeders under the banner of Lothenbach Stables. He died unexpectedly in 2023 at age 64, but not before years of planning and material selections that shaped what would become the most ambitious private residence ever attempted on the lake.

Set on roughly eight acres with about 655 feet of west-facing shoreline, the compound is oriented for sunsets and privacy in Woodland, the wooded peninsula between Deephaven and Wayzata long associated with old-guard Minnetonka addresses. The program spans a main residence of about 28,980 square feet, with additional square footage distributed across two guest houses, a pool house, and a boathouse at the water’s edge – the garages are sized for a serious collection, with a main-level motor court and additional lower-level stalls. The team behind the project reads like a who’s who of Upper Midwest craft: John Kraemer & Sons as builder, TEA2 Architects for the exterior architecture, PKA Architecture on interiors, MartinPatrick3 for interior design, and TOPO for the landscape.

The scale is dramatic, but the detail is what sets 2770 Gale Road apart. Lothenbach personally sourced finishes on buying trips and approved an elevated palette: more than $4 million in Italian Brombal bullet-resistant windows and doors, $3.5 million in hand-selected Connecticut fieldstone (with significant culling to achieve consistent tones), and $750,000 of Italian marble in the primary bath, including a 1,400-pound custom-carved tub. The wellness suite layers a Himalayan salt cave, massage rooms, and a gym on top of an entertainment level with a bowling alley, golf simulator, lounges, full bar, and study – a private club atmosphere under one roof. Outside, stone terraces step down to a pool deck and outdoor kitchen; closer to the shoreline, docks are set up for multiple watercraft and guest arrivals, with fire features and a putting green extending the program to the edge of the lake.

The project timeline underscores its bespoke nature: two years of design followed by five years of construction, with completion in 2024. Public records and reporting trace the land assembly to a purchase of the main tract for about $8.2 million in 2015, followed by acquisition of an adjacent lot in 2019—moves that created the wide, west-facing frontage that defines the setting today. The estate was first whisper-listed off-market at $68 million in 2024, well before it had a certificate of occupancy; in May 2025, it debuted on the MLS at $55 million, instantly becoming the most expensive residential listing ever publicly offered in Minnesota. The ask reflects not just square footage but an attempt to price a one-of-one combination of acreage, engineering, materials, and shoreline – an attempt, in other words, to establish a new ceiling for the state’s luxury market.

Context helps make sense of that number. For nearly two decades, Minnesota’s all-time residential sales record hovered far below the Gale Road ask; even Lake Minnetonka’s trophy trades historically clustered under $20 million. In recent years, however, Lake Minnetonka has seen a wave of new construction where land acquisition and build costs regularly cross eight figures. Against that backdrop, the 2770 Gale Road estate is less an outlier than a culmination: a multi-structure compound whose materials, engineering, and curation – from the window and door system to the stonework, glazing, mechanized walls, and landscape – mirror the kind of coastal-market craftsmanship that has become harder to insure and maintain on the oceanfront. That relative risk calculus, as the listing agents note, is shifting attention and capital toward the Upper Midwest.

Lothenbach’s biography adds a human dimension to the architecture. The son of a baker and butcher, he built his company through long days and a willingness to reinvest, eventually employing hundreds and earning industry recognition before selling a majority stake years later. In racing, his royal-blue silks with red diamonds became familiar nationwide, with more than 790 wins and over $30 million in purse earnings over two decades; Canterbury Park inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2023. Those pursuits demanded patience, selection, and an appetite for excellence – qualities that surface again and again in the home’s specification list and in the way the project was managed to completion even after his passing.

As a piece of residential design, the estate reads as a study in quiet monumentality: broad single-story living spaces that open to the lake, layered ceiling treatments, living green walls, and a material palette chosen for permanence rather than trend. The double-gated approach, deep setbacks, and mature canopy protect privacy; the compound layout gives guests autonomy while keeping the lake as the visual throughline. It’s easy to imagine the house shifting gracefully between modes – weekday family life, philanthropic gatherings, race-day celebrations, or shoulder-season retreats around the firepits – without ever feeling cavernous or performative. That kind of programmability is rare at any price, and rarer still in a region where true estate parcels on premier water are finite.

Whether 2770 Gale Road ultimately resets Lake Minnetonka’s sales record or simply stands as the most ambitious expression of Lake Minnetonka living to date, it is inseparable from the person who imagined it. Bob Lothenbach’s career joined entrepreneurial grit to a taste for top-end competition; the home carries those signatures in every choice, from the bullet-resistant glazing to the stone that was rejected by the ton until the colors harmonized. In that sense, the property is less a listing than a capstone – a physical biography that translates a life of building, betting, and giving back into rooms and gardens and shoreline. Whatever happens next in the market, the estate has already done what the best architecture always does: it tells a story about its maker, and it does so with conviction.

For Private Showings: David Gooden  |  +1 612-367-6025  |  dg@danearthur.com