Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

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Nathan
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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby Nathan » August 12th, 2016, 11:40 am

From what I can tell from the plans the closest this gets to the adjacent buildings is 16 feet. And that is only a small section of the block. I've lived much closer to another house and still had breezes. And doesn't the wind typically come from the other direction? I understand what you're getting at, but as a condo owner at 19xx Aldrich, I'm thinking of the greater good of our neighborhood, not just a couple of units, which probably will have little change once all is said and done.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby BoredAgain » August 12th, 2016, 11:42 am

And while it is true that their view wasn't guaranteed, I doubt anyone expected it to be completely obscured by a six-story corrugated-metal box sitting (in some cases) four feet away.

I'm not saying "block the building" (yet), but really, have you no compassion at all? There are people, your fellow citizens, who would be demonstrably harmed by this project. I don't see how anyone here is worse off by acknowledging that. It certainly shouldn't be mocked.
I have no problem with blocking the view. I brought up the lot line distance because of the "Light and Air" implications. Those are at least somewhat legitimate and the reason for the set back requirements. If anyone complains that a new building blocks existing views (looking at you Linden Hills and West Lake), then I have zero sympathy.

That said, the existing building on this site has zero set back from the lot line. The same goes for many other buildings on this block. The condo building is also only 12' off the line, so they are also not meeting current set-back requirements.

Finally, there would be at least 16 feet between the back of this building and the condo building windows behind it. Your 4 foot statement above is simply false. There is a small one story addition on that 12 foot space facing Franklin, but it has less space now than it would with this new building.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby David Greene » August 12th, 2016, 11:52 am

Ugh, those narrow veritcal windows..

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby EOst » August 12th, 2016, 12:15 pm

From what I can tell from the plans the closest this gets to the adjacent buildings is 16 feet. And that is only a small section of the block. I've lived much closer to another house and still had breezes. And doesn't the wind typically come from the other direction?
According to the Weather Channel, we have a NE wind right now. ;)

Sixteen feet only if you count the air space over the one-story storefront (which, apropos of nothing, will have a two-lane curb cut basically adjacent--woohoo). That's still barely half of what the code considers a minimum combined setback.
That said, the existing building on this site has zero set back from the lot line. The same goes for many other buildings on this block. The condo building is also only 12' off the line, so they are also not meeting current set-back requirements.
I don't think the mistakes of the 1890s or 1920s should be an excuse for another mistake.
Finally, there would be at least 16 feet between the back of this building and the condo building windows behind it. Your 4 foot statement above is simply false. There is a small one story addition on that 12 foot space facing Franklin, but it has less space now than it would with this new building.
I never said the condo building's windows would be four feet away from the new structure. :) For one thing, they have the amenity deck in-between. But the distance is a red herring; it's the height and shadowing that actually does damage.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby LakeCharles » August 12th, 2016, 1:00 pm

One of my neighbors houses is within 8 feet of my house. The other is 12 feet away. And both are taller than mine. As my house faces west, most of the windows are on the north and south sides facing those houses. It works out just fine!

Granted, they were built in the 20s, so that "mistake" was in the distant past, but I think it's just kind of an established part of living in a not-even dense city that your neighbors might be within 20 feet of you.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby EOst » August 12th, 2016, 1:29 pm

One of my neighbors houses is within 8 feet of my house. The other is 12 feet away. And both are taller than mine. As my house faces west, most of the windows are on the north and south sides facing those houses. It works out just fine!
Apples and tangerines. My house has neighbors to the north and south and east too, but their setbacks and heights more or less match mine. They don't do this:

Image

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby amiller92 » August 12th, 2016, 1:48 pm

Compassion for assumed views? For me, depends. For instance, when the Target tower was proposed many condo owners along the Loring Greenway wailed that it would harm their skyline views and the value of their investment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And the darn thing did block my view the rest of downtown too (although it was there when I bought the condo, so I can't actually complain, especially as I have since sold the condo).

Anyway, my sympathy for lost views is not non-existent, but it's pretty easily overwhelmed for a project like this.

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Nathan
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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby Nathan » August 12th, 2016, 2:06 pm

Shadow does not mean black out. There's still light... think of the money they'll save on drapes when they're trying to sleep in.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby UrsusUrbanicus » August 12th, 2016, 2:15 pm

I understand what you're getting at, but as a condo owner at 19xx Aldrich, I'm thinking of the greater good of our neighborhood
As another owner on the same block, I strongly second this. The attitude that "new properties can only harm mine, not help it" implies a zero-sum view of economics that simply doesn't hold true. I *want* to live in a vibrant, urban place -- both day-to-day and for the future appreciation of my investment (via potential purchasers who want the same surroundings).

