urbanMSP

As much as I'm against tearing down a century-old house for surface parking, it would be nice for the entrance to the expanded lot to move to 13th and off of 4th. Hopefully that's a condition of the demo permit. Or does the permission he got for the Graduate still apply?

The demo permits for 1315 4th and the old house on 13th Ave were approved. They were not in any way tied to building of the hotel. The hotel would have gone through a totally separate planning process with its own public hearing. Same goes for the 2320 Colfax development...the apartment building hasn't actually been approved yet, even though the fight over demolition is over (or nearly over, pending the lawsuit).

Which curb cut on 4th are you wanting to be closed? The one for the bank(?) drive through (1315)? Or the one between 1319 and Tony's Diner?

I'd like to see the bank drive-through reclosed. Until last summer, the parking lot was run as a part of the bigger one displaced by the Venue, and access was off of 5th. I'd like to see that be the case again.

Interesting hints from Ward 3 Councilman Jacob Frey I uncovered while reporting another story.
http://www.mndaily.com/blogs/newsstand/ ... -developer

So ultimately, there might be better project coming?

A substantially taller one, apparently. This is gonna be fuuuun!

It's taller AND it does a better job maintaining the historic architecture? This sounds like it could be a real winner.

I can't wait to see the "Keep Dinkytown Dinky" proponents respond to this one!

sounds like a win-win to me. Those types of people always find something to complain about though

Did the plans come out today? I'd assume they would have been put up at the same time at the Theater Garage Marquee plans, but I can't figure how people are finding those on the city's website.

Plans be yonder:
http://minneapolismn.gov/meetings/plann ... S1P-127101

And no, nothing on this today.

Doesn't look like there's anything on the schedule, either for the Planning Commission or their CoW.

Theater Garage Marquee is on the PC CoW (City Planning Commission of the Whole, basically a pre-meeting meeting where the commission members discuss the business that will be before them, the public can attend but they can't testify). http://www.minneapolismn.gov/meetings/p ... S1P-127101

Also out today is the 4 unit apartment building on Lyndale, but that's in the regular Planning Commission meeting, and wasn't on the previous CoW agenda, so I guess I'm not sure how exactly that works out. http://www.minneapolismn.gov/meetings/p ... S1P-127028

This may warrant a new thread, but here is an update on the hotel concept resurfacing from the MN Daily: http://www.mndaily.com/news/campus/2014 ... -developer

DJR Architects appears to be the developer. Maintains existing facade(s). Renderings to be released next week.

Not that I expect the Daily to be super-accurate journalism, but I'm pretty sure it'll have to knock down at least the yellow bank building or the house, or it won't have any street access at all.

Nevertheless, exciting!

Up to 18 floors now? Wow, that's shockingly bold considering the 6-story proposal by Doran was shot down so vigorously, but apparently the reasoning is sound and with 40-foot setbacks a slim 18-story tower would impact the street LESS than a 6-story behemoth that has no setback! They also propose to keep the existing buildings intact, which I always love (i.e. adaptive reuse).

Site plans to be revealed next week.

This sounds like it'll be a really nice project.

Realistically though, will it probably be dropped down to something like 12 floors? It seems that many of the taller proposals in the city that are over 12 floors high, later turn out to be a few floors shorter than originally planned due to things like overall construction costs, controversy over height, etc.

Maybe that's their M.O., and rightfully so, considering that no matter what the proposed height is it seems that the City of a neighborhood group will try to knock it down, so why not get ahead of the game and inflate the height purposely just to be knocked back down to a height closer to what they originally hoped for?

Even that I wouldn't have a problem with. I just don't want to see Dinkytown become entirely 6-story buildings (except for the Château, of course). Height variation is good.

Predictions for this proposal:
#1: The Daily reporter was confused, and this project will actually tear down the yellow bank building and possibly the house, just sparing the Mesa building.

#2 That street-facing transformer that everyone hated will be back, and probably bigger.

#3 The resistance from Save Dinkytown will be truly mind-boggling, despite this project saving at least 3 "historic" storefronts compared to The Graduate, and despite a hotel making it more nearly certain that the actual historic part of Dinkytown will survive.

I hope it does at least to get 12 floors high because the Chateau would look less towering over Dinkytown with the mixture of 6-12 story buildings within a couple block radius.

I'm surprised nothing has surfaced about this project in the past month, considering the Daily article stated that plans would be released to the public in early July.

(This project should probably be its own thread now - I'm assuming the new plan won't be named after a 70's movie too)