1500 Nicollet Avenue - Dominium Development - 6 stories / 184 units

Downtown - North Loop - Mill District - Elliot Park - Loring Park
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Nick
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1500 Nicollet Avenue - Dominium Development - 6 stories / 184 units

Postby Nick » September 22nd, 2014, 7:02 pm

Yop, so I guess some kind of preliminary proposal will be at the CLPC land use meeting next month, as well as another preliminary something (!) for 1500 Nicollet Avenue. That's that block that was on Craigslist a while back.

Mod note: Jump to plans on Page 3
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Re: Current & Proposed Downtown Minneapolis Projects

Postby twincitizen » September 23rd, 2014, 8:03 am

That's a pretty big chunk of land for Loring Park, at just over an acre: http://gis.hennepin.us/property/map/def ... 2924320031

For reference, that's slightly more land than Vue occupies.

The neighborhood actually needs some publicly-accessible, underground parking if the remaining surface parking lots (Woman's Club, etc.) are ever going to be developed. I'd actually expect a parking facility to be able to produce a profit in this area (and/or possibly "subsidize" the rents of whatever residential is built above it).

Nick, do you know of any publicly accessible parking in the immediate area that could serve residents around here who don't have off-street parking of their own? I'd imagine newly available off-street parking would be a hot item.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby Nick » October 28th, 2014, 6:34 pm

There was a real estate broker fellow who came to the CLPC land use meeting yesterday and talked a bit about this property. Everything seemed fairly up in the air, but it sounds like they'd had some serious interest from a developer in Atlanta. Mixed use, probably taller than six stories, retail on the bottom. An Aldi's was discussed as a possible tenant, which maybe seems odd for Loring Park but I guess makes sense in that part of Loring Park, in particular with its proximity to Stevens Square and Whittier.

Another tidbit was that Trader Joe's seemed to not want the LPM spot and was focused on finding something along Washington, which I would assume is Thresher Square.
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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby mnmike » October 29th, 2014, 9:14 am

Does this go all the way to the freeway, or just 16th?

If they say Atlanta developer...I wonder if this will be a "Skyhouse" condo tower. I think the developer of those is from Atlanta...smart idea really, same design, same trademarked name, several different cities. I think Austin, Raleigh, Orlando, Atlanta and Houston so far. Maybe they are looking to come north.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby mister.shoes » October 29th, 2014, 9:31 am

Sanity check: 1500 Nicollet is the SW corner of the intersection, right? So whatever is proposed for that spot would involve knocking down five little buildings? Can't we do something about the surface parking at 1501 on the NW corner instead?
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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby HiawathaGuy » October 29th, 2014, 9:41 am

Sanity check: 1500 Nicollet is the SW corner of the intersection, right? So whatever is proposed for that spot would involve knocking down five little buildings? Can't we do something about the surface parking at 1501 on the NW corner instead?
The City owns that parking lot. There was a proposal for that land years ago, but the market crash killed it.
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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby HiawathaGuy » October 29th, 2014, 9:44 am

Does this go all the way to the freeway, or just 16th?
That entire block (W 15th Street to the freeway) is all owned by the same person, under the ownership of Twin Town Properties, LLC. So one would assume that a development could encompass that whole block.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby TommyT » October 29th, 2014, 9:46 am

I also think it's too bad they would knock out all those buildings for something new when there is a completely empty lot just across the freeway.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby grant1simons2 » October 29th, 2014, 9:59 am

Image

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby twincitizen » October 29th, 2014, 11:49 am

"all those buildings" is kind of a stretch even. The only one with any value whatsoever is the one at the corner (15th St Market), and even that looks pretty worse for wear. It's 93 years old and probably needs significant investment to bring it up to code. As for the city's "meter farm" across the street at 1501, remember that block was included as part of the "value capture" district for the streetcar, so the City is certainly looking for that to get developed as well, ASAP, so it starts generating money.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby grant1simons2 » October 29th, 2014, 12:01 pm

Those buildings are in really bad shape. It would cost a lot to try to fix them and who knows if they'll be taken care of afterward. I'm kind of surprised MediaXpress is still in business, if they weren't I bet they'd be going too.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby PhilmerPhil » October 29th, 2014, 12:10 pm

As much as I despise General J's, isn't it kinda nice to have affordable spaces for thrift stores, convenience stores, and ethnic restaurants to run their businesses?

