Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

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lorwest
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby lorwest » April 27th, 2014, 10:26 am

First renderings I've seen of the taller Phase 2 section, overlooking Shepard Road and the river valley.

http://www.kaaswilson.com/project_1408/

seanrichardryan
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby seanrichardryan » April 27th, 2014, 11:23 am

Look at all that surface parking.
Q. What, what? A. In da butt.

mplser
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mplser » April 27th, 2014, 2:05 pm

yikes. Why so much surface parking? is the ground floor going to have a walmart?

nickmgray
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby nickmgray » April 28th, 2014, 10:25 am

the building looks OK, but there's no reason to have that much surface parking. Is there no underground parking with this phase of the project?

mattaudio
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mattaudio » April 28th, 2014, 12:09 pm

Anyone know what the parking minimums are in this district? Seems like there's plenty of street parking to be had on Otto and the blocks north between Otto, West 7th, and the RR track.

mamundsen
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mamundsen » April 28th, 2014, 12:38 pm

I believe there is no parking on Otto.

When I moved my sister into this project there was not much parking and she was one of the first to move in. Once this is filled to operating capacity it will need a parking lot.

This is basically a suburban apartment complex.

mattaudio
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mattaudio » April 28th, 2014, 12:42 pm

Here's to hoping Riverview is built as LRT and cuts through this area on the CP Ford Spur so it can be less suburban....

Wedgeguy
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby Wedgeguy » April 28th, 2014, 2:12 pm

With that being an old brownfield site, I doubt that they can go very deep for underground parking.

mulad
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mulad » July 25th, 2014, 9:50 am

I'm planning to move to the existing Phase Ib portion of this development after having a crisis at my current place (a roof leak developed just in time for our sequence of heavy rains in May/June/July, and the result is that my place is pretty much uninhabitable). I'm not sure how long the first Victoria Park Apartments building has been open, but the second one is going to be opening to residents on August 1st. I really liked the interior finish of the units and common areas -- a nice departure from the typical white/off-white interiors for what seems like 95% of apartments in Saint Paul. There are lots of balconies and townhome entrances facing the street in a New Urbanist fashion, plus a common room and "cyber lounge" (cue the eyeroll for calling anything "cyber" in 2014) which has tables and chairs on the second floor overlooking the main entrance.

Peeking at the current and former master plans, it's disappointing that they've cut back so much on the amount of planned housing here, though a lot of it was going to be SFHs anyway. Is/was the cost of environmental cleanup the big reason for making the park so large?

David Greene
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby David Greene » July 25th, 2014, 9:55 am

Icue the eyeroll for calling anything "cyber" in 2014
LOL! I guess today it should be called the "cloud lounge" or something.

mamundsen
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mamundsen » July 25th, 2014, 10:14 am

Mulad, my sister was one of the first to move in. They have been changing plans constantly. I'd get things in writing. For instance the extra storage in the garage has been cut back and he is not getting what was promised. She tells me that the pool is not up to the specs she was shown when she signed her lease.

mulad
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mulad » July 25th, 2014, 12:33 pm

I can see how your sister was disappointed by the pool, since it looked pretty small to me. I've never bothered to use the pool at my current place, though. I'm planning to forgo the underground parking to start, since it's becoming really really tempting to sell my car now that Car2Go has expanded to St. Paul -- that and the fact that Mississippi Market is a couple of blocks away removes a big reason why I've kept a car in recent years (the remaining big issue is the ability to drive down to my parents' place on short notice, but that just means getting more familiar with the regular rental agencies). I'm not quite sure what to do about my bicycle, so it would be really nice if I could plop a bike locker or small storage unit into a stall rather than a car, but that requires some investigation.

twincitizen
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby twincitizen » December 8th, 2014, 3:14 pm


lorwest
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby lorwest » August 13th, 2015, 5:23 pm

It looks like site work has started.

mulad
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mulad » January 2nd, 2016, 7:11 pm

I've been surprised at how they've plowed ahead with this into the winter. The lower level (mostly parking, I presume) is all in place as far as I can tell, and they've started work on the first level of stick construction:

Image
_mg_0413 by Michael Hicks, on Flickr

mulad
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mulad » February 21st, 2016, 1:05 pm

They're mostly done with the wall panels on the 3rd floor. I'm not sure if the space off to the right is supposed to be for amenities or if they'll do a second phase of construction on that side.

Image
_mg_0423-edit by Michael Hicks, on Flickr

mulad
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mulad » April 16th, 2016, 4:58 pm

This is mostly topped out, though there's a final section which hasn't been constructed. The building is in a distorted "U" or "V" shape, but one leg is chopped off for the moment. Most of the building is 5 stories, though the end nearest Shepard Road is 6 stories. I wasn't able to take a picture of the transition point between the two since the sun was right behind it. Large chunks of the first floor don't have windows, though, and the building is on top of a concrete parking level.

