St. Louis Park - General Topics

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Anondson
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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » April 17th, 2018, 9:39 am

Here’s a 1950 aerial.
Image

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St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » April 17th, 2018, 9:41 am

Here’s a 1971 aerial that has the Excelsior-100 bridge now completed (36th was yet to come many years later.)
Image
Byerly’s and Target are in a former gravel pit! St. Louis Park is on top of huge deposits of aggregate, there are gravel pit remnants all over the city.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Ubermoose » April 17th, 2018, 10:31 am

I remember that intersection at 36th st pretty well. When I was learning to drive, I was driving a manual transmission and that was a good sized hill as you drove from the north. I killed the car about a half a dozen times after coming to a stop at that light (odd to think there was a stoplight on Hwy 100 at that time). That was in 1983, I think the bridge came a few years later.
That was Zayre Shoppers City where Microcenter is now.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby min-chi-cbus » April 17th, 2018, 10:39 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.
Yes, I recall this as well, since my baseball coach at the time was David Frauenshuh, who redeveloped the site and was telling me about how we were all going to be a lot closer to a McDonald's and movie theater with more options (closest option was the Landmark Edina Cinema 4, which was getting artsy-fartsy). The theater was a huge hit for quite a while, but one bit of bad luck with the timing of this was that it was built JUST before the stadium seating concept starting taking root in most new theaters, and any theater that did not convert to stadium-style seating (like this one) was an instant relic. The last movie I remember seeing at this theater that was packed/sold out was Star Wars I - The Phantom Menace (circa 1999).
Last edited by min-chi-cbus on April 17th, 2018, 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby min-chi-cbus » April 17th, 2018, 10:40 am

You could do offices I suppose, but if I remember correctly this site is pretty badly contaminated and not suited for residential.
Dumb question: why would that prohibit offices but allow for retail? If anything I'd expect it to prohibit residential first and foremost.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby min-chi-cbus » April 17th, 2018, 10:45 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.
I HATE that intersection with Wooddale because in literally 20 feet there's yet another stoplight for the frontage road (Park Center Blvd.). Whatever major overhaul is done to this area (if that ever occurs) should definitely include a revamp of this intersection, and potentially as well as interchange with the bridge over Hwy. 100 (perhaps a Diverging Diamond).

Interesting point with the Byerly's site, since Byerly's just recently made a similar decision to redevelop their property along France Ave. in Edina, so I suppose it's possible. Unlike France Ave though, the street that meanders through here (Park Center Blvd.) is not a high-traffic thoroughfare and it's a bit out of the way to access unless you are specifically going to Target, Byerly's, the AAA, or possibly the Mann Cinema 6 and associated retail. I'm not sure it has quite the same redevelopment appeal as some locations, but its proximity to the pending (imminent?) SWLRT station at Beltline Rd. nearby may nudge the redevelopment potential of this location.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby min-chi-cbus » April 17th, 2018, 10:57 am

Here’s a 1971 aerial that has the Excelsior-100 bridge now completed (36th was yet to come many years later.)
Image
Byerly’s and Target are in a former gravel pit! St. Louis Park is on top of huge deposits of aggregate, there are gravel pit remnants all over the city.
Can you add an aerial of what it looks like today as well? It'd be interesting/fun to compare the different eras of St. Louis Park in this highly-dynamic location, between the: Excelsior & Grand, Mann Cinema 6, Byerly's, and 36th Street areas.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » April 17th, 2018, 11:14 am

Can you add an aerial of what it looks like today as well? It'd be interesting/fun to compare the different eras of St. Louis Park in this highly-dynamic location, between the: Excelsior & Grand, Mann Cinema 6, Byerly's, and 36th Street areas.
Good idea. Here’s a simple screenshot off Apple Maps. Has the Fresh Thyme going on so it’s rather recent.

Image

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby min-chi-cbus » April 17th, 2018, 11:27 am

Thanks!

