urbanMSP

^The piling walls for the western apartment building go down quite far, I noticed yesterday. Will there be multiple sub levels?

Overheard at the meeting: "They just need to close that damn road."

The Strib coverage with a video of renderings:
http://www.startribune.com/design-unvei ... 305257791/

pretty good design given the constraints (portland ave and the vikings). Biggest question though, will the great lawn be big enough to play football on? You know that's going to be the #1 thing every wide-eyed kid is going to want to do after seeing a game.

Its definitely big enough, but the Vikings will have tents and crap set up on game days. The good lawn will be big enough for a game of catch at least though. I'll post a picture when I get home.

Fog? FOG!

The large green area is the Great Lawn. The small green area is the Good Lawn. The blue area is the Water Plaza.

so... what exactly is this "water feature" and is it worth taking up so much space? The strib article says they are proposing a "cloud-like experience". Did they talk at all in the meeting about what that will mean?

A misting effect

It's apparently a plaza that will have mist shooting up from the joints or something like that. It sounded to me like what that exactly means was more up in the air than the rest of the plans. I did confirm with one of the planners, though, that it will just be a dry plaza with the water off, instead of becoming an depressing unusable void like certain downtown water features I could name. I'm not really convinced it needs to take up as much space as it does, though, and it definitely doesn't need to have a weird exclave on the east side of Portland.

So, Portland update: It's not closing. However, it is morphing from 3 drive lanes and a painted bike lake to 2 drive lanes and a protected bike lane, and there will be not very detailed measures taken to make it feel like a pedestrian space where cars are intruding rather than the other way around. Oddly enough, the drive lanes will be 13' wide, up from 11' in the existing configuration, which seems counterproductive. You all should go to the feedback survey (text box) and point that out. I'm actually pretty optimistic about this approach. The block of Chicago Ave in front of the stadium also doesn't feel entirely like a road for cars, and seems, in my experience at least, to have much less traffic than other roads in the area. If a more extreme version of the same thing is done to Portland, maybe in a couple years the lowered vehicle counts will convince the county that it can be can be closed after all.

Oddly enough, the drive lanes will be 13' wide, up from 11' in the existing configuration, which seems counterproductive.

My guess is they're actually 11' lanes with a 2' curb & gutter on each side, assuming they are still going to rebuild it with a standard road section configuration.

Anyways, my main comment was to switch the Good Lawn with the Pavilion to lure more WF tower people to the other side of the park. Right now the only pseudo-consistent activity on that side will be the food trucks, which will likely be gone for 5 months of the year. The pavilion will lure lunchtime workers to the less populated side of the park every day of the year (hopefully).

That doesn't look at all like a cloud formation....more like the steady, creeping hand of Zigi and the gang pick-pocketing the park for all it's worth ("gotcha!").

That doesn't look at all like a cloud formation....more like the steady, creeping hand of Zigi and the gang pick-pocketing the park for all it's worth ("gotcha!").

Maybe I am taking you too literally, but while I can't help but chuckle at the mental imagery you've described, I don't think the water feature is supposed to look like a cloud formation from above. Rather it will make "clouds" of mist at street level.

Fog? FOG!

Yes, Like they tried that mist thing with the last of the Opus 150 Towers when they left the small pocket park at the base of the tower.. The water wall and mist was supposed to cause fog when it was colder outside. The mist was supposed to cool people in the summer. It will be another waste of money on a concept that will quit working in a year due to Minnesota's freeze and thaw cycles!!

Anyways, my main comment was to switch the Good Lawn with the Pavilion to lure more WF tower people to the other side of the park.

Do you mean the south side of the park? My guess is that the pavilion wouldn't get as much/any sunlight there, which could be a deterrent.

Yes, the south side. I think the pavilion would get enough sunlight from the Portland corridor to justify the move. I am just worried there are currently not enough consistently engaged uses on the south side of the park, which may lead to an unintentional park "divide" of use. The design currently drives all active uses - the pavilion, the play areas, the water feature - to the north side, and only throws the food trucks at the south side. Its important to spread out the activity love, so to speak.

Assuming we can't completely close Portland, is there any reason we couldn't change Portland and Park to two-way (with 1 through lane in either direction) north of 5th/6th St? It seems apparent from the design and comments that they're trying to make Portland and Park feel more like shared spaces, which is great, but how likely/safe will it be if these remain one-ways through the Commons area?

It's apparently a plaza that will have mist shooting up from the joints or something like that. It sounded to me like what that exactly means was more up in the air than the rest of the plans. I did confirm with one of the planners, though, that it will just be a dry plaza with the water off, instead of becoming an depressing unusable void like certain downtown water features I could name. I'm not really convinced it needs to take up as much space as it does, though, and it definitely doesn't need to have a weird exclave on the east side of Portland.

So, Portland update: It's not closing. However, it is morphing from 3 drive lanes and a painted bike lake to 2 drive lanes and a protected bike lane, and there will be . Oddly enough, the drive lanes will be 13' wide, up from 11' in the existing configuration, which seems counterproductive. You all should go to the feedback survey (text box) and point that out. I'm actually pretty optimistic about this approach. The block of Chicago Ave in front of the stadium also doesn't feel entirely like a road for cars, and seems, in my experience at least, to have much less traffic than other roads in the area. If a more extreme version of the same thing is done to Portland, maybe in a couple years the lowered vehicle counts will convince the county that it can be can be closed after all.

That fog thing/plaza is about 3x bigger than it needs to be. WAAAAAaaaay too much hardscape on the "north/west" end of this thing. The whole block needs a redesign per the above and what has already been mentioned (move the pavilion to the south end of the block).

I'll believe the protected bike lane when I see it.

"Not very detailed measures taken to make [Portland] feel like a pedestrian space where cars are intruding rather than the other way around" is not confidence inspiring.

And, we only need to raise $22M to build.

#betterthansurfaceparking

Fog? FOG!

Yes, Like they tried that mist thing with the last of the Opus 150 Towers when they left the small pocket park at the base of the tower.. The water wall and mist was supposed to cause fog when it was colder outside. The mist was supposed to cool people in the summer. It will be another waste of money on a concept that will quit working in a year due to Minnesota's freeze and thaw cycles!!

Are you referring to the Fifth Street Towers?