Image
_mg_0432-edit by Michael Hicks, on Flickr

Image
_mg_0435-edit by Michael Hicks, on Flickr

Image
_mg_0437-edit by Michael Hicks, on Flickr

Image
_mg_0438-edit by Michael Hicks, on Flickr

The sidewalks and crosswalks along Otto Avenue from Shepard Road to West 7th Street have long been insufficient, since the Victoria Park site used to be an industrial area. They're going to complete the sidewalk on the south side of Otto, and the north side is having a bike path put in. Most of Otto on that stretch didn't have a sidewalk at all on the north side, except for a 1-block segment between Shepard Road and Stewart Avenue. I'm a bit more interested in whether they'll add a crosswalk on the south side of West 7th and Otto, where I cross regularly when taking the bus.

Image
_mg_0436-edit by Michael Hicks, on Flickr

Image
_mg_0439-edit by Michael Hicks, on Flickr

Image
_mg_0440-edit by Michael Hicks, on Flickr

I haven't heard if the speed limit will go down on this stretch of Otto (currently 35 mph, which matches the speed on West 7th in this area). The parking on the north side of the street will be removed in order to make room for the path, and the lane width will be brought "to the state minimum", from what I've heard, though I'm not exactly sure what that is here.

mulad
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mulad » April 16th, 2016, 7:07 pm

This article from the PiPress is also worth a mention:

http://www.twincities.com/2016/04/15/wi ... 1460727774

The Victoria Park Apartments complex may grow with a 4-story building at 763 Kay Ave. The Ramsey County Property Map isn't giving me much help locating that parcel (undeveloped parcels have an address of "0"), so I can't entirely tell whether this would be on the east part of the block where Nova Classical Academy sits, or if it would be in the roughly triangular block north of the school. However, that separate block is shown as owned by "Brighton Victoria Park LLC", while the lot next to Nova is listed as "Minneapolis Lofts LLC", so it looks like it would go on the triangular block. The school has expressed opposition to it.

Sholom Home is also looking to expand with a 7-story building, which exceeds current zoning. The article isn't clear on the position of that one either, though Sholom owns a couple of parcels in the land between Otto Avenue and Kay Avenue between the existing Sholom building and the set of townhomes on Mercer. There are some community gardens on that land, but there have also been Sholom signs indicating it's the site of future expansion for quite a while.

mulad
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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby mulad » November 11th, 2016, 4:15 pm

I'll see if I can post some new photos of the V2 building this weekend, since it's nearly finished. They held an open house last night and I had a tour around (no pics, though), and there are some folks already living in the building as the last touches are applied. The interior is another tick up the luxe scale from the earlier Victoria Park buildings, with darker shades of paint and wood, and just more wood in general such as around door frames. Very snazzy.

They showed three different units, starting with a sort of studio/1br hybrid (the bedroom area had walls that didn't go all the way to the ceiling -- the bedroom didn't have any windows, so I suppose the shortened walls lets some sunlight filter in?), a corner 2br, and one of the penthouses. The penthouses are listed as two bedrooms, though the upper-level master bed area doesn't have walls around it, just a railing. It lets you see the river and other sights from bed, but it's kind of an odd choice.

The courtyard area in between the legs of the U/V shape of the building was very nice too, though they were still having some work done in the pool area and we couldn't go right up to the edge. It was dark anyway.

Something unusual is that the rooms all include DirecTV and CenturyLink Wi-Fi as standard (albeit a separate charge from rent, combined with the water & trash bill).

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Re: Victoria Park (W 7th & Otto)

Postby Legion_of_Doom » November 28th, 2016, 10:40 pm

Good luck to all the people about to move into the new building with the balconies/windows on the corner of the bluff just above Shepard. Yes, you have some spectacular river views. As for any 'soothing nature sounds' not so much. Shepard is a 4 lane divided concrete highway where people routinely go 60-65 mph. Tires on concrete pavement are *noisy* esp at highway speeds. There is also a small bridge right there that makes a nice tha-thump tha-thump as people fly over it during rush hour. Fairly frequent truck travel route as well.

It could have benefited from extensive sound mitigation but being low bid new construction I really doubt that is anything more than standard apartment grade stuff meaning Office Space style "HEY MAN TURN IT TO CHANNEL 9!" wall thickness, including exterior with basic windows that don't really block much sound. New is nice, sometimes. For now I prefer to live in my old downtown converted concrete warehouse, where I have slept through many a severe thunderstorm without even noticing.


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