I'm not saying we should save these buildings at the cost of new development, but I dislike the way they are just being dismissed as valueless and run down.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby UrsusUrbanicus » October 29th, 2014, 12:25 pm

As much as I despise General J's, isn't it kinda nice to have affordable spaces for thrift stores, convenience stores, and ethnic restaurants to run their businesses?
Amen to that. Spaces that are unique, and sometimes even a little gritty, are an essential part of what makes a city a city (rather than a suburb that just happens to have a financial district). The big question is: how do we go about creating and/or encouraging the conditions under which these spaces can be preserved? In theory, development and growth needn't entail gentrification... but how does one keep those trends separate in practice?

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby Wedgeguy » October 29th, 2014, 12:31 pm

IF that half block had been taken care of and some maintenance had been done over the years I'd maybe be more for saving. But as they are now they are huge money pits that would cost more to fix than what they could possibly get for any ROI. I only hope that it is not a block long slab that fronts Nicollet. I would hope for maybe two towers and a retail platform. At least 3 retail slots if not more, and 2 smaller lobbies so that retail gets as much street use as possible.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby HiawathaGuy » October 29th, 2014, 1:00 pm

As much as I despise General J's, isn't it kinda nice to have affordable spaces for thrift stores, convenience stores, and ethnic restaurants to run their businesses?

I'm not saying we should save these buildings at the cost of new development, but I dislike the way they are just being dismissed as valueless and run down.
I think valueless as they are is the caveat. I mean, if every space that was good for affordable uses was under threat, I could maybe see your concern. But thankfully there are still lots and lots and lots of places for those type of businesses. One would think that desirable property within the square of University/Cedar/Franklin/Lyndale for higher density development (as well as other well-served transit nodes in the City) should be fair game for market forces. Seeing these building replaced with a something more dense certainly makes their value less, and as such a potential project like this seems to be a good option for the City.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby nickmgray » October 29th, 2014, 1:26 pm

I don't like the idea of razing old buildings to put new ones in, but we do need to make a few compromises if we want the city to continue to grow. I just wish the be buildings we put up to replace them have enough character that people will be asking to save them in 60-80 years when another developer comes along and wants to tear it down for an even bigger project.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby Nick » October 29th, 2014, 4:57 pm

The property includes the whole half block from I-94 to 15th Street. I wouldn't want to speak for the still-tentative developer, but the broker at the meeting didn't seem to think there was any chance of saving any of the buildings on the land (someone asked) and he said that many people had looked at the property & concluded that razing the whole area was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby Chef » October 29th, 2014, 6:11 pm

We have lost so much of our old, fine grained storefront retail downtown that we should really try not to lose even more of it. I feel like a lot of people don't value old buildings here as much here as they do in other cities. All of downtown Savannah was a money pit 40 years ago, but it is still there today because the locals loved it the way it was. Others find a way, we don't. It is a shame.

I really hope this development doesn't happen.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby nBode » October 29th, 2014, 6:42 pm

I'm also one who is sad to see old buildings destroyed. I really believe that having a great diversity of old and new buildings is what makes a city great. Not to say I'm opposed to new construction; I just wish we could try to fill all the open spaces before tearing things down. It would be cool to see the new development go in behind the existing structures and at least keep one of them. All these developers just demolishing buildings to start blank-slate is so lazy and unbecoming.

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Re: 1500 Nicollet Half Block

Postby Nick » October 29th, 2014, 6:48 pm

I would agree that tearing down old storefronts is unfortunate, and encourage anyone who agrees with that sentiment to vote with your wallets by patronizing businesses in old storefronts.
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