(Note -- I realize the post to which you replied wasn't really going full-bore NIMBY / zero-sum, but such an attitude is of course not uncommon in the Wedge / LHENA).

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby TroyGBiv » August 13th, 2016, 10:46 pm

If you buy an apartment on an alley - aren't you paying for an alley view? I mean this seriously. Garbage trucks... garbage cans and dumpsters. I live a few blocks eat from this potential development. My alley is not a lovely view from my window. I am sure that some people are not happy - but this is a city and cities either grow or die.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby seanrichardryan » August 14th, 2016, 6:10 am

There isn't an alley on this block.
Q. What, what? A. In da butt.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby TroyGBiv » August 14th, 2016, 9:51 pm

So how close is this building going to be next to the existing three story building... I thought it looked like that building was set out to Lyndale with a patio or open air space on the back (west side) of the site.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby RailBaronYarr » August 15th, 2016, 9:14 am

So how tall would be an acceptable height to allow a reasonable amount of sunrise light and views here? When you've got long blocks north-south, with no alleys between the east and west sides of the block, redevelopment will be a tight squeeze no matter what. 124' parcels isn't much. Your "maximizes profit" is my "maximizes the number of people who can live on this corner." And even then, that's not true. It's not crazy to suggest a corner like this would be a great spot for a tower not unlike this one or this one - both roughly a quarter mile from this location (of course, provided one could be built given the water table/soil conditions). Anyway, a 5 story building with generous stepbacks from the rear lot line with just a 15' high parking structure + privacy wall for most of that rear frontage seems pretty in line with the (questionable IMO) city policy of focusing development/intensity along major commercial corridors.

As a side note, I'm generally interested in what EOst likes about cities, since the low-to-no setbacks, density, height, etc of buildings like this or the ones it'll shade (which you describe as mistakes of the past) are precisely what make this area of Minneapolis walkable, bikeable, transit-supportive, diverse, etc. I don't think the two condo buildings on Aldrich, at 3.5 stories high and 8 feet apart from one another, are mistakes even though the southern one surely blocks almost all direct winter sunlight to the southern units of the building to the north.

But I've made all these arguments before and the city clearly approved a 'worse' project on this site in the past and will likely do so for this design (which is improved in terms of mitigating impacts to back yard neighbors), so.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby EOst » August 15th, 2016, 3:39 pm

Shortening the structure by one story (six to five, or 68' to 57' or 58') would certainly help the shadowing issue. Of course, you'd need to do a study to see just how much it would help. In terms of views, anything above four is going to block most of the skyline view from inside the top floor units at 2007 Aldrich, but reducing it to five would at least give a view from a roof terrace. It would still, objectively, suck for the owners of those units. I'd love to think of a better solution.

I don't think that anyone here needs to be sold on the societal benefits of walkable urban development. I lived in Stevens Square for years precisely because it was walkable and bikeable and beautifully urban, and I would probably still be there if affordable dwelling units in the area didn't top out at ~800 square feet (a tight squeeze for two giant people with a lot of stuff). But I'm not so sanguine about the neighborhood as to deny that there were drawbacks to everything that made it great. I love the way that the buildings along 2nd Street form a wall of beautiful red brick--but in my first apartment there, a south-facing middle unit, I would describe the predominant ambiance as "gloom." Did that make it affordable? Sure! But I would never live in darkness like that again. The market suggests I'm not alone.

That's why there is no such thing per se as a "good development." There's a passage from Iliad 24 that I return tTo often, a well-known one. Achilles is speaking to Priam, the aged king of Troy, who came to Achilles' camp to beg his son's murderer to allow a funeral. Achilles is shockingly reminded of his own father, and to comfort Priam he says:

"There are two urns which sit in the halls of Zeus
One which gives nothing but evil, the other but good;
To him whom Zeus gives it mixed,
Sometimes he finds good, sometimes evil;
But him to whom he gives only of evil, he makes wretched..."

