St. Louis Park - General Topics

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VacantLuxuries
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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby VacantLuxuries » February 9th, 2018, 3:32 pm

As an SLP resident I'm happy to see this.

As somebody who loves how Emagine Willow Creek theater is the best kept secret in metro movie theaters, I'm sad.

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St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » February 9th, 2018, 3:34 pm

Second update. In 2019 Louisiana Avenue, south of the Cedar Lake trail to Excelsior Blvd, will begin reconstruction. The major reason to tackle it is that the bridge over the creek was identified in 2011 as needing replacement very soon. Doing it in 2019 because then they can coordinate with SWLRT work on the rail bridge.
ImageFebruary SLP updates by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
Off-balance roundabout at Oxford, keeping traffic signals at the hospital entrance for some reason to do with Park Nicollet's preferences.

Worst feature, keeping four lanes in this stretch that is lucky to get over 10,000 cars a day because Louisiana up by TH7 gets 13,000 cars per day. 🤷‍♂️ Traffic "projections" *cough* show 19,000 cars per day when the Louisiana station area is built up. 🤦‍♂️

Best feature, raising Louisiana Avenue bridge high enough for the Minnehaha Creek walking trails to pass underneath with abundant lighting under the bridge.

Second best feature, it looks like separated sidewalks and bike trails on both sides of Louisiana from Excelsior up to the LRT station bus stops. I think there is good opportunity for good bus stop design there.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby MNdible » February 9th, 2018, 4:09 pm

Are they severing the rail spur as part of the SWLRT project?

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St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » February 9th, 2018, 4:36 pm

SWLRT was going to remove the spur that swings through the industrial area (crossing Louisiana) and reconstruct a more direct connection to the CP-Dan Patch line via a short bridge. A future connection linking Cambridge to Louisiana (where the rail crosses today) when the station area begins to develop is in the future station area plans.

I just remembered, Blake Road will be finishing its second year of reconstruction in 2019, when Louisiana is being torn up. Uffda. Going north-south between 169 and 100 from Excelsior to TH 7 will be ugly.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » February 13th, 2018, 8:01 pm

Platia Place looks likely to get its TIF request.

https://finance-commerce.com/2018/02/st ... e-project/

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St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » March 11th, 2018, 8:53 pm

A handful of days back the city posted two concepts for the historic Walker and Lake district.

https://www.stlouispark.org/home/showdocument?id=8375

Both concepts include a mini roundabout at Lake and Wooddale. (OMG I’m dancing inside)

There are painted bike lanes on Lake.

The Walker and Lake intersection is being redesigned by bending Walker to connect with Brownlow.

One concept has a woonerf for Library Lane with removed head in parking through most of the area, while the other concept continues the head in parking in the area.

Click on the link and check the 12 page .pdf yourselves. I might upload screenshots of the concepts in a few days in no one else does it first...

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Oreos&Milk » March 12th, 2018, 10:50 am

A handful of days back the city posted two concepts for the historic Walker and Lake district.

https://www.stlouispark.org/home/showdocument?id=8375

Both concepts include a mini roundabout at Lake and Wooddale. (OMG I’m dancing inside)

There are painted bike lanes on Lake.

The Walker and Lake intersection is being redesigned by bending Walker to connect with Brownlow.

One concept has a woonerf for Library Lane with removed head in parking through most of the area, while the other concept continues the head in parking in the area.

Click on the link and check the 12 page .pdf yourselves. I might upload screenshots of the concepts in a few days in no one else does it first...
I definitely like the added parking space around Lake and Walker St. We definitely don't need such big green space in this area surrounded by mostly single family homes. So I would probably pick concept 1. Although sharrows instead of bike lanes on Lake St. Hmm, that might be a deal breaker, depending on what the long term plans are for Minneapolis as to if they would connect to other sharrow lanes or other proposed bike lanes. Still hatters gonna hate but, more parking at a park and ride stop is always a good thing.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » March 16th, 2018, 7:49 am

I’m so glad to see this historic beautiful building get a new tenant, this time a clothing retailer Sota Clothing.

https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/ ... ldest.html

The redesign of Walker and Lake takes extra importance to get right now.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » March 16th, 2018, 12:25 pm

Click on the link and check the 12 page .pdf yourselves. I might upload screenshots of the concepts in a few days in no one else does it first...
Got around to bring share the screenshots for conversation purposes. This district is all quite close to the Wooddale LRT Station, you can see where the station would be in the far lower right corner. You can also spot the building the new clothing retailing is moving into where Walker St. crosses the CP railroad.

ImageWalker Lake district by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

ImageWalker Lake district by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

You can see the new bike lanes on Lake Street, the differences between concepts are that in concept 2 there is a buffer between a 10' vehicle lane and 5' bike lane. Concept 1 has no buffer between a 11' vehicle lane and 6.5' bike lane. You can see this more clearly in the lane diagrams below.

