Saint Paul - General Topics

[EOst]

I am a little surprised that they're asking $2 an hour from 6-10 throughout the corridor, even in front of pure residential areas. Even a lot of commercial districts in Minneapolis don't ask that.

[Silophant]

Yeah, it kinda feels like a stretch to charge as much as Uptown right off the bat.

Anecdote time: My girlfriend and I were driving down Grand on Friday evening, and wanted to stop for some ice cream. Unfortunately, there was not an open parking spot close enough to Grand Ole Creamery to let us get there before it closed. So, we continued west (and, apparently, 1500 years into the past), went to Dinkytown, parked in a metered space, and went to Chilly Billy's.

[mattaudio]

I wonder what these same folks were on record saying when Cupcake was proposed.

[Anondson]

Maybe the Yelp sites of these businesses should get reviews about their "parking" issue that prevents patronage...

[Snelbian]

If I have to hear about how Grand Ave. is "unique" and what works everywhere else it's done will never work here one more time, I may consider moving to Minneapolis.

This meter issue is just embarrassingly parochial now. Although I've gotta say, Grand Ole Creamery is kind of right. Parking meters will impact their sales. I won't be doing business there for quite a while. Not that that's a huge sacrifice since Izzy's is clearly superior in every way...

[Anondson]

Are there not alleys behind the homes? Do they not have garages or parking pads?

[Snelbian]

I'm not sure how much of the housing right on Grand, or on the north side of Lincoln, has in terms of private parking. But I know that the south side of Lincoln does have alley parking, frequently in addition to street-accessed driveways and garages. I also know that in my own neighborhood there's a parking permit district near O'Gara's in which the neighbors constantly complain about a lack of parking even though the overwhelming majority of them (over 75% by my count) have driveways. The frequent refrain is that guests would have to look for parking somewhere, or a third car wouldn't be able to park right in front of the house, or the garage can't be used for car storage because it's being used for storing other stuff. I would not be at all surprised if a lot of people near Grand are seeing a parking shortage when they can't park immediately in front of their homes or in their own garage-turned-storage unit.

[Anondson]

Right. When I lived on Hague next to O'Gara's (literally) I installed a driveway so I could park. I didn't scream at the city or O'Gara's over it.

[acs]

A reminder, St. Paul's public forum on Grand avenue parking meters is tonight at 7, William Mitchell auditorium.

http://m.startribune.com/local/east/334 ... ?section=/

[seanrichardryan]

Who went? I only got to check the twitters during another far less exciting meeting.

[Anondson]

Twitter posts made it sound rather ugly. I blame GABA.

[acs]

Disrespectful would be too light of a word so I'm going to go with openly hostile. The Mayor and every speaker for was shouted down pretty much from the get go. The crowd had an average age north of 50 and most speakers went along the lines of we hate taxes and government overreach and the river balcony and soccer stadium and pretty much every generic Fox News talking point they could think of, and oh by the way we hate parking meters.

[phop]

I bet some form of compromise could be reached pretty easily among the adults in the room, but I'm not sure there's any reason to at this point. Might as well go with the original proposal, because these people have no grasp of nuance and will complain if anything changes at all.

[Mikey]

Large parts of St Paul need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the 1950's

[Snelbian]

I find these meetings are much more palatable if you simply tune out most of the speakers and instead imagine they're Garth Algar deadpanning "We fear change" and smashing a robot with a hammer. But maybe that's just me.

I hope the mayor and council go through with this. They have very little to lose, really. Coleman will be re-elected if he runs, plain and simple. Stark will almost certainly win, as will Thao and (I think) Brendmoen. Thune's out anyway. And they know from the experience of other cities that the meters will work and people will realize it's a positive improvement after the fact. So there's really no reason for them to not go forward unless they're feeling unreasonably intimidated. Then again, the same should have been true with the Cleveland bike lane issue...

[seanrichardryan]

As I said yesterday at our meeting, they should definitely be spite meters. 6' poles brightly painted in stripes of violet and bubblegum pink. Princess castle meets Venetian canal. :p

[Snelbian]

That's...really tempting.

At the very least the city could combine progressive changes with spiting a certain crowd and use the parking meter/bike parking combo poles.

[jw138]

Mystery employer seeks $1.4M to add 330 jobs in St. Paul:

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/n ... d-mif.html

It's not clear where the company is currently located. The article does state though that we're in a national competition for these jobs:

"St. Paul is competing with several other locations in several other states to convince the company to locate the jobs in St. Paul,"

[xandrex]

Parking meters go bye-bye.

http://www.startribune.com/st-paul-drop ... 338420651/

[acs]

A local firm bought the 1st national bank building back from NY investors. Included a hint about upcoming redevelopment of part of the property:

http://www.startribune.com/st-paul-firm ... 339476421/

Crockarell said the North and West buildings are about 85 percent occupied and he anticipates that to be closer to 90 percent at the time of closing due to some new lease signings. Meanwhile, he has plans for the East building.

“The East building is scheduled for redevelopment but we haven’t made any firm decisions yet,” Crockarell said.

Which building is this exactly? I didn't know there were three separate buildings here. Office to residential conversion maybe?