urbanMSP

How can Mr Stanton build hundreds of condos downtown , yet he's not worried about the liability other developers use as an excuse not to build them? The market is there. Seems odd...

It is not just Mr Stanton taking the risk, but the architect and contractor as well. Odd indeed!

http://www.startribune.com/business/295682211.html

"As of this week, there were only 56 condominiums for sale in the downtown area, including the North Loop and Mill District. Of those, about 20 already had contingent purchase offers, according to data from the Regional Multiple Listing Service."

Man, that makes me wish I had jumped on a condo at 1200 Nicollet / 1225 LaSalle (or 210 Grant or something) in the last couple of years. Ugh, I need to be rich before the next recession hits so I can buy up cheap stocks and real estate when everything bottoms out again. Seriously.

How can Mr Stanton build hundreds of condos downtown , yet he's not worried about the liability other developers use as an excuse not to build them? The market is there. Seems odd...

I'd bet you that you're going to start seeing more activity in condos in the near future, especially with projects that are still proposed and can be converted fairly easily (like those in Nordeast).

Nevertheless, it's not a super ideal market for condos -- at the macro level anyways -- with banks being finicky with our taxpayer-bailed-out-dollars and the shaky economic recovery and job market causing consumer confidence to remain low. It's scary to put down roots and buy a home when your job or wage potential doesn't feel secure. At least, I know that's true with me.

I think Stanton owns/controls many of his subs so he has more control over the quality of the work being done on his buildings and is confident they won't have an issue down the road. Plus, he will stand by his work... I believe I heard a quote from him once where he said " if there's a problem, I'll fix it" or something like that. I'm not that crazy about the design of most of his buildings (I do like Stonebridge and 5th Ave Lofts), but he DOES provide good value.

Also interesting that this is being sold by an insurance company, how did they come in possession of it? I wonder if they bought it as an investment?

Riversource is Ameriprise's Insurance brand, but I'm not totally sure that the building it owned by Ameriprise. The building is used by Cenveo, a print company that handles printing and distribution of customer statements for Ameriprise. To my knowledge, Cenveo has been in that building for over a decade.

Isn't Cenveo already gone? Though if Cenveo was printing stuff for Ameriprise then that would probably explain it.

I hope he ups his design for this one. While I love in-fill, not a fan of his buildings - Bridgewater, etc. Too suburban and not pedestrian friendly at all.

I hope he ups his design for this one. While I love in-fill, not a fan of his buildings - Bridgewater, etc. Too suburban and not pedestrian friendly at all.

It will look very similar to what he's already built. He has a formula and I doubt he will deviate from it. He's a great businessman, but very conservative with suburban values and a transportation orientation towards the automobile. Truthfully, not much different from many of the other developers building projects downtown.

It's occurred to me that every single major development company in the Twin Cities is located in the suburbs: Shamrock, Mortensen, Ryan, UP, Doran. I guess K/A is downtown, but... yeah. I don't know how much that affects their development mentality, but it certainly must play some sort of a role.

Ryan HQ is downtown. Mortenson is just across the border in Golden Valley, so I'll give them a pass. The rest though, yeah, it ain't great. UP & Doran are in Bloomington. UP in particular ought to be downtown. Hopefully K-A finds a way to stay downtown, despite the dust up over their proposed HQ building.

Those developers that are using steel and concrete have less to worry about as do those people that bought condos in stick buildings. There I would demand a 20 year guarantee. When you want to cut corners then you don't want a long guarantee. His buildings will not win beauty pageants, but are well made and will stand up to time with quality materials.

Plans for The Legacy condo project are on the Committee of the Whole agenda site:

http://www.minneapolismn.gov/meetings/p ... MSP-173242

Direct link to document (124 MB):
http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups ... 173260.pdf

No idea how the city could force it, with StoneBrige already being built and (100%?) sold, but it sure would be nice to extend that bike trail down the property line all the way to Gold Medal Park.

Omg. So big. It took a little to wrap my mind around, the site orientation is complexing. It doesn't seem to maximize the size or the views from the parcel. It looks like a lot of decent materials though the usage gets really jumbled in large expansive areas and that is kind of hard to like. Nice walk up entries but a lot of dead space on the ground floor as well.

That's big, and kind of dull.

I like the ambition and the height but I just don't get the point of these semi-public small parks that keep popping up. They're so small and Gold medal park is so close, just put some neighborhood retail there instead.

Given the fact that 13th Avenue only has a sidewalk on one side (this one), I wish the sidewalk they were proposing was a little wider. There's plenty of room.

If you don't allow a trail to extend through you don't need to build in a way to accommodate your shadows drowning the trail in darkness.

No excitement here.

14 stories 225 feet with over 300 units added to the riverfront.. And no excitement?

C'mon. It's not a beautiful thing but it's on the outskirts of downtown and will bring in a ton of new residents and tax base.

No excitement for your comment