ImageWalker Lake district by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
Concept 1

ImageWalker Lake district by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
Concept 2

Concept 1 has a current layout for Walker St. and Library Lane, plus municipal parking lots pretty much exactly where the current oddball municipal lot is, and a pergola structure at a triangle at Library Lane/Walker intersection. Concept 1 has the tire shop and gas station share a driveway on the abandoned Lake St ROW.

Concept 2 has a Library Lane woonerf, removal of head-in parking where head-in parking currently is today. Concept 2 has the gas station and the tire shop with separate driveways.

ImageWalker Lake district by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

I really wish there was better effort at a less dangerous transition from the mini roundabout to the new bike lanes on Wooddale and Lake Street. This could be a source of complaints that it could have been better. The city fell down badly with the Walker St. bike lanes transitioning to the Louisiana roundabouts also. A cost-shaving dgaf?

ImageWalker Lake district by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

ImageWalker Lake district by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

I favor the separate driveways of Concept 2 for the tire shop and gas station. It make it possible to the green space to have a future re-use, IMO.
I favor the bike lanes in Concept 2 on Lake St.
I wish they considered back-in parking but that's probably too radical for a progressive midwest suburb, but I like the head-in parking of Concept 1.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Ubermoose » March 16th, 2018, 12:38 pm

My only concern about the roundabout is it's proximity to the school and the number of kids that cross the street randomly in the area. I think traffic may move at faster speeds with the roundabouts. I know that there have been some pedestrian issues on Louisiana with traffic speeding through and not allowing pedestrians to get through the crosswalk.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » March 16th, 2018, 12:44 pm

That’s a good point, but this isn’t the high speed roundabout design like Louisiana used. This is far smaller type so people can’t take it going 30 mph like Louisiana’s roundabout are.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Ubermoose » March 16th, 2018, 1:45 pm

Overall I like the plans and I would welcome anything that eases traffic flow at that intersection. The change at Lake and Walker is nice too. Over the years I've seen a lot of accidents and close calls right there.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby DanPatchToget » March 16th, 2018, 7:32 pm

The only problem is motorists need to know to yield to pedestrians in the roundabout. For locals I'm sure its easy, but for people trying to take a shortcut, are new to the area, or just don't care that will be difficult and hopefully they won't learn the hard way.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby cblaisdell1 » March 20th, 2018, 8:54 am

It would be great to see some reuse of some of the buildings along Lake St. and near Walker/Lake to house perhaps a restaurant/pub or coffee shop. Plenty of people in the immediate area to make something of that nature successful one would think.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » April 16th, 2018, 3:23 pm

Those are tucked under, Caribou and Boston Market is in a stand-alone building. Maybe they’re the ones relocating? But Park Nicollet has a huge bare plot across the driveway from McDonalds and the movie theater. Why not build there?

There were no movie titles on the theater marquee, maybe that building will be demolished after all?
Looks like the theater IS going to close and Park Nicollet is expanding.

https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/ ... -park.html

In a way this sucks to lose some retail. But with Excelsior and Grand near, Miracle Mile across the street, W 36th, I’m not sure it’s sustainable.

I wished Park Nicollet expanded on their existing campus or their abundant land near Methodist.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby nordeast homer » April 17th, 2018, 8:41 am

I was just at that theater about a month ago with my daughter and the first thing I thought when I walked into the lobby was that it looked run down to the point that they were on the verge of remodeling or closing. The place has not been kept up very well and would not have lasted much longer in the shape it's in without some significant investment in roof and ceiling repair as well as carpet, flooring, wallpaper, etc.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » April 17th, 2018, 8:58 am

The city invested a lot of time and resources planning replacing the old strip that was here, redesigning the unfortunate Wooddale-Excelsior-100 intersection into the current alignment so that the McDonalds-Boston Market-Theater-ex Granite City could fit for maximum restaurant and retail parking.

I recall the city being involved partly because there was buried landfill in the vicinity. I could be mixing up another nearby ...

But it was a big deal to lure a theater back into St. Louis Park after The Cooper closed. It was pretty nice but a few years after this opened the stadium seating phenomenon popped up and this fell behind relevance pretty fast. Willow Creek remodeled but Mann just never felt like they cared.

It is unfortunate we can’t rewind the intersection planning knowing the theater and retail portion was ill-fated, but I’m not sure how forward looking it was possible to be in those years.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Nick » April 17th, 2018, 9:06 am

You could do offices I suppose, but if I remember correctly this site is pretty badly contaminated and not suited for residential.
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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » April 17th, 2018, 9:15 am

Oooh, I know! A structured park and ride for an Excelsior stop for a TH 100 hBRT!

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Multimodal » April 17th, 2018, 9:26 am

I hope this doesn’t turn into a medical complex ghetto, with no other uses.

Did Wooddale used to continue across into what is now the parking lot, continuing to Target & Byerly’s?

I assume Byerly’s will be redeveloped at some point, as the parking lot is virtually always empty.


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