The thing to notice here is the omission; Zeus gives it mixed or he gives it bad, but he never just gives it good. Everything has consequences; everything brings harm alongside its benefits. We all know this, of course, but it's easy to focus on certain benefits and ignore the rest. "This adds X new housing units," "this puts a restaurant closer to X people," "this creates X pleasing street canyon." But praising the good doesn't make the evil disappear; if someone wants to know whether another is blessed or wretched, they need to weigh the good and evil they've experienced, not just count up the good.

That's why I think it's telling that no-one has really seriously challenged my premise on this from the start, that this could do real financial damage to the owners of some of those condos on Aldrich, and only one person (Nathan) has even really considered it. Does it matter if a development harms those around it? Does it do more good than the evil it causes?

People around here make fun of some of the most common justifications for Euclidean zoning--the proverbial "what if someone wanted to build a coal-burning factory/feed lot/nuclear waste dump next to my house???" kind--because you probably don't need zoning to keep that scenario from taking place, and because they're a little ridiculous anyway. At the same time, however, I don't think anyone here would actually advocate letting people build those things today in the middle of the Wedge, no matter how many jobs they provided. But why? There's no moral case to prevent their construction except insofar as they would hurt the people around them. That's enough, intuitively, for a feed lot. Why is this damage not worth discussing?

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby FISHMANPET » August 15th, 2016, 4:31 pm

Because it's so minor in the grand scheme of things compared to a structural housing shortage?

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby EOst » August 15th, 2016, 4:44 pm

Because it's so minor in the grand scheme of things compared to a structural housing shortage?
How so? Be specific.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby FISHMANPET » August 15th, 2016, 4:45 pm

Well there's mazlov's hierarchy of needs, shelter is far above skyline views or sunlit apartments.

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby EOst » August 15th, 2016, 4:48 pm

Well there's mazlov's hierarchy of needs, shelter is far above skyline views or sunlit apartments.
individual != collective

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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby UrsusUrbanicus » August 15th, 2016, 5:30 pm

People around here make fun of some of the most common justifications for Euclidean zoning--the proverbial "what if someone wanted to build a coal-burning factory/feed lot/nuclear waste dump next to my house???" kind--because you probably don't need zoning to keep that scenario from taking place, and because they're a little ridiculous anyway. At the same time, however, I don't think anyone here would actually advocate letting people build those things today in the middle of the Wedge, no matter how many jobs they provided. But why? There's no moral case to prevent their construction except insofar as they would hurt the people around them. That's enough, intuitively, for a feed lot. Why is this damage not worth discussing?
I think it might have to do with consensus views of what is and isn't a nuisance sufficient to trump others' property rights. Pretty much everyone agrees that things which increase the incidence of Ass Cancer or render the air effectively unbreathable have absolutely zero place in a built environment that's even partially residential. In other words, a consensus view about, say, that nuclear dump or feedlot does exist.

But some of the other non-desirable offshoots are less than 100% avoidable (just due to the fundamental nature of an urban environment), and thus operate on more of a degree or spectrum basis. Think noise, traffic, particulate pollution from vehicle exhaust (at least in a society like ours that's still partially car-dependent even in its most urban places)... or, indeed, the blockage of natural light. As with any other social phenomenon, these gray areas are where most of the contention happens -- precisely because everyone assigns different weights to the various problems and to any positive trade-offs they might bring. Even though the awfuls are not as intense and are more easily mitigated, it's actually harder to get a consensus here.

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Nathan
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Re: Theater Garage Marquee Apartments - (Franklin & Lyndale)

Postby Nathan » August 15th, 2016, 5:48 pm

I do understand the issues you bring up, and would have similar concerns, I'm just not sure that they're damages that weren't in the condo owners own realm of understanding when they purchased their condos.

I understand that they may have appreciated the view and the morning light as a selling point, but also should have taken into consideration that there is a highly under utilized lot in an ever growing major city right next to the building. That's a consideration you make when you move in. When you analyze your monetary risk and what you think the future of the neighborhood will be. Just like you would if you lived on a main street in a growing city, that street might expand and become noisier and have traffic etc etc, they may even take some of your lawn to do it! Anyone who thinks critically would have seen a development here in the future.

Anecdotally I have a hard time imagining that they could possibly have monetary damages because of this project, again because it improves the neighborhood, but also because the values in our neighborhood just won't stop rising. I my tiny unit with no view has increased 5 to 10k a year for 3 consecutive years.

On another note.... was just thinking, steeple people would be awesome in that retail building just north of Ridgewood on lyndale.


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