Downtown Parks Master Plan

[uptowncarag]

The surface parking lot that lies between 2nd and 3rd Avenues and 9th and 10th Streets should be a park. Rooms in the Hilton and W Minneapolis would have park views. It is also near the convention center. It would be possible to build an underground ramp with a park on the top. Lets do some forward thinking with green space.

[Anondson]

Is it too late to demolish Block E and make it a public plaza? *sigh*

[Minneboy]

Henn Co Gvt Ctr has 2 choices to have lunch. Hardscape plaza and the southern side which is full of trees and quite pleasant. They may not be official parks but they are nice and fairly large enough to be alone if that's your choice.

[Minnekid]

I don't think block E should be a public plaza. There isn't enough entertainment there yet. Like it needs to be continued to be built along there, but something needs to replace it. Also It would be a very unsafe public plaza :p

[mulad]

I don't like the plazas at the Hennepin County Government Center very much. It's a little less obvious than with the federal court building just to the north, but these spaces seem to be designed to prevent proper use. The big circles in the middle make it impossible to form a regular crowd.

The fountain in the north plaza also really bugs me since this is Minnesota, where we turn our fountains off for half the year. These things also need to look nice when they're turned off, particularly when they're in spots like this which are fairly busy year-round.

[nordeast homer]

With the federal building it was designed that way so you can't drive a truck loaded with explosives into the building. It's hard to create an eye pleasing courtyard that intentionally limits access, unless maybe you were able to raise the courtyard.
As for HCGC, it's better than it was, but I would prefer they make the north yard grass versus the cobblestone. I'm okay with the fountain, but make the rest of it more inviting.

[mulad]

Well, the tower of the federal building directly abuts 3rd Street -- from that perspective, the plaza is mostly security theater. It does prevent someone from just physically mowing people down by driving a truck through the lobby, but I'm not sure it would do much in an Oklahoma City-type situation if the attacker just went around back. I imagine the rear of the building does have some reinforcement, though.

I have to wonder if the big mounds and concrete tree logs in front are any better at slowing vehicles down than a simple set of bollards. In fact, directly in front, that's all they have: http://goo.gl/maps/APsbR

[MNdible]

IIRC, the Federal Courts plaza was a redesign after the city criticized the initial post-OKC plan as being too sterile or unimaginative or something, so they hired an artist/landscape architect to re-imagine it.

Also, I think there were major security concerns about the underground parking and the immediately adjacent Flour Exchange building.

[Wedgeguy]

IIRC, the Federal Courts plaza was a redesign after the city criticized the initial post-OKC plan as being too sterile or unimaginative or something, so they hired an artist/landscape architect to re-imagine it.

Also, I think there were major security concerns about the underground parking and the immediately adjacent Flour Exchange building.

You are correct with the security concerns. Part of why there is no parking allowed next to the north side of the building. There were also concerns about the underground parking that their could be like the first World Trade Center booming which was in their parking garage.

[twincitizen]

The Park Board has released some concepts for the various parks throughout Downtown Minneapolis:
https://www.minneapolisparks.org/park_c ... ster_plan/
1. View the concept PDFs on the right, under "Key Documents"
2. Comment via this survey (closes on 12/16): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QLzjgI ... 0/viewform

There is a public meeting tonight:

Downtown Service Area Plan South Area Open House
December 10, 2015 Loring Community Arts Center
Time: 6-8 pm
Type: Public Meeting

Downtown Service Area Master Plan Open House for Downtown Workers
December 16, 2015 New Century Theatre
Time: 11 am-1 pm
Type: Public Meeting

Downtown Service Area Plan Steering Committee
January 28, 2016 MPRB Board Room
Time: 6:30-8 pm
Type: Public Meeting

F&C Article: http://finance-commerce.com/transit/201 ... most-done/

[trigonalmayhem]

A perimeter sidewalk for Loring park! That's legitimately exciting for me! One of my beefs with Loring was the lack of this very basic urban amenity that made entrance at all but a few points uninviting. It seems like they want to improve entrances in general for it, which is great. Now if they could just make the paths have more obvious connections across the park to destinations and entrances/exits I'd be super happy.

[trigonalmayhem]

Gateway is a little disappointing though. It seems like they're afraid to touch the Hennepin/Washington corner or disturb the useless lawn in front of the ING building (or whatever it's called these days). There needs to be a diagonal path from the corner there to bring people into the interior of the park area and some kind of plaza there. That corner is important and the sad narrow sidewalk does not do it justice.

[Silophant]

Given that that corner and lawn are private property (same parcel as the building), not MPRB property, there's not a whole lot they can do.

[MNdible]

Here's the Strib article on the same subject. Focuses especially on some of the North Loop master plan, and our old friend the Bassett Creek Tunnel.

[twincitizen]

Gateway by Matt Brillhart, on Flickr

It appears that the plans do stick to the Park Board property and do not show any meaningful improvements on Shorenstein's property. I do hope, however, that MPRB has reached out to Shorenstein about working collaboratively there. You'd think that any money Shorenstein (or tenant Voya) put in would be pretty beneficial to their property values.

[trigonalmayhem]

Well that's a real bummer then. Is there at least some kind of public easement on the old nicollet ROW that passes through that roofed plaza? I know I've got stink eye from security guards for walking through there but I'd assumed at was at least still accessible to the public.

If they want to run that place like a suburban office park though, they'll probably never want to do anything to make that corner or gateway park more inviting because they probably see random people as some kind of threat. The whole design of the landscaping around the building screams standoffish to the area around it right now, which is a shame because it's an attractive building. I hope the city tries to engage the owners and they're receptive, because a little plaza or some benches along a path like I was talking about would totally be an amenity the workers there would use during their lunch breaks.

[karlshea]

Well that's a real bummer then. Is there at least some kind of public easement on the old nicollet ROW that passes through that roofed plaza? I know I've got stink eye from security guards for walking through there but I'd assumed at was at least still accessible to the public.

If they want to run that place like a suburban office park though, they'll probably never want to do anything to make that corner or gateway park more inviting because they probably see random people as some kind of threat. The whole design of the landscaping around the building screams standoffish to the area around it right now, which is a shame because it's an attractive building. I hope the city tries to engage the owners and they're receptive, because a little plaza or some benches along a path like I was talking about would totally be an amenity the workers there would use during their lunch breaks.

Last summer I saw a security guard there harassing someone on the public sidewalk trying to take a picture of the building with a DSLR camera. So I stood 10 feet away and took the same shot with my phone which apparently wasn't an issue.

I don't know if it's the building management or just some shitty security guards but they don't seem to enjoy being part of any sort of downtown energy.