urbanMSP

One other oddity in this area is the fact that Xerxes Ave has two different connection points at American Blvd/79th. Rather than going straight through, the section south of American Blvd meets the main street at York/Zenith Ave -- in fact, in perfect alignment with Southdale's York Avenue. But of c...

As a sidebar, I love this old pattern of development (from that 30s picture). Carve out a grid, subdivide to sensible sizes, and plant some boulevard trees (at least in that segment of Edina north of 62nd). No paving, curbing, driveway aprons, buried electrical, cul de sac pie platting, access manag...

Actually it's older and must be on the original plat. Here is the road oddity in 1937 in the middle of farm country- http://geo.lib.umn.edu/Hennepin_County/y1937/WN-9-808.jpg https://i.imgur.com/2Ee99kgl.png OK, that's fascinating to me. Great find. I wonder if that was a correction line in the ori...

I've wondered about the moving of CSAH 31 to York Ave as well (which actually runs in Zenith Ave... no idea why it's called York). But from the images, it appears that CSAH 31 was not developed as any major commercial route until Southdale Center's construction. I guess it made sense to orient the n...

Speaking of walkablity around Southdale, the Mall owner has been installing a lot of sidewalks. Plus with the sidewalks some new crossings are installed. Can't walk around the mega block entirely yet but great strides have happened from the disaster it was up until a year ago. Mixed feelings. Bette...

50th and France is horrible to get around in in a car- no wide roads, double turn lanes, etc, and far from a freeway. The people that live there obviously value something else than getting around easy by car. Maybe the people living at Southdale do value getting around by car, or they'd buy at 50th...

What is the most helpful way to turn a "road" into a "street?" Is that even possible? If not, how do we avoid the worst of stroadiness? Actually, most major streets in Minneapolis, especially outside downtown, were once roads -- including Nicollet and Hennepin. Fortunately, they...

I think there are a huge number of people who are driving there and who would drive through , but won't necessarily pick a coffee place based on drive-thru preference. At Cedar Point (66th and Richfield Pkwy), there are four fast food-type places -- Subway, Chipotle, Noodles, and another Caribou. Al...

Caribou and MyBurger are both confirmed. I think it is pretty grim that Caribou just left the mixed-use City Bella across the street (where people could use convenient street parking) and is instead going to Lyndale Station, with a drive-through and parking lot. Do they really think so little of the...

Wow, this really is the "second wave" of multifamily residential building in Edina. They didn't seem to have much in the 90s/00s, and the 80s/early90s stuff is rather tower-in-the-park with big setbacks and parking lots. Once Edina converts these stroads to multiway boulevards in the comi...

Regarding the striping configuration on Lyndale: Richfield is restriping Lyndale between 64th and 66th (adjacent to this development) to eliminate one of the through lanes and create bike lanes and on-street parking. Somewhat ridiculously, it will go back to four lanes (plus left-turn lanes) at the ...

Sorry. Did not mean to offend. The homes themselves are nice. I was referring to the condition of the street itself, and some of the commercial areas that look blighted, not the houses. We're on the cusp of a lot of new work. 76th Street was completely reconstructed east of 35W over the last few ye...

Richfield is going to widen 66th Street west of I-35W to 3 lanes in each direction?! I have to say that I'm not sure I understand that decision. Not three lanes in both directions, but adding a median/center turn lane. The current road is mostly four lanes, undivided. East of Nicollet, it will be n...

Also, the stretch of Richfield Parkway that was still the old two-lane street is closed off and torn up at the moment, presumably to complete the parkway-ification that's been done on either end. Yes. The new lighting and median will go in the central section, and that segment of the Intercity Regi...

The commercial areas are pretty dilapidated. The houses are not really any worse off than most of the ones in adjacent South Minneapolis. There are some unsightly features (like, there are fewer alleys, so a lot of cars parked in front-facing driveways) -- but that's more an issue of design than cur...

@Mdcastle: I think you're underestimating the inefficiency of the "stroad lights" on 98th Street today. When every movement has its own, protected cycle, it significantly reduces the capacity of the intersection. I bet if you cut things down to single left-turn lanes (at least for cars exi...