urbanMSP

While this is a cool project, it's kind of a bummer that this will preclude any large scale redevelopment of this area. Wouldn't worry about it. (1) It's good to have jobs near transit, (2) these jobs will be making more housing elsewhere possible, (3) there's plenty of nearby lots to redevelop bef...

PSA: With the weather getting cold, this is my reminder to download the Pantograph app so you can see the near-live (updated every 30 seconds) position of your bus or train and their anticipated arrival times. Don't wait unnecessarily. I am constantly surprised by how many people do not use this, an...

The upcoming November 1st City Planning Commission agenda contains two excellent projects from Hennepin County. Both are conversions of hotels into <30% AMI housing. The first project will convert 45 rooms of the former University Inn in Marcy Holmes and the second will convert 55 rooms of the form...

HCMC is proposing an expansion of the existing Purple Ramp to cover the other half of the site, creating a full-block parking structure bounded by 6th and 7th Streets and Park and Portland Avenues. The new ramp would add 1,053 parking spaces to the 1,331 already on the block. The new ramp would have...

The upcoming November 1st City Planning Commission agenda contains two excellent projects from Hennepin County. Both are conversions of hotels into <30% AMI housing. The first project will convert 45 rooms of the former University Inn in Marcy Holmes and the second will convert 55 rooms of the forme...

I attended the open house for the Kmart site last night. There was delicious food and it was well attended by a diverse audience. The City had lots of engagement activities, multiple stations asking various questions, and translators on hand. They got many details right, with the only exception that...

Homelessness is a separate issue from crime and it's extremely counter-productive to lump them together as a single item.

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...