This probably sounds negative, but with a hand drawn sketch that won the proposal: get ready for no lighting scheme, no offset interestingly stacked towers, and it definitely won't be "*WORD NOT FOUND*".
If a developer doesn't have their feet held to the fire they'll go as cheap as possible. While the Pohlad's have billions, they have billions for a reason... the same reason why there is no talent on their baseball team.
Thank you for posting this. Developers tend to be wealthy for a reason - primarily, they don't spend much of their own money and they don't spend unnecessarily. There is merit in parsing the word "unnecessarily."
The city has laid out guidelines for materials and developers are not going to go above and beyond what is necessary for approval. Sadly, the state of development-driven architecture has a MAJOR emphasis on the former (development) and not the latter (architecture) and the developers AND the city need to be held accountable.
I guess “we” have to decide as a city if “we” want a better class of architecture. Do “we” value architecture enough to demand better in “developer-driven” housing? This assumes that “demanding better” doesn’t stifle development. I’m sure there are others on this board that can elucidate how other cities demand better “quality” without creating a difficult business environment for development - I certainly don’t have the answer. It seems that Portland always comes up as a shangri-la (in almost every measurable) and then Seattle, then Denver. I’m not sure how much truth there is to the idea that the aforementioned cities do multi-family development better than we do but I’m guessing there are opinions in this forum.
The recent Strib article is of particular interest regarding the notion of “holding developers feet to the fire” and the city’s role in development. The Strib article (and indeed many of the comments on this board) challenge the “sameness” of multi-family, developer driven projects. The massing is no mystery - you need about 120’ of width to get two rows of double-loaded parking in Minneapolis, you go as long as the lot/setbacks will allow. If you need more parking to meet the ratio of the units you are shooting for and the city’s 1:1 parking requirement, then you have to consume some space at grade for more parking. The massing above the podium is governed by lot/setbacks and the most efficient way to get as many units as the developer can possibly get on a particular site given the construction method/building code/height. There are only so many shapes/massings that you can do to achieve maximum efficiency. As soon as you start messing with massing to create “interest”, you are cutting into that efficiency and you are going away from the “tried and true” maxim that right angles are easy (cheap) to build (see almost every multi-family project around town).
The Brunsfield is relevant to this idea of “holding developers feet to the fire.” Developers generally are going to give VERY little consideration to decreasing rentable efficiency for the sake of architecture, this is what makes The Brunsfield a fascinating study - they break the “maximum efficiency” rule in several ways and then clad their building in a very expensive material.
The Brunsfield is clad in a rain screen metal panel that is quite expensive (as claddings go). I know a lot about this panel and (at the time) it was in the $26-34 per sf range. For comparison, brick (depending on size, and makeup) was in the $16-25 range.
Everybody seems to love the Brunsfield. JSA is a good firm that does really nice work and the Brunsfield is a good example. I have some criticisms which I voiced on the Brunsfield thread (if anyone is interested). The rumor is that the housing lease up didn’t go as the developers had hoped - I don’t know the truth and I’d be interested to hear any insider info; maybe it’s not true. The retail space is also not currently leased (to my knowledge).
There are implications here that I think are very interesting…did the lease up go poorly/slowly because the rents were too high (relative to the competition in the North Loop and downtown market)? Were the rents too high because the cost of the building was high (-er than the nearby competition) and the rents needed to cover the additional cost? Is the location too close to the outer “edge” of the North Loop? In my earlier writing about the Brunsfield, I make note of the fact that the developer/architect carved out valuable ground level square footage to create amenity space - this is definitely out of the ordinary and giving up that leasable space creates more pressure on the units to deliver the rents needed. I also mention that creating a “double-height” space in the retail creates even more added pressure because it deletes another large chunk of rentable space, again adding pressure on the unit rents.
People seem to love The Brunsfield and hold it up as an ideal that should be strived for in terms of “development-driven” multi-family architecture and I don’t disagree. However, you will find few (if any) developers that would be so willing to “sacrifice” leasable space and to clad their building in a very expensive material. The fact is, most developers see architects as a necessary evil and very few who strive to win architecture awards. I’m not talking about Finance & Commerce awards and/or Business Journal awards (awards the laud “the deal” versus the built form), I’m talking about architecture awards. I wonder if the “out of town developer” on The Brunsfield brought values to this site/project that are not shared by the “in town developers” and thus, the economic viability of the project suffered as a result DESPITE the architectural merit. I’m excited to think that developers exist who DO value architecture and are willing to make sacrifices but in my experience this is the outlier, not the norm.
I don’t want to criticize developers only for their lack of desire to create good architecture. The city should also be held accountable. Metal panel typically gets short shrift with the city which I find to be ludicrous. Given the example above (a ~ $30/sf metal panel versus a ~$21/sf brick), materials matter and one material is not equal to another just because they have the same chemical makeup. Corrugated metal panel does not equal machined rain screen metal panel. Some brick is ugly and cheaply manufactured, some brick is beautiful and robust. The city also prescribes some massing requirements (“breaks” in a facade, etc) that further govern the shape of buildings. Monolithic shapes (like The Brunsfield), are not the norm because of this mandate for “breaks”; I understand the spirit of the rule because I think there are bad examples (the 3rd St side of Third North comes to mind) of continuous, unbroken planes that are just brutal but in many cases, we are getting what we have because deviation from the rules is difficult/time-consuming/expensive in the entitlement process.