urbanMSP

So...restaurants? What we need in this area is smaller (=less expensive) spaces for independent owners. Minneapolis and especially Uptown are at or near the saturation point for restaurants. A lot of restauranteurs want to see how the $15 hr minimum wage fight plays out in Minneapolis before they o...

It is basically a modern update on the slab style commie block.

Maybe Wayzata fits their target? When I worked for them they had no plans in the Twin Cities beyond the four stores. If you are looking to sell a small restaurant chain, going regional makes it more valuable than having a saturation presence in one metro. The brand itself is a major source of value...

Did we know that Red Cow is going into the old Green Mill space? I just heard this on the radio and wasn't sure if it's old news or not. That's great, but leads me to the question, how many Red Cows can this city support? The two in Minneapolis currently are far enough apart to not cannibalize each...

This is turning into the type of project that makes regular people hate new developments.

Filling in vacant lots is one thing. Tearing down century old urban fabric is another. We don't have much of that left, especially commercial. This project should be opposed. I don't want Minneapolis to become even more soulless.

Did anybody else feel like this attempt to install Ellison as party chair was really an attempt by Sanders and other progressives to put him out in the public spotlight with an eye on grooming him to be a future progressive presidential candidate? When was the last time the race for DNC chairman had...

Music Go Round was only half the block. The other half was a surface parking extension of the Calhoun Square ramp. I use to park there when Ravenswood Books was still in Calhoun Square, which was in the early '90s.

The thing is though that Ackerberg has failed at building anything other than a taxpayer subsidized parking ramp. I don't think there are glorious projects at the end of the rainbow, just eternally vacant lots. I don't think he is ever going to get anything built. His hotel got beat to the market by...

Interesting. I was starting to wonder if Ackerberg was going to get anything built. He has developed a track record of swinging for the fences and missing. I am starting to fear that his lot next to Calhoun Square is going to be the last parcel to be developed in Uptown. I would like to see some stu...

One thing that will never happen in MN is a referendum like you're seeing in the 8 states that have passed this in recent years. The MN Constitution doesn't allow for such "ballot questions", only for actual constitutional amendments. I strongly support legalization (and enjoyed it in tri...

I just emailed my representative to urge her to support this. It is depressing how far behind Minnesota is on this compared to the states that a lot of the Twin Cities peer cities are in. I worry that lagging behind on this issue could hurt our ability to maintain the vitality of our creative commun...

What's interesting is I thought I read that a city tried to get police escort of meter readers and in order to get a look at evidence inside homes on the pretext of safety of the readers. Courts shut that down. If we want equipment malfunctions on cars to be enforced, we should have a special branc...

I worked at that Red Cow location for a while. I have no love for the company but the neighbors are out of their minds. The irony here is that nearly every house on the blocks around Red Cow has alley accessible garages. Almost none of them park on the street, and there are almost always one or two ...

My guess is that part of our growth over the last five years was due to vacant foreclosures being occupied again. Remember that Minneapolis didn't grow much in the '00s despite all the development because foreclosures were balancing out the new development. If the reoccupation of foreclosures and ab...

Once the park has a name that name will probably become the name of the neighborhood. At least that is my prediction.

The Musicland space next to it has been vacant since the early '90s. Obviously the landlord has no interest in renting it because surely somebody would have taken it by now.

It’s not a coincidence that Revival is opening their second location in St. Paul.” I'm friends/former bandmates with the chef/co-owner of Revival, and yes - he has some stories about the environment here in Minneapolis. And I will say, as someone who is generally supportive of the Working Families ...

Since I work nights, it was a challenge to vote but I made it. We actually got everyone who was at work last night and wanted to vote to the caucuses by having people leave and then come back, and free up the next person to go, but it was a colossal pain. Having two hours in the evening to vote prob...

I don't normally read the Huffington Post but I found this to be a pretty good analysis of the recent history of the Democratic party and the importance of the Clinton/Sanders contest within the context of it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-studebaker/bernie-vs-hillary-matters-more-than-peop...