Rosemount and UMore Park

[Nick]

http://www.mndaily.com/news/metro-state ... park-plans

Continued concerns over UMore Park plans

The Rosemount community, Metropolitan Council and Dakota County staff members have continued concerns about the University's UMore Park.

By Elizabeth Ryan July 12, 2013

A public comment period on the proposed plans for UMore Park development ended Wednesday and Rosemount, Minn. residents are concerned with water use, population growth and hazardous waste issues.

The University of Minnesota purchased UMore Park in the 1940s. Plans for the now-5,000-acre plot south of the Twin Cities include sand and gravel mines, industrial areas and a sustainable community for about 25,000 people.

Earlier this month, Rosemount commissioned an Alternative Urban Areawide Review modeling plans for the area’s future and addressing environmental issues.[...]

Language beef: Can we all stop saying "sustainable" and start saying "less un-sustainable" instead?

[min-chi-cbus]

As someone who works in that industry/for that purpose, I believe that is still the all-encompasing term for environmental sustainability. Even if it's not carbon-neutral it's still considered "sustainable" if it simply reduces carbon.

It seems like they're missing an opportunity to create a truly dense, walkable and sustainble community here. 25,000 people in this much space is not even close to the population density of a lower-density Minneapolis or St. Paul neighborhood. I'm not certain what neighboring residents are concerned about to be honest.

*Edit: I take that back, I thought the area under development was much larger than just under 8 sq. miles. If they built it out to closer to 35,000 residents then the density would be over 4,000 ppsm, not including the industrial and office areas that would hold the 15K-25K jobs they're predicting there (that's a huge jobs center, btw!).

[mattaudio]

There was an article in the Strib last month about this: http://www.startribune.com/local/south/212022121.html

Also seems like we should get a few of the commenters onto UrbanMSP if they're not already here.

[mattaudio]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
https://twitter.com/Nathaniel1983/statu ... 4801224704

[woofner]

Damn, I tried to comment on the intrinsic unsustainability of building a low-density residential community and a high-density jobs center 20 miles away from the existing population center, but I did so 5 years ago and was swatted away by their PR toady. I guess I was too early to officially comment. Well the U will continue to do whatever they want, including running automatic sprinklers the day after a 4" rainfall.

[RailBaronYarr]

I sent an email to the project coordinators like 4 months ago. I said basically what redisciple did - building this thing far from the core cities, hell, even far enough from downtown Rosemount, with no real existing transit choices to get anywhere else (other than driving) while not using any existing infrastructure is a problem. If the U wants to lead good urban, "green" design/development, I think they should go for selling off the rock and use the money to do small infill projects. Show that you can build some great row-houses in existing neighborhoods that add value. Show that you can build small mixed-use buildings with no parking and have it succeed. Focus on neighborhoods that need it, partner with local contractors and use students in the Architecture program, etc etc. No need to build here, this is all PR greenwashing.

[twincitizen]

U changes course on Umore Park: http://www.startribune.com/local/south/291788061.html

[RailBaronYarr]

Well, I guess if faced with an eco-friendly New Urbanist style development vs what will likely happen if Rosemount Z&P is involved, I guess I'd definitely take the former. I had hoped they'd just leave it as open space & allow the mining. Oh well.

[mulad]

I ended up passing through the old Rosemount town center on my way to a Zip Rail meeting last night. There appeared to be at least three construction projects going on, though the only one I could really identify was The Rosemount, a senior living facility going up next to the Steeple Center. They snuck a rendering in as the background image of the website: http://www.therosemount.com/img/rosemount-bg.jpg

I don't know the area well enough to identify the other things. One was probably just a remodel of an existing building (east side of Robert, probably on the block south of 145th), but the other was a big hole in the ground (west side of the street, probably just south of 147th).

[mamundsen]

Rosemount news! I saw this on a friend's facebook page:

"City approves 225 unit apartment complex in downtown"
http://www.rosemounttownpages.com/news/ ... x-downtown

This surprised me at first, apartments in Rosemount?!? My friend is a neighbor to this site and was already claiming NIMBY. There is one key sentence...

The developer has proposed a phased project plan, adding one two-story apartment building per year for the next seven years.

SERIOUSLY... 2 story buildings. How worthless.

Also saw a UMore park update:

http://www.rosemounttownpages.com/news/ ... ects-umore

[mattaudio]

"City approves 225 unit apartment complex in downtown"
http://www.rosemounttownpages.com/news/ ... x-downtown

A 12.25 acre site, so 18 units an acre. Not bad, but I'm not holding out hope either. Also, this better include some sort of pedestrian tunnel/bridge/grade crossing of the railroad at 147th to make it much more walkable to downtown Rosemount. Unfortunately the railroad wye makes 147th more difficult, though it would be much more beneficial there than 146th. The wye was originally part of a rail connection between the Rock Island and Milwaukee Road in Rosemount and the Chicago Great Western over by 52 for all of the Gopher Ordinance activity in WWII. I'm not sure if it still is used, but there was one industrial user off 145th St which used this wye to back railcars into their spur. But I think it's generally just used for railcar storage by PGR.

[MNdible]

I think something that be broadly beneficial would be to give cities more leverage in adding at grade crossings over rail lines. Unless the rail lines are very active, grade crossings are going to be both more useful and more used than a tunnel or a bridge. And cheaper to build.

[mattaudio]

Plans for massive UMore housing development in Rosemount fall through
Developer pulls from deal for Rosemount's 436 acres.
http://www.startribune.com/plans-for-ma ... 563661032/

Kinda nice that this two thirds of a square mile won't become sprawlscape.

[QuietBlue]

For now. I think someone else will try to develop it at some point, though maybe as a smaller project.

[twincitizen]

SaveUmoreforfutureairportrelocation

[mattaudio]

It's too close to (sub)urbanized areas. Even back in the late 80s and early 90s when the Dual Track process was underway, they were studying sites beyond Coates and east of Vermillion... p13 here https://www.leg.state.mn.us/docs/2012/other/120470.pdf

But as fantasy as it is to move MSP, it's not actually a bad idea:
- The current MSP site could be easily redeveloped to house 50,000 or more residents.
- Imagine if some of the existing landside facilities could be repurposed at MSP, with a high-speed rail connection to a rural airport (in conjunction with HSR to Rochester)
- There could then be sterile trains or even sterile cars as part of larger trains that connect to the airside. I seem to recall Sea-Tac using this concept back in the late 90s or early 2000s for their tram that connected the south satellite that housed international arrivals. Obviously a different scale, but same concept.