Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby dajazz » July 14th, 2016, 11:55 am

HyVee announced they'd build a grocery store at the Terrace Theater location in Robbinsdale if the city approves the project.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby Anondson » August 19th, 2016, 10:53 am

Hy-Vee kills Robbinsdale proposal after strong neighbor opposition to demolishing vacant theater.

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/n ... s-due.html

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby Mdcastle » August 19th, 2016, 12:02 pm

Not surprised. What's surprising is that people fail to get that Hy-Vee won't just move into the Rainbow spot and someone with a jillion dollars is going to materialize to renovate the theater and everything will be sunshine and rainbows. They have zero incentive to build sub-optimal stores shoe-horned into existing properties when there's plenty of cornfields to build a prototype in. This isn't too far from other Hy-Vees and it does send a clear "take it or leave it message" to other suitors.

If the Rainbow building was suitable as a grocery store wouldn't someone have figured that out by now and opened one, and/or just bought and kept operating the Rainbow?

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby seanrichardryan » August 19th, 2016, 12:04 pm

The future of this site shouldn't be another losing big box model.
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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby Mdcastle » August 19th, 2016, 12:09 pm

Suggestions? Obviously a mid-sized grocery doesn't work. Given the demographics of the area I don't think a hyper-expensive tiny store will either. So more apartments or something?

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby EOst » August 19th, 2016, 12:33 pm

If the Terrace Theater gets its NRHP designation (the Robbinsdale Historical Society is starting that process now), the additional tax credits should be able to do some good. The people who showed up at the meeting last month pointed to the Hollywood Theater in NE as a good model. An event center or office conversion would make the most sense.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby mattaudio » August 19th, 2016, 1:02 pm

I think a co-op could have a shot of working here. But more than that, big boxes are bad especially for urban places like Robbinsdale. There's plenty of Sprawl Repair practitioners who could help Robbinsdale convert this big box land use into a significantly more valuable human scale land use, the dividends which would be reaped for generations in terms of tax base and community health.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby Mdcastle » August 19th, 2016, 1:52 pm

What makes you think a Co-Op would work? Seems like the community is either clamoring for the Hy-Vee so they don't have to go 10 minutes away on surface streets for a wide selection of inexpensive groceries, or they want the theater saved and don't have anything in mind. No one is saying "we want a small, expensive place with a limited section to shop". Some people value fun more than prices when grocery shopping or else Whole Foods wouldn't exist, but I don't think Robbinsdale is such a place. The areas been vacant how many years to give someone the opportunity to put something cute in.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby seanrichardryan » August 19th, 2016, 2:02 pm

Nonetheless, the property owner has applied for a demo permit, to be heard at the 8/23 meeting- http://www.robbinsdalemn.com/Home/Compo ... ws/2441/16
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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby Mdcastle » August 20th, 2016, 12:43 pm

Not to hard to figure out what's going on. The city government (and probably the majority of the residents?) want HyVee. HyVee is pausing it to make the city and current property owner do the dirty work which they are more than willing to do so HyVee can move in without controversy.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby seanrichardryan » August 20th, 2016, 3:38 pm

It's bizarre the city want to use 10 acres in the center of town for a big box that will suck business off their main street. Is it 1961?
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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby Mdcastle » August 20th, 2016, 9:25 pm

Not sure how it will "suck the business of their main street". There's no small, limited selection, expensive grocery store that's hard to park at to drive out of business. If Cub goes under is that a great loss to the community?

People aren't thinking likes it's 1961. They're thinking like it's a suburb in 2016. Plenty of big boxes are still going up in the suburbs and Robbinsdale is obviously valuing low prices, parking, and selection over cuteness and "walkability" like people in the city seem to like.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby QuietBlue » August 21st, 2016, 2:13 pm

It's bizarre the city want to use 10 acres in the center of town for a big box that will suck business off their main street. Is it 1961?
Kind of hard to suck business away that doesn't exist in the first place. The objections to this seem based on generalizations rather than the specifics of this particular location.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby lordmoke » August 22nd, 2016, 12