urbanMSP

The plasma center was difficult because there was no equivalent space they could move them to, due to zoning restrictions.

I have no inside knowledge of anything, but I would imagine Mesa Pizza would relocate to a new space in Dinkytown.

I'd think so too. They wouldn't have expanded to Uptown if they weren't doing well here.

Don't forget Iowa City. They're just a big chain now!

That's true. We don't even want them in Dinkytown anymore!

Not sure if anyone saw this in the *BAM* front cover of the Daily today, but this could be a game changer.

http://www.mndaily.com/news/campus/2013 ... town-hotel

The biggest problem I have with this (and I would assume others would too) is the hotel would have no ground-floor retail. Why even bother trying to convince the city to build something non-retail on a heavy retail strip? It just seems extremely short-sighted, and would otherwise be an easy addition IMO.

I think a non-retail development should be a non-starter here. That would be idiotic. There's no reason why a hotel couldn't work here, but there's also no reason why a hotel couldn't have retail in the base. Obviously they'd need a certain amount of lobby space, but at least two-thirds of the street-facing portion could be independent retail even with a hotel lobby, if it were built as a city hotel instead of following the "Hampton Inn" type of model (not to pick on Hampton Inn, which I like, but just to point out the segmentation of the hotel market).

I'm not going to believe there wouldn't be any retail in a hotel in the center of Dinkytown until I see the planning commission docs saying so. That would be, as talindsay said, idiotic.

However, I was actually thinking today that I'll be surprised if this project actually went through as planned. 7West and the Station on Washington are both still advertising open units, so the luxury student housing market seems be drying up, and there's already three new projects under construction in Dinkytown (The Bridges, The Marshall, and the HoH project) 2 of which are much larger than any of the other luxury student buildings we've had in this boom. I'll admit to not knowing that much about development strategies, but I'd be wary of throwing another project into this mix, even a relatively small one.

Is the apartment boom in Minneapolis in general starting to dry up? Uptown seems to be slowing, the only one I don't know about is downtown. Is this the end, or is it just that there are a lot of units and they will take a little to be absorbed, but there are still people coming?

I'd rather see the hotel in Uptown, but oh well.

One interesting note from the article is the Erbert and Getbert's owner quoted as saying his rent barely went up in Sydney Hall. I'm pretty sure mbkwhr has referenced more than once that the rent doubled or at least went up significantly.

I honestly think that's the most important line in the article, since the anti-development crowd's favorite point is that the rent is sooo much higher in new development. Not that they'll believe they're wrong. Who is the actual small business owner to say that they aren't right?

Didn't he also say that he owned the building, too? I'm confused. Also, absolute price means nothing without knowing sqft (or layout, amenities, etc).

Is the apartment boom in Minneapolis in general starting to dry up? Uptown seems to be slowing, the only one I don't know about is downtown. Is this the end, or is it just that there are a lot of units and they will take a little to be absorbed, but there are still people coming?

Although it's a bit off-topic, I saw this piece about the apartment market in the Twin Cities from the Business Journal and thought I'd forward it to you (you need reader access to read the whole thing, but I think the little that is available will help paint a picture for you):

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/p ... built.html

I think it's one thing to say that there's still demand for apartments in Minneapolis -- that market is broad and deep.

But I'm skeptical that there's much more demand for luxury student apartments.

^^ I'd probably agree with you, and with the influx of both dorm and market units to the area I'd be curious how many students are still commuting in (and what the floor is for this number given the plethora of housing options in areas like Longfellow, Seward, cheap Uptown, etc. But flip that back and ask how many people graduating from the U will continue to stay on campus with the CCLRT opening up. Minneapolis/StP is still a place where people from the universities of Iowa, Wiscsonsin, North Dakota, NDSU, Duluth, SCSU, etc etc migrate to and live with friends. It seems like that typically meant "move to Uptown" but now may see a lot more coming to Dinkytown/SV areas for a year or 2.

Anyway. It would be good to see some cheaper, regular apartments or units in-fill some of the under-utilized areas in the MH neighborhood, IMO.

I think you will see the prices drop in places like Keehler, UV, Dinnaken, and the one on 14th & 6th in the Dinkytown area, among others. New stuff just replaces the stuff that is now 10+ years old. And I bet less and less people will live in inconvenient places like the Como neighborhood. Maybe those areas will return to owner occupied homes.

Yes, I understand how the rental market works. The issue is that you've got a lot of brand new inventory coming onto the market, all of it assuming that they're going to be able to get sky-high rents. For the stuff that's already built, this could mean a number of projects can't hit their financial projections and could find themselves in some hot water. Does this matter much to you and me or the students or the city? Probably not, but it will sting the developers and their investors.

For projects that are still on the boards, this could mean that they're turned into hotels, or that they try to make their numbers punch out based on cheaper construction and cheaper rents (easier said than done), or that they just don't get built.

The market slowing in the university makes sense. Because you only have have a certain number of a certain number of students. The university doesn't grow by that much per year. Since the market here is luxury that grows even less for university students, thus for sure university is beginning to end. Now I'm not saying I was sure of this before I asked but it makes sense. The main question which was answered well and made me happy was that the other markets still see strong. I just had to rationalize it.

Cool article. Thanks

I don't know if many adults will ever live in Dinkytown, but with the CCLRT areas like Prospect Park will only get more desirable. There's still a ways to go yet, though.