The Venue at Dinkytown - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Northeast, Near North, Camden, Old St. Anthony, University and surrounding neighborhoods
mattaudio
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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby mattaudio » June 5th, 2013, 8:35 am

So, the pro-sensible-development side needs a slogan too:
"Save Dinkytown... from surface parking lots" ???

RailBaronYarr
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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby RailBaronYarr » June 5th, 2013, 8:58 am

Yet another article in the Daily:

http://www.mndaily.com/city/business/20 ... e-fighting

I'm a little disappointed the Daily has been so lopsided in the coverage of the downsides of the development going on without really interviewing the flip side. I think this makes 4 in the last few weeks with focus on the troubles or the fact that the units being put up are luxury ones.

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby gpete » June 5th, 2013, 10:34 am

City Staff are saying that this project will not need an EAW: http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups ... 109359.pdf

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby seanrichardryan » June 5th, 2013, 1:29 pm

Didn't you read their glowing piece on Kelly Doran?
Q. What, what? A. In da butt.

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby twincitizen » June 5th, 2013, 6:13 pm

Oh Bill: http://tcsidewalks.blogspot.com/2013/06 ... wn-is.html

He "corrected" the recent Star Tribune letter to the editor from the SaveDinkytown folks.
Allowing such spot zoning also creates a precedent that threatens other C1 neighborhoods parking lots. If we don’t act now, Dinkytown's surface parking will disappear forever — on our watch. And, yes, your neighborhood’s small-business district's surface parking lot could be next.
In other news, this public hearing has been delayed to the June 24 Planning Commission meeting. That makes me a little worried that the Z&P Committee isn't going to adopt staff's findings that an EAW is not necessary.

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Nick
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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby Nick » June 5th, 2013, 9:02 pm

Nick Magrino
[email protected]

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby nordeast homer » June 5th, 2013, 9:06 pm

Great letter!

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby twincitizen » June 6th, 2013, 9:00 am

http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/tv/79

SaveDinkytown is making their plea for the EAW before the Council's Z&P Committee right now.

I'm predicting no EAW, as that would seriously imperil the project's ability to open for Fall 2014 (I assume that is the target date). Fall 2015 is really far out for them to be proposing this, and student projects have to be timed for Fall, otherwise a completed building would be sitting mostly vacant for several months and not generating income.

EDIT: Staff recommendation adopted, no EAW required. Next stop: Planning Commission on 6/24. It seems fairly certain at this point that the Planning Commission's decision will be appealed, so we can expect this to be back before the Z&P Committee sometime in July.

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby RailBaronYarr » June 6th, 2013, 9:28 am

Do developers simply build in roughly 4-6 months of zoning appeal and delay time to projects now?

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby MNdible » June 6th, 2013, 10:01 am

Do developers simply build in roughly 4-6 months of zoning appeal and delay time to projects now?


If you look at all of the projects that are currently under construction right now, the vast majority of them went through very mundane approval processes. For every controversial project, there are a dozen that get approved without incident.

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby RailBaronYarr » June 6th, 2013, 10:24 am

^ Fair enough. Seems like a lot of the projects we talk about on here in the urban areas seem to get held up, but it's easy to overlook the ones that don't. I was just curious on how developers deal with delays like this, particularly for a location where completion date could set you back a year on revenues.

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby MNdible » June 6th, 2013, 11:43 am

My sense is that a savvy developer has a pretty good idea as to which projects will be easy and and which will be difficult.

Asking for a lot of variances and rezoning? Might be tricky.

Trying to build something two blocks from Meg Tuthill's house? Probably going to be a rocky road.

This one might have been a bit of surprise. There's been some grumbling about recent Dinkytown developments, and for whatever reason, this is the straw that broke the camel's back. Probably because it's on one of the core blocks of Dinkytown.

I'd say normally there's a risk-reward thing that plays in. Are you trying to buy land cheap because it was viewed as a difficult parcel, and then overcome some obstacles and as a result have a very profitable development? If so, you're probably willing to go through a lot more hassle.

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby Didier » June 6th, 2013, 3:02 pm

At this point I think it's abundantly clear that this new proposal is a definite upgrade and will be tastefully done.

However, I think the underlying concern among the neighborhood groups seems to be the precedent. House of Hanson and surface parking is the low hanging fruit, but is there theoretically anything to prevent redevelopment of the more iconic Dinkytown buildings should the current owners decide to sell? I'm not asking for the sake of argument but rather to see if somebody knows the answer.

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby FISHMANPET » June 6th, 2013, 3:32 pm

Yeah, while I think some people are concerned about parking or other stupid reasons, I think a lot of people, especially those outside of the area now (aka former students) are genuinely worried about the changing character of Dinkytown. First, I found an article about that in April from the Daily:
http://www.mndaily.com/city/business/20 ... y-evolving

And in no particular order, some arguments I've come up with about how this won't change the uniqueness of Dinkytown
1) Dinkytown is always changing, why should we (as a generation) decide that right now is when we should freeze it and it should never change again?
2) There's no such thing as landmark designation for a business, and to implement such a scheme would be a bureaucratic mess. We can't preserve these businesses with any rules or regulations, only foster their existence.
3) A lot of the buildings are pretty shabby. On that block I'd be fine with the Al's "building" some history preservation but I'm not sure if much else warrants it.
4) Rents in new construction are generally higher than that of existing space, but every building there was new at one point. We have to build it before it can be old. Along with #3, a lot of the stock is pretty bad and at some point it's all going to be gone and we'll have to replace it all, let's get started now so when we get to that point this is old.
5) New residents only help strengthen the businesses that are there already.

Also just saw this, the Book House is relocating to above Varsity Bike. Before the Book House did half of their business online, going forward they're going to have a much smaller retail space so they're going to shift to more online business. I think that's the only way a bookstore can survive in this age so that sounds fine with me:
http://www.mndaily.com/city/business/20 ... e-fighting
And I've heard that Opus wants to work to keep these businesses in their development, I think the best thing they could possibly do is offer the Book House a space of similar size to their old location for a similar rent, I think that would just shut up all the critics and put a pretty big nail in the coffin of dissent.

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby FISHMANPET » June 6th, 2013, 3:43 pm

And which one of you is cecc0011 on disqus? Whoever that is I want to bring them here, he/she is making some pretty smart comments on the Daily articles about this development.

mattaudio
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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby mattaudio » June 6th, 2013, 3:59 pm

That would be RailBaronYarr

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby FISHMANPET » June 6th, 2013, 4:04 pm

Well then feel free to ignore the email I sent to your University account inviting you to post here, RailBaronYarr :)

RailBaronYarr
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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby RailBaronYarr » June 6th, 2013, 5:01 pm

Couldn't you tell? I beat the same dead horse there as here! :)

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby FISHMANPET » June 6th, 2013, 5:13 pm

Unfortunately that horse isn't dead in the comments of the Daily yet.

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Re: House of Hanson Site - (14th Avenue SE & 5th Street SE)

Postby Nathan » June 6th, 2013, 5:50 pm

Has nobody in the save dinky town group ever been to Madison or UW Seattle or pretty much ANY urban university? The area around the U is severely underutilized, forcing people to use cars, and wasn't there some data to support that we have one of the highest numbers of students who commute in? And that we're also behind on the amount of student housing surrounding the U, compared to other similar Universities? Those neighborhoods in other cities are vibrant and fun and have mixed use and sized buildings. Why they didn't protest the UTEC development but are going so CRAZY over this blows my mind.


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