urbanMSP

I would rather have a narrow 31 story tower than a wide 15 story tower taking up more of the footprint.

I'm willing to entertain your point of view, but I'm have a little trouble understanding your reasoning.

If the building were to take up the entire footprint of this lot, I assume it wouldn't be nearly as tall. a 31 story half block tower would probably put them over their preferred budget, and in my opinion, would not look very good. Instead, we have a narrow tower with a base that fills up the lot.

If your argument is to only use the portion of the lot that the tower take up, then you are going to have a very tall parking podium that would be very inefficient. Instead, the current version has the parking podium hidden by units on the most visible portion. A very fair compromise in my opinion.

I would rather have a narrow 31 story tower than a wide 15 story tower taking up more of the footprint.

I'd rather the narrow tower keep its parking on the same footprint so the rest of the land could also be put to use.


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Yeah the rest of the lot only has retail, housing units, office space, an amenity deck, and parking... total waste.

I think the ramp looks fairly discreet given its size. Yeah, the base could use a few more tweaks but it's already a very admirable design. I've lived near this intersection for over 30 years, and walked by it frequently. This project is a tremendous improvement for this long underutilized site.

I wonder if having the tower centered on the podium would look better? Every parking podium tower we have has the tower all the way over to one end, as far as I can remember (not counting LPM or 4Marq, which have towers as large as the podium), and I'm not really sure why that should invariably be the case.

Easier to maintain one large amenity deck as opposed to two smaller ones?

LPM has an "amenity loop" above the podium and around the tower.

I'll try to address a few things but certainly welcome feedback as we're going to CoW for that very reason as well - we're trying to build this thing right...

Ingress and Egress: The site is awkwardly constrained with bus lanes on 2nd Ave, the new Orange Line BRT on 12th Street traveling NW in one lane and traffic/buses flowing SE in the other three lanes, and then N and S bound traffic and bikes lanes on 3rd Ave/Central. In addition to the parking ramp circulation, there also need to be service lanes for retail/commercial, shipping, move-in/move-out, etc. Furthermore, ride share and deliverables need to be able to pull off the street at certain locations without interfering with any of the buses/bikers/pedestrians and causing traffic, public transport, and pedestrian safety issues. We felt this was the best circulation route and way-finding taking into account all those issues as well as we reasonably could as well as the LOS that exists at each of these intersections. With that said, we're still studying some of the porte cochere's in the area (mainly to see how pedestrians interact with it), their peak usage, and how they function to understand how this works, along with your typical TDMP analysis (say what you will about traffic studies...).

Point-Tower construction: As someone alluded to, there is an efficiency in operations from a point tower due to enhanced spaces for revenue against non-revenue generating spaces and code certainly plays a role (not surprising that MN has fairly restrictive/extremely safe building code). However, there is also an (1) aesthetic efficiency in the form of streamline and minimalist design with units having a lot of glass and sunlight, and (2) construction efficiency in the ability to construct a tower in a fixed amount of time and concrete pours - this is mainly a construction budget concern. Additionally, building a hulking box is just that - but that's more subjective (not when it comes to shadow studies though...). The location of the tower is to preserve air space from adjacent buildings and maintain view corridors from inside the building, but also respecting the surrounding buildings' existing view corridors. We're also trying mindful of the position of this building as it relates to the skyline when coming in on 35.

Thanks

^^^^
Thank you for posting. Your insight is appreciated.

I guess my biggest question is would there be a renovation to Hotel Ivy? I mean, there's a giant blank wall on the Southern side because the plan was that a building would someday arise like this one. Now that there is a building, it won't even cover that wall.

I think the real question I have for Alatus is: what's with the rendering with the guy staring directly at the "camera"? I want to know the story behind that one.

I guess my biggest question is would there be a renovation to Hotel Ivy? I mean, there's a giant blank wall on the Southern side because the plan was that a building would someday arise like this one. Now that there is a building, it won't even cover that wall.

To be clear, Ivy has a blank wall because it was built right up to the interior property line, not necessarily because they thought another building would abut it later. Ivy could not add windows to that wall without first purchasing a few feet of property from Alatus, so that said windows would not be directly against the property line.

Is this retiredbanker?!

Is this retiredbanker?!

Thought the same thing when I read "point tower."

What a time that was

I wouldn't doubt that this is in fact someone from Alatus. I reached out to them when they announced the project in Rochester, and the lead developer actually took time out of their day to meet with me for a drink so I could pick their brain about the development world. They seem to be more than willing to reach out to the community, more specifically boards like this.

Questions for Alatus:
- Is there the possibility to connect a skyway to Ivy, or would that just take away from leasable space with no benefit to this building, thus not making any sense to complete?
- What determines the height or number of units when proposing a project like this?
- With your Rochester project, now that demo and site prep appear done, when will actual construction start?

I'm obviously not Alatus, but I don't think a skyway connection to the Ivy helps much - at least at this point. If there were a skyway connecting the Ivy north across 11th to the Leamington ramp, then it would make sense from a system standpoint. Since the Hilton skyway is the only one in the system over 11th, a potential cut through the Ivy doesn't save any walking.

I'd be curious if there's a long-term ability to connect to the NE corner of the block (and further east), through either building

Anyone know if there's provision for future skyways along the two Ameriprise buildings along 3rd Ave S? This, along with some sort of Century Plaza development, seems like it would be good to have a path north to Accenture/Hennepin County/ Thrivent. Not that I support skyway expansion, of course.

Folks, it looks like this is actually 421' Roof, 515' Spire, though due to the large metal panels at the top, the roof will appear to be at roughly 450' from the ground.

http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/www/gro ... 208250.pdf

If you look at the bottom of the section cut, ground level is marked 100', so you have to subtract that to get the true height. I'm not sure why architectural drawings do this - to avoid having to use negative numbers for basement levels maybe?

I'll edit the thread title, though.

Ohh yeah, very weird, I think whoever at the city wrote up the description didn't notice either, and none of the narrative from the developer mentions the correct height.