urbanMSP

The idea of Cupcake on Grand in Saint Paul is going into hibernation. The Mall of America extended an offer and a shop is expected to open there August 1st. They're required to be open by the 11th, the MOA's 20th birthday. I'm guessing the mall is going to pay for lots of cheap/free cupcakes that da...

Interesting. Well, the buildings better have good A/C if people are required to wait inside. I never would have thought of having an extra door opening just ahead of the bus for people who need to load bikes. People will have to watch for that step, though! The Strib and PiPress covered the skyway s...

I guess I'm not really sold on the idea of capping freeways if all we're going to get out of it is more grassy space to mow, possibly lined with trees that stay stubby for years and die as soon as they mature. I really want something that heals the gap in the streetscape. If that area remains flat, ...

Well, it'd be about the length of a downtown city block. 60-90 seconds.

I e-mailed Shaun Murphy, the city's bike/ped coordinator about 1st Ave NE and got this response: "We have some plans developed for Hennepin & 1st, but they are County roads and a couple of key decision makers at the City and the County want to wait to implement them until the City’s street...

I presume most folks would just wander west to the Hiawatha LRT Trail and take that to the station. There have been some improvements to the sidewalks at the Cedar-Franklin-Minnehaha-20th Ave intersection. The little island between Minnehaha and 20th has been enlarged a lot, and the sidewalk on the ...

Yeah, I've had visions of restoring tracks between Monticello and Clearwater, and then adding a bridge across the Mississippi near there to access the Staples Subdivison where Amtrak runs (and Northstar is hoped to run), but it would have been better if someone had pushed the idea of passenger servi...

Yeah, trackage rights are a huge gray area. I had kind of assumed that the $107.5 million that went to BNSF up front had trackage rights attached -- perhaps some of that money is being doled out on a yearly basis? Certainly a bit of that yearly contract money is going into paying the train crews (wh...

That's pretty close. There's rail running between the junction with the Hiawatha Line down to the West Bank station, though I don't think there's any actually next to the platform yet. The junction/interlocking with Hiawatha is also a work in progress -- they've got the switch for the eastbound CCLR...

Yeah, platform expansion caused some weirdness, though the Metrodome platform was full-length from the start, if my memory serves...

Did a little scouting of the line today. The Hamline intersection has rails embedded and is open to north-south traffic. I think rails had also been installed at Victoria (though not anywhere on either side there). Pavement is finished and striped on the south side of University from Mackubin to Mar...

If I quote Matt, maybe it won't seem like I'm talking to myself... My hypothetical for Northstar? Repurpose it as regional rail. Departures from STC and Mpls every two hours. Maybe leaving STC at 5 AM, 6, 6:30, 7, 7:30, 8, 10, Noon, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 Leaving Mpls at 5, 7, 9, 11, 1, 3, 4, 4:30, 5, 5:30,...

There's a hotel planned on the block just west of the old Abbott Hospital, isn't there?

Thanks for thinking so highly of "my" idea -- it was actually mattaudio who suggested it. This isn't a topic that's really been on my mind, though I think adding a center platform is probably the right thing to do. The big question is, who would pay for it? Perhaps there will be enough con...

University Avenue had a 3- to 2-lane conversion about a decade ago and did just fine. I think 1st Ave NE could probably drop a lane with relatively little ill effect, and a bike lane is a good idea. Hennepin Avenue going the other direction feels a bit more restricted, but I suspect a bike lane coul...

I think they only retained the parking ramp where the cars were stored. The dealership's front office/sales area had been demolished when Google aerials were taken in April. If you're seeing something other than the ramp, it must be new.

Sounds good. I'd tweak that idea a bit by replacing some of the LRT proposals with relatively short-distance yet high-frequency, electrified commuter rail. Routes like Southwest and Bottineau are already going in freight corridors for the most part, so why couldn't we have just tried to make the exi...

Bleh. Well, from the perspective of architecture, I wouldn't mind if Territorial and Frontier went away, or maybe even Centennial. I'd get fairly pissed if they tore down Pioneer, though. I like the superblock as a place, however -- I'm not one for sports, but there were always people shooting hoops...

Finance & Commerce covers the topic: http://finance-commerce.com/2012/07/city-of-minneapolis-tackles-riddle-of-reopening-nicollet/ There's mention of the "complicated" land ownership situation, which doesn't strike me as all that complicated. There are two parcels, each owned by differ...

The Strib has an article talking about an idea to save a training center at the Ford plant in Saint Paul. Anyone know which building it is? (I'm assuming it's the shiny new bit that looks like offices which you can see from Ford Parkway...) The building went up in 1999, making it very modern compare...