urbanMSP

I don't expect this to get any traction, Metro Transit seems attached to the "crawling at 10mph even when it's not detoured for farmers markets and other events" Nicollet Transit Mall experience, but I left a comment requesting that they look at crossing downtown on Marq2, using the Orang...

The F Line planning process emerged into the open today. On the project website , you can now view the Draft Corridor Plan and comment . I posted the full comment on Twitter , but I still strongly believe (see previous posts in this thread for an extended argument) that this project would be strengt...

This looks pretty great, but I'm disappointed that the developers didn't consider that this site was high on my target list for a residential tower once I win the Powerball. Serious thought is that there are now very few full, 3/4, or even 1/2 block redevelopment sites remaining in downtown, but the...

I also went to the Blue Line Extension public open house on Broadway. I learned a lot from the meeting. There were about twenty to thirty members of the public who attended, enough that there were productive conversations going on everywhere but not as much as you would hope given a project of this ...

I'm extremely skeptical of loops as a transit route design. To my knowledge, I'm unaware of any really successful loop route that stood out on its own, except at resorts and airports where the rider base is captive and there are big benefits to the efficiency of having just one line. There are a num...

There is a community meeting planned for Saturday, October 22nd, to discuss the future design of George Floyd Square. It is not my place to decide, but I am very interested in what comes out of this process. Something that stirred my mind on this topic recently was a visit to Richmond, VA, where the...

Between this, the Youngblood project, the Northrup King Artist Housing, and the 1717 Central project, it's pretty clear that developers are building exactly 1:1 car parking to unit ratios in upper Northeast. All of these projects hit that mark, which gives Ward 1 the second highest car parking to un...

Feel free to use my tracking spreadsheet to locate the meeting where past projects were discussed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... ue&sd=true

Lots to like. Bunch of thoughts on this one: First of all, I'm glad they are doing three buildings. While we're never going to go back to the days when a block like this would have a dozen or more separate buildings on it, it's nice to have at least some variety. I would've preferred four buildings,...

Wells Fargo has sold their downtown Operations Center at 3rd and Washington to Sherman, says this Bizjournals article . No comment from Sherman about what they're planning on doing with it. Potentially pretty exciting. I think this building is one of the worst in downtown Minneapolis. Combined with...

FWIW, projects with a heavy subsidized affordable component operate with a bit of a different logic than market rate projects. So it could be the case that a developer has sworn off market rate projects in a city, but is still willing to entertain affordable projects. Not ideal, because every city n...

I'd argue the biggest issue in the Minneapolis market is oversupply...

Which, to be clear, has been an explicit public policy goal for the city.

Minneapolis rents have barely budged at a time when rents nationally are increasing astronomically, and it's not because of disinvestment or flight.

New before the Planning Committee CoW this week is a proposal for a six story, 65 unit, 20 car parking space project at 613 Van Buren. Here's the packet . If that address rings a bell, it's because it's on the same street (and benefitting from the same strip of Corridor 6 built form guidance) as the...

Yesterday HUD updated their building permits survey (I've been calling these housing starts, which is basically what they are, but there is a difference and I should be more clear) through June, so we've got a half year of data now. Through the first half of 2022, there were permits for 2,317 homes ...

What an awful headline. "... as [Minnetonka] reaches max capacity" Who wrote this, a farmer? I wouldn't have chosen that headline, but if you read the first three sentences, it's clear that what they mean is that Minnetonka has an extremely low vacancy rate and that more housing is needed.

If I'm not mistaken, didn't the Governor (either Dayton or Walz, I can't remember) actually fly down to Fort Worth to negotiate with BNSF executives directly? This project was delayed for years while the state tried a lot of different avenues of leverage. I wholeheartedly support the new route throu...

May 2022 Blue Line = 15,632 Green Line = 19,554 Total LRT = 35,186 % of May 19 = 45.36% % of May 20 = 260.46% % of May 21 = 126.28% Ridership is improving and Metro Transit is painting a positive picture, but I think the number is a bit more discouraging. Especially in May, which saw much less ride...

Orange Line passed over 1k weekday riders in May. Ridership has grown every month so far. While there's no avoiding the fact that it's a pretty low number overall, it's still a positive milestone. Still enormous opportunity for growth, especially given how almost none of the station areas for this l...

I like how each station has a different motif expressed in those metal screens at the entry ramp. They all look very nice, but I'm especially fond of the tree in Eden Prairie Town Center Station and the circuit board at Golden Triangle Station. A nice cheap way to add decoration and local flavor to ...

The residential conversion is in front of the CPC next week. Packet . Now at 216 homes (I find it funny sometimes how these numbers move around by extremely small increments as the design evolves). This project will have no new added parking spaces, understandably, but residents will be able to get ...