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Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 14th, 2014, 8:12 am
by mattaudio

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 14th, 2014, 10:45 am
by Nathan
he said there was no violence... but that street sign through a cat picture begs to differ.

I agree with the general idea that there needs better pedestrian realm with the amount of people who walk there in general.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 14th, 2014, 10:52 am
by twincitizen
he said there was no violence... but that street sign through a cat picture begs to differ.
Image

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 14th, 2014, 11:04 am
by Nathan
Touche :D and AMAZING.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 14th, 2014, 11:06 am
by FISHMANPET
I support the police's efforts to save our cat pictures.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 18th, 2014, 8:27 pm
by exiled_antipodean
Marcy Holmes/Dinkytown Plan public review is out with comments due by 6/2/14

http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups ... 123484.pdf

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 10:44 am
by Didier
Thought I'd share this comment (without comment) from Marlys' latest MinnPost story about community input.
Thankfully, citizen engagement has come a long way since Marlys Harris's graduate school experience. MHNA voted to implement the Dinkytown Business District Plan - a plan well-informed by expert, technical analysis. Stantec economists advised that preservation of historic character is essential to Dinkytown's competitiveness, as the other University commercial areas will be served by LRT. Design experts also provided guidelines for new development, complementing that historic character. Land use planners recommended expanding the commercial footprint to welcome larger retail spaces that complement Dinkytown's small business retail.

Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association continues to advocate for growth in Dinkytown: growth with preservation. The Dinkytown Business District Plan reflects that placemaking growth strategy. Developers are being encouraged to site new commercial development - like a hotel - in the expanded commercial area, retaining the core crossroads to preserve Dinkytown's historic character.

Saying no to a hotel in the heart of Dinkytown is saying yes to a long-term, positive growth vision for our thriving business district.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 10:48 am
by FISHMANPET
I'd be interested in a way to develop the parking lots behind the Camdi etc buildings, as well as getting rid of curb cuts on 4th St. Obivously it would be a fantasy since nobody's proposing anything like that, but would it even be possible to do something like that with the zoning code? You could maybe buy out the parking, build a podium over it, and build a couple of stories of housing on top of it.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 24th, 2014, 6:21 am
by sanguinic
"Saying no to a hotel in the heart of Dinkytown is saying yes to a long-term, positive growth vision for our thriving business district."

Wow. This is the kind of commentary that gives preservationists a bad rap. How can rejecting a major investment can be described as "growth"? Wasn't a majority of the proposed hotel's footprint replacing a parking lot, and a nondescript 1960s bank building? Wouldn't a hotel full of guests contribute to the neighborhood's vitality?

And where some see a "thriving business district," others see a fading, shabby neighborhood in need of an overhaul. Travel around the country. The lively, mixed-use commercial districts adjacent to other major universities put backward Dinkytown in an unfavorable light. The U of M and Minneapolis deserve better.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 24th, 2014, 3:04 pm
by TheUrbanGopher
Just because I was curious, I wanted to make a map showing the Dinkytown retail district circa 2009 and all the projects that are planned, are under construction, or have been built in the past 5 years. Its pretty astonishing just how many projects there have been and how much land they have taken up - a good thing, if you ask me. A solid majority of these projects were built on mostly parking lot (Venue, Marshall, 17th Ave Residence Hall) or severely underutilized land (The Bridges).

The only project that is really questionable in my mind is the 15th Ave and 7th Street apartment building. Most of these townhome units look like they were built recently - Hennepin County lists them at 1990 - so it must have just been the ease of purchasing that pushed it through.

