As expected, the appeal passed the full council unanimously.
That sentence deserves closer attention - this project has not been granted final land use approvals yet, only the "certificate of appropriateness" to build in the historic district has been approved.Developers intend to begin construction as soon as this fall, though the council must still provide final approval on the land-use plans for the site.
The finalized site plan review application must still be approved by the Planning Commission (which will almost certainly approve). I don't know why Alatus is taking so long to get those final applications in for Planning Commission review...they could have been moving through both processes simultaneously, so I'm guessing the finalized designs just aren't ready yet. The problem is that the anti-everything crowd will still get one last chance to fight this project (by appealing the eventual Planning Commission decision to approve), lengthening the timeline even further, even though they have already lost...
As far as I can tell from the city website, Alatus has not applied for anything other than the Certificate of Appropriateness yet: http://apps.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/PIApp/ ... 2924130154