urbanMSP

When they say first floor, I assume that they mean the ground floor with frontage facing northeast? If so, that's going to become a very congested little area, with a pretty terrible parking layout for a grocery store. Looks like the Kowalski's will be on the upper floor of the old Herberger's (fac...

Please explain to me why these issues with privately owned infrastructure is now the responsibility of the state.

Especially since railroads have been such good neighbors and always willing to work hard and negotiate in the interest of the greater good.

Don't forget about all of the tourists visiting St. Cloud.

I'm skeptical but hopeful that NLX to Duluth will be successful, but I'm really quite certain that Amtrak to St. Clould will somehow have even fewer riders than Northstar.

I saw somewhere from a totally unknown source that they discovered some structural issues when they started the Southgate project and had to bail on the original plans.

Wasn't one of the big takeaways of the original Blue line and Green line that it's better to run trains down the middle of roads rather than on the side? And if so, why do we have so much side running rail in these plans? I can't tell from the plans -- are they still proposing to cross the 7th St/6t...

For what it's worth, the argument went that should buy the railroad so that TC&W wouldn't be a stumbling block in negotiations, not that they would shut it down. They could have done the necessary reroutes and then resold it to a private company as-is, or hired somebody to operate it on their be...

As soon as I saw who wrote that I clicked out of it.

Magrino again?

The excursion train thread reminded me that at one point the Renaissance Festival was supposed to be relocating, due to their lease with the quarry around them ending. A little googling found their new proposed location outside of Jordan, but then radio silence. Did I miss that they were able to som...

That fairly pronounced path that cuts down along the side of the bluff -- anybody know the story behind that? It seems too deliberate just to be a desire path.

It's stupid, but I'm sure the issue is that if they make any improvements that encourage people to cross here, and then somebody crosses and gets run over by a train, they'll be liable.

It may be a pipe dream, but I think there's still a decent chance that the Bassett Creek Valley station will eventually be surrounded by some pretty dense TOD.

Has anybody seen any updates on the big redevelopment project at Roseville?

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The City and County are making plans to reconstruct the 1st Avenue S, 10th Avenue S, Nicollet Avenue S and Pillsbury Avenue S Bridges over the Midtown Greenway.

Source.

Yeah, they're apparently planning to access the city's Inclusionary Zoning TIF money to fund the project, which requires meeting higher levels of affordability.

I don't think there's anything that precludes the railroad and the city from entering into a binding contract, though, if both were willing parties. In other words, if the city (with mostly other people's money) offers to build new storage track that is attractive to the railroad, they could sign a ...

Looks like there are some very large, expensive houses directly impacted by this, which may explain why it's a priority.

I mean, she's not wrong. They definitely were lobbying.

I'd argue that Hennepin and Nicollet should be consolidated anyway, but the problem remains dipping down quickly enough to not sever First Avenue. In theory, it's maybe doable -- about 400' of run between First and Second to drop about 20' puts you at a 5% grade, which I think is towards the upper e...