urbanMSP

Maybe the design was inspired by the materials of the curbs and sidewalks in the warehouse district. There is no evidence of anything from the Warehouse District above that. No, this will probably not look awful, just unrelated to anything in its neighborhood.

There was a scathing critique in the Chicago Tribune of Stern’s new tower, One Bennet Park in the Windy City - which is essentially a larger version of what we are getting here. The biggest digs Blair Kamman gave in the review nailed the finishing material on the tower itself (concrete panels much l...

I recently stayed at the Park Point Marina Hotel and found myself wondering once again why there has not been more development on the Duluth harbor front. The Lakeshore hotels manage to stay busy well beyond the summer high season. The one new development on the west end of the harbor is the nicely ...

Hmm, maybe two nuclear detonations - one for City Center and one for the even more ghastly Treasure Island Center - what on earth were they thinking? The pig is dirty white in this case, but the lipstick is a total mess. The most recent render (I just saw one today) of the City Center redesign is at...

The Wilf’s Omni luxury hotel and conference center is now up to the ninth of it’s fourteen flours. It already stands out forcefully for drivers along 494 and from the surrounding area, it looks like it just sprang up out of farm land - thought the property it sits on was actually woodland but you co...

It’s hard to imagine anything short of a minor nuclear detonation really helping this sad monument to architectural bad taste. I can understand the heavy landing of the tower on sixth street - the entry is consistent with the weighty but highly textured face of the tower. The tower is uninspired, bu...

I agree that it would be good to fill that little parking lot at the end of the block, otherwise, I am glad to see that someone picked this up. The Duffy building is just too big and too much of a presence to sit untouched for any longer. With the mount of retail they have planned, this will do a lo...

The real virtues of this project are in the thoughtful details, such as this notion of making room for another rail line at some uncertain point in the future. The park space under the viaducts, the grand staircase, the shared amenity floor and many other details make this a particularly good plan. ...

When I was.a kid, all of Nicollet, Hennepin and many of the cross streets between them were packed with retail shops, restaurants, and the wonder that was the Great Northern Market, purveyor of exotic fruits and vegetables and good meats. That was a long time ago. The kind of retail that existed at ...

The added details in the proposal and the images makes this one of the more innovative projects to be put forward lately. The Guthrie Ramp liner is in the same category. The drawings for North Loop Green are promising. Making use of the space under the viaducts is very clever.

It is good to see this moving along. The parking lot was a particular blot on the Mall. Now if Opus can just get moving on their plan and eliminate the remaining parking lot on their property Nicollet will be greatly improved.

This is a peculiar design. I agree that the way it meets the odd intersection is clever and a good approach, but the barrel effect looks too contrived - especially with rest of the building looking plain and featureless. It is likely a building on a tight budget trying to projec5 an image of being “...

Okay, this is not a great work of architecture, but it is not a bad work either. The “sky deck” or super skyway is an interesting feature that will create some great views for people in the building and the pedestrian oriented green area and walkways are an appealing addition to the neighborhood.

The riverfront looks less connected in this rendering than in the previous one. The four towers create a massive wall that screens the rest of downtown from the river. The design of the towers is undoubtedly still preliminary and tentative, but it is uninspired at this point. A few odd angles cut in...

Have they officially broken ground on Eleven or is it just sitting with a fancy fence and no activity? Any dates for construction yet?

Giving a tour here to Italian friends a few years ago, they loved Downtown, the river from and Northeast. They were also completely amazed by our parks, lakes, and the Grand Rounds. I am always meeting tourists in the metro - a recent trip to the Eagan outlet mall was an encyclopedia of foreign lang...

It strikes me that mall owners and managers are really at a loss for what to do with their properties these days, which is understandable given the rapid rate of change in the marketplace. We don’t really need a pile of destination shopping centers. Even the Mall of America looks a bit worn and toot...

I can picture the council caving in to th Fed on this. It is strange that the Fed would manage this whole project so badly, and then down to the planning commission - although it is clear that many people do not understand the many functions of the Federal Reserve Banks. This is not just a research ...

I’m relieved to see st least some action on this project it has the potential to add handsomely to the Washington corridor and to bring at least a little bit of affordable housing closer to the heart of downtown. A careful read of the Strib article does include not only the six story affordable buil...

The articles about our area on the Aer Lingus blog have a couple of errors, but it is good to see MSP pick up more direct international flights. I hope that this direct flight to Ireland can be sustained.