Ford Plant Redevelopment [archive - locked]

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twincitizen
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby twincitizen » March 3rd, 2015, 3:18 pm

I suspect that the lack of taller structures on the Ford site will primarily be driven by demand, construction costs and economics - much more so than NIMBYism. This is a huge site, and a blank slate (see mr.shoes post above). All things equal, if today someone were proposing a taller building at the center of the site, I don't think anyone would get too riled up about it. I think everyone understands that the site is going to be a mixture of commercial, mixed-use, mid-rise rentals and single-family homes.

The real key here is the arrangement of streets and blocks. "No super-blocks!" and "No big box!" should be the two primary rally cries for developing this site properly.

Personally, I'd favor quality urbanism over density any day for this site. I *want* it to contain a large quantity of single-family homes and duplexes, in addition to mid-rise rentals and mixed-use, of course.

ProspectPete
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby ProspectPete » March 3rd, 2015, 5:06 pm

All of that would be nice yes, and I really hope they take advantage of that gift wrapped ROW all the way to SPUD.
Be it rail or bike trail, it would be a high crime if they didn't utilize that.

Qhaberl
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby Qhaberl » June 9th, 2016, 10:43 pm

Whats the latest on this. I have tried to follow this, but have not heard much as of late. I know its late, and i think they have already picked out their devolopment partners, but imagine if we could get a company like DPZ, specializes in new urbanism, to develop the site.


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mattaudio
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby mattaudio » June 27th, 2016, 9:49 am

I think it's far too late to bring in a DPZ, but that should have happened. And it should be developed by dozens of developers, not a single master developer.

twincitizen
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby twincitizen » June 27th, 2016, 12:32 pm

I know what you mean, but that's kind of up to Ford since they still own the land. I'm sure I'm not alone here in occasionally sort of forgetting that little fact...seems weird that they still hold it after what feels like forever (but has actually only been like 4.5 years since the plant closed!) Ford likely has no interest in selling to a bunch of smaller buyers.

EDIT: One more article http://finance-commerce.com/2016/06/for ... paul-site/
CBRE to market the site for Ford...but not for another year at the soonest

mattaudio
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby mattaudio » June 28th, 2016, 10:31 am

I have close-to-zero faith in the SPPA. But couldn't they, or another public redevelopment corp, purchase the large parcel and come up with a plan to subdivide and provide infrastructure?

If you sell one giant parcel to one developer who does one giant development, the land use analysis will be what gets them the best outcome for the developer rather than the best outcome for the taxpayers of St. Paul. It's entirely possible that such a land use would actually create negative cash flow for the City of St. Paul on a multiple-lifecycle basis. That sure would be a shame.

acs
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby acs » June 28th, 2016, 10:42 am

Keep in mind that what the city and neighbors want also might not be what works out financially in the long run. If you asked highland park, you'd get a bunch of SFH's and one story coffee shops, but that doesn't really provide enough return to cover the costs no matter how small the lots. We've seen time and again that when you loosen up the zoning restrictions in a desirable area, even over the objections of the neighborhood, the market responds with better outcomes for the city as a whole. That's why I'm ok with Ford doing this privately.

mattaudio
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby mattaudio » June 28th, 2016, 10:58 am

I'm all for loosening/eliminating zoning codes. But let's be realistic about what monolitic single-developer developments look like. Arbor Lakes in Maple Grove. Or TCAAP's awful site plan. Even the "good" ones like Centennial Lakes in Edina, or Carlson Center in Minnetonka, aren't fine grained solid urbanism.

acs
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby acs » June 28th, 2016, 11:12 am

I don't think you are going to be able to duplicate uptown from scratch here. It just takes too much time and in any case wouldn't be a suitable replacement for the 5,000 middle class jobs that anchored the neighborhood. Sure, the city could step in and build out a grid of streets to fine urban standards then zone it and hope. But then you would have the city taking on that large cost upfront instead of a developer and you would have a long, long lag time before things filled in piecemeal at any reasonable density. Overall, not good for the city's short-term finances when they could just hand it off to a single developer for nothing and let them go to work.

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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby talindsay » July 13th, 2016, 4:10 pm

I really do think the city of St. Paul should demand an extension of the street grid though. Any development that doesn't basically follow the existing street grid will be an embarrassing maintenance nightmare in thirty years, and they only have one chance to get that part right. Have some superblocks? Sure. Some parks? Okay. Maybe do some stupid things with the grid in a couple places? Not the worst thing ever. But leave it to the highest-bidding developer and you'll get cul-de-sacs and other atrocities.

fehler
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby fehler » July 14th, 2016, 9:20 am

I'd prefer limited intersections with East River Parkway. Not zero, but not every cross street.

twincitizen
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby twincitizen » July 14th, 2016, 9:33 am

You mean Mississippi River Blvd? ;)

While I agree on the importance of an urban street grid, there's something even more important for the residential blocks: alleys.

I'll take an imperfect (longer-blocks, a little winding/contouring) street grid with alleys over a perfectly rectangular street grid without them.

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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby RailBaronYarr » July 14th, 2016, 10:39 am

Honest question: why would we want to extend the rectilinear grid into the Ford Site? Or at the very least, shouldn't the site try to have something else? As much as I love the grid of half-mile spaced arterials, I think the space between them makes walking or biking short distances worse than it needs to be (a less-structured web of angular streets, for example). I'm not saying I know the magical balance between what's good for development (predictability, no funky lot sizes, etc) and what's good for walking, and what's good for maintenance/service/etc. But since the 1920s there have been plenty of other options out there that could be used beyond a 660'x330' standard block.

