Ray Harris is a developer best known for the creation of Calhoun Square and the mis-ownership of the Sears Building circa 1998 - 2002 (end date unclear).

He is the president of STA Development Corp.

Info on Harris from a 2000 City Pages article, Shell Game, which has good info about how these things are funded:

"Ray Harris is perhaps best known as the developer of Calhoun Square, which opened in 1984 at the intersection of Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue, and whose anchor tenants now include Famous Dave's, Figlio, and Borders. For a time he also held development rights to the City of Minneapolis's star-crossed Block E parcel downtown, which he lost when he was unable to secure financing. At 140,000 square feet, Calhoun Square is less than one-tenth the size of the Sears complex, which Harris says is "twice the size of the IDS building" in terms of available space. Harris will also tell you that few developers boast a résumé that includes what he's trying to pull off. "No one's done a 19-acre, 1.9-million-square-foot renovation," Harris says. "It's one of the largest in the country."

He and his partners first expressed interest in the Sears complex in 1997, after other redevelopment attempts there had failed. They purchased the site in 1998 for $5.9 million, with a $2 million mortgage assist from the Minneapolis Community Development Agency (MCDA) and a $200,000 grant from the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association. A 1999 MCDA state filing on the project waxed confident about a $98.4 million complex with a mix of light-industrial and retail use that would bring about 4,000 new jobs to an economically troubled area of south Minneapolis. But today the agency is singing a gloomier tune.

In a June letter to the developers, an exasperated MCDA executive director Steve Cramer tallied the substantial amount of money the MCDA had helped bring to the table to date: more than $23.6 million in public funds, including the MCDA's mortgage; $8.5 million in federal grants and loans for a planned parking garage; $4.5 million from the Metropolitan Council for pollution abatement; $3 million in state bonding money to help Hennepin County acquire space; and more than $3 million for a planned Metro Transit hub. The federal designation of Minneapolis as a so-called Empowerment Zone helped the project secure another $1.4 million in federal grants, Cramer noted; with an additional $17 million in public funds required to complete the parking garages, public investment in the project would top $40 million. But while public money has flowed in--$7.2 million has been spent to date, according to the MCDA head--STA has generated precious little cash of its own. Wrote Cramer: "Now is the time for STA to do its part to get the project underway."

An article on the Sears building by Ed Felien in 2001 has this to say:

"Harris has maintained and improved the Sears building, but his speculation in the area has had a disastrous effect on surrounding businesses. By fencing off the parking lot and renting parking to Abbott-Northwestern Hospital employees, he deprived local businesses of the free parking that used to make shopping at Chicago and Lake easy and convenient. Almost every small shop there has gone out of business."