https://www.google.com/maps/ms?msid=200 ... 5,0.019183

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 24th, 2014, 6:32 pm
by EOst
And where some see a "thriving business district," others see a fading, shabby neighborhood in need of an overhaul. Travel around the country. The lively, mixed-use commercial districts adjacent to other major universities put backward Dinkytown in an unfavorable light. The U of M and Minneapolis deserve better.
Which ones are you talking about, exactly? Because I've been to a lot of university commercial districts, and honestly, Dinkytown is average at worst--certainly a hell of a lot better than places like Purdue, UIUC, UNL etc. It isn't Madison, sure, but there's nowhere quite like Madison.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 25th, 2014, 6:43 am
by sanguinic
Three urban campuses with thriving commercial districts that I've visited in the past year are the University of Washington in Seattle, the University of California in Los Angeles and Northwestern University in Evanston.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 25th, 2014, 6:56 am
by Silophant
I think that, by 2020, the main commercial district people associate with the U will be Stadium Village, not Dinkytown. It'll mostly be because of the LRT access, but partially due to the extreme difficulty of developing anything in Dinkytown. And honestly, I'm not so sure that change would be a bad thing.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 25th, 2014, 7:13 am
by EOst
Three urban campuses with thriving commercial districts that I've visited in the past year are the University of Washington in Seattle, the University of California in Los Angeles and Northwestern University in Evanston.
Ask a Seattle resident and they'll say the same thing about the U district that you do about Dinkytown--that it's dingy and been in decline for a long time. I've certainly seen a hell of a lot more dead rats in the gutters of Seattle's U district than I have near ours.

This is all in the eye of the beholder; the most "successful" University areas aren't really U areas at all, they're just parts of town where a lot of students also happen to hang out. I think Dinkytown would lose whatever charm it has left if that happened to it.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 25th, 2014, 9:04 am
by Nathan
mill avenue next to asu is surprisingly awesome and thriving and clean and more like uptown, definitely a whole different vibe.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 25th, 2014, 9:10 am
by go4guy
mill avenue next to asu is surprisingly awesome and thriving and clean and more like uptown, definitely a whole different vibe.
Agreed. I havent been there for a long time, but thought Mill Avenue was great. And it was full of construction at the time, cant image what it is like now. Great compliment to Oldtown Scottsdale. But from what I know, downtown Phoenix is absolutely awful.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 25th, 2014, 9:17 am
by Nathan
mill avenue next to asu is surprisingly awesome and thriving and clean and more like uptown, definitely a whole different vibe.
Agreed. I havent been there for a long time, but thought Mill Avenue was great. And it was full of construction at the time, cant image what it is like now. Great compliment to Oldtown Scottsdale. But from what I know, downtown Phoenix is absolutely awful.
so off topic, but downtown Phoenix is doing really well,I was just there. since the light rail happened and they converted a bunch of homes to restaurants and business... getting kinda cool.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 25th, 2014, 12:29 pm
by Snelbian
I think that, by 2020, the main commercial district people associate with the U will be Stadium Village, not Dinkytown. It'll mostly be because of the LRT access, but partially due to the extreme difficulty of developing anything in Dinkytown. And honestly, I'm not so sure that change would be a bad thing.
For a lot of people it already is. There are a lot of people living in the Stadium Village area who might go to Dinkytown to drink and not much more.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 25th, 2014, 12:49 pm
by David Greene
I think that, by 2020, the main commercial district people associate with the U will be Stadium Village, not Dinkytown. It'll mostly be because of the LRT access, but partially due to the extreme difficulty of developing anything in Dinkytown. And honestly, I'm not so sure that change would be a bad thing.
For a lot of people it already is. There are a lot of people living in the Stadium Village area who might go to Dinkytown to drink and not much more.
There's no reason the U can't support two commercial districts. U. of Michigan Ann Arbor's central campus alone has two distinct though geographically close commercial distrincits, not unlike Dinkytown and Stadium Village. And population-wise, all of the Ann Arbor campuses put together is quite a bit smaller than the U of M.

Re: Dinkytown

Posted: April 25th, 2014, 12:57 pm
by Snelbian
There's also West Bank to consider. I know a lot of students in the arts and social sciences who do most of their lunches out and drinks after class in Cedar-Riverside because they've already got 90% of their classes over there.