EDIT: I clicked submit and walked away from my desk, only to come back and see twincitizen's similar post.

RailBaronYarr
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby RailBaronYarr » July 14th, 2016, 11:10 am

I'm all for loosening/eliminating zoning codes. But let's be realistic about what monolitic single-developer developments look like. Arbor Lakes in Maple Grove. Or TCAAP's awful site plan. Even the "good" ones like Centennial Lakes in Edina, or Carlson Center in Minnetonka, aren't fine grained solid urbanism.
I missed this earlier. So, what do we think about Celebration or Kentlands or Seaside? How did whatever level of fine grained urbanism work out for those places in terms of mixed income communities, commute mode shares, etc? I don't know. I think a major failure of New Urbanism is a heavy focus on aesthetics (wrapped in talk of "architecture agnostic form") rather than outcomes. These places largely built out in a matter of years (not organically over many decades), and built a crap-load of infrastructure up-front (roads, fake lakes, etc) - even if they did bring in multiple actual developers to build individual homes or commercial/apartment buildings. I don't know. I'm not saying giving a single developer a blank slate and no regulations or visions whatsoever is the goal, but I'm also not sure that a single developer wouldn't build a place with the same outcomes (mode share, demographics, etc) as one handled by a master planner like DPZ.

talindsay
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby talindsay » July 14th, 2016, 12:53 pm

Honest question: why would we want to extend the rectilinear grid into the Ford Site? Or at the very least, shouldn't the site try to have something else? As much as I love the grid of half-mile spaced arterials, I think the space between them makes walking or biking short distances worse than it needs to be (a less-structured web of angular streets, for example). I'm not saying I know the magical balance between what's good for development (predictability, no funky lot sizes, etc) and what's good for walking, and what's good for maintenance/service/etc. But since the 1920s there have been plenty of other options out there that could be used beyond a 660'x330' standard block.
Node-and-spoke urbanism would be incredible. But that type of design isn't really present in American cities built since 1800 except for DC. The "since the 1920s" form has definitely been dominated by cul-de-sacs and non-through streets. A grid isn't the best possible outcome, but it's head-and-shoulders better than other *likely* outcomes. I'll agree with twincitizen though that alleys are even more important. Also sidewalks and on-street parking. Requiring a proper street grid with alleys, sidewalks, and on-street parking may not guarantee good urbanism, but it automatically precludes the worst types of anti-urban design.

RailBaronYarr
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby RailBaronYarr » July 14th, 2016, 2:01 pm

Am I in the minority that thinks a site like this - with no pre-conceptions of on-street parking rights or ownership, good (A-Line to Blue or Green Lines) to potentially great transit access, and likely great bike access - would be wasting a giant opportunity by building on-street parking? We actually have the unique opportunity here (assuming the city wants to do this) to make this a neighborhood where people who move in on Day 1 intentionally work nearby or in places connected by transit, and if they have a car they buy or rent in a place with storage (either on-site or in district-parking). None of the "but you can't take away my parking!" arguments because the site's design and amenities were clear when they sign the lease or purchase agreement.

I know I've hammered it before (Idea 5), but why even bother with a distinction between alleys and major streets when we could just have a network of rights of way between 15 and 25 feet wide - big enough for any possible vehicle and room for trees, but small enough to still clearly be putting pedestrians first. If so inclined, we could have community/guest parking every so often that also acts as snow storage. We seem to manage storing snow in alleys just fine, and we're clearly okay as a society saying people can live in detached accessory dwelling units fronting alleys with as little as a 6' setback. Something like this for the whole site wouldn't be awful IMO. And there are places in the world where very-small-lot SFHs coexist with small-ish multifamily (3-4 stories) as well.

Maybe I'm off my rocker, but if affordability is a goal for this site, and also people plan on providing detached homes, I just don't see how you marry those two with 40x120' lots served by an alley and a street out front. I'd rather the city/region throw as little money as possible to redeveloping this site, both in terms of infrastructure costs and housing subsidies. I'm aware those things can be accomplished on a grid, and most green/brownfield urban developments (even in Europe) don't follow old-world street grid patterns. I'd go so far as to call myself tickled pink if this is what we got, on a grid (notable there are no alleys though, coming from a guy who literally wrote a love letter to them).

Obviously an extension of our street grid and alley system wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. It'd be nice if there were at least one or two diagonals cutting through to cut down on ped walk time to major transit stops and/or shopping rather than walking on the grid. tl;dr, I just hope there's at least a good discussion around the options, pros/cons of each, etc before cutting developers loose since there's no "right" urban design in my mind (and, I don't think the master planning has been very creative so far).

acs
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby acs » July 14th, 2016, 2:06 pm

I'd actually be surprised if any of this is zone for SFHs. Maybe on the far eastern edge to appease the neighborhood, but so far all the tidbits and rhetoric coming out of the city hasn't mentioned SFH.

RailBaronYarr
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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby RailBaronYarr » July 14th, 2016, 2:24 pm

Well, maybe I'm wrong but the study from 2007 (that old already!?) said for scenarios 2-4 to have 9-25% of the development land be for SFDHs. Certainly not the focus, but not nothing, either. But I will agree, more recent recommendations and the locations of the places they visited on that trip to Europe indicate maybe less emphasis on that.

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Re: Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant Redevelopment

Postby BBMplsMN » July 14th, 2016, 3:35 pm

Plus the grid is a little unusual in that area, and rather ungrid-like already.


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