Seeing the latest aerial makes me wonder just how much longer the Burlington/Micro Center site just off of 36th street and Hwy. 100 can hold out before being sold for redevelopment (assuming that is part of the small area plan for this part of SLP). Same goes for the Discoveries for Children site with the large surface parking lot just to the south of here on the other side of the entrance/exit ramp that divides the two areas. That site also encompasses quite a large area even though most people probably never notice it, and its proximity to the 36th Street corridor and acts as a buffer along Hwy. 100 seems to make it a good candidate for redevelopment into a more appropriate use that separates the quiet neighborhood to the West/Southwest from the loud highway. Plus, it's close enough to the potential SWLRT station at Wooddale Ave near Hwy. 7 (less than half a mile).

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Korh » April 17th, 2018, 6:02 pm

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.
I hope this doesn't mean Mann is going to start closing their other theaters as well (mainly the Hopkins one)

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St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » April 18th, 2018, 10:41 am

Based on reading the submitted agenda to the city planning commission, the entire ground floor will be medical offices for urology and plastic surgery. Chipotle will relocate to the former Granite City.

The second floor will be left vacant but Park Nicollet wants the second floor to be left available for future possible medical offices. Under the current zoning replacing the theater and restaurants with 1st floor medical offices leaves a major under use of parking. Adding a second floor of medical offices would require 33 additional parking spaces over the retail parking currently. The added parking could be done by restriping for diagonal parking or by turning the open space south of the 3900 into parking.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Ubermoose » May 4th, 2018, 10:55 am

Seems to be a lot of activity at Via/PLACE this week.
Still waiting to see something other than a fenced off hole at the old American Legion site.

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St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » August 16th, 2018, 3:28 pm

60+ apartments proposed for behind Supertarget near North Cedar Lake trail and the 169/7 interchange.

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

It appears it’ll go on the surface parking strip.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby MNdible » August 16th, 2018, 3:57 pm

Great views of the Target loading dock!

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby bapster2006 » August 16th, 2018, 4:20 pm

That is a thin strip of land all right. But I guess they need phase 2.
There are a lot bigger lots in the area ripe for development, like east and west of Louisiana south of 7.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » August 31st, 2018, 2:51 pm

I guess there is a shortage of vacant spaces in SLP to develop.

https://finance-commerce.com/2018/08/ap ... ouis-park/ Image

There are a bunch of vacant spaces that haven’t yet been developed but they are spoken for with various proposals that are on hold.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Silophant » August 31st, 2018, 3:22 pm

Why are they on hold? Waiting until the SWLRT actually starts?
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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Multimodal » August 31st, 2018, 4:00 pm

Sounds like the Olive Garden will be replaced, and more apartments on Excelsior Blvd.

I wonder if the Twin Cities suburbs that run out of developable land for apartments will start increasing the zoning density around their current commercial & multifamily housing districts, allowing missing middle housing to start popping up.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » August 31st, 2018, 4:06 pm

The Central Park West lots were proposed for commercial towers but the developer, last I heard, hadn’t gotten enough commitments to occupy to break ground.

The large superblock north of the Beltline Station had gone out to RFP for a mixed use (retail, offices, residential, parking structure). The developer was chosen and now the sluggish process has started.

The McGarvey/P.L.A.C.E. site is delayed while more financing is secured after the federal tax changes to low income housing credits.

Platia Place (The former-Santorini) proposal of apartments and hotel was approved but nothing has started that I noticed.

Arlington Row East/West ... I just don’t know, I think one of the sites has started.

Some of these above took demolition to clear the site but they were bare for a long while. It seems like anything that gets developed in SLP going forward will be on underused surface parking or redevelopment of existing.

Methodist/Park Nicollet own quite a lot of property along Louisiana Ave south of 7, they may be holding their giant surface parking lots for SWLRT opportunities.

The city owns the large vacant lot between Lake St and 7 just west of the south roundabout. It was briefly used as a hospital employee outlot during expansion of the hospital and as construction staging during the Louisiana bridge/roundabout project. The city might be holding it as construction staging for SWLRT and other Louisiana Ave projects in 2019.

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Re: St. Louis Park - General Topics

Postby Anondson » October 5th, 2018, 4:05 pm

Affordable housing anecdote: my daughter’s 2nd grade class in Susan Lindgren has had an alarming drop in attendance in the one month since the school year began from 22 students to 17. Every child was a student whose family lived in the units at what was once named Meadowbrook Manor. Meadowbrook Manor recently changed owners and with repairs and upgrades the new owner has shifted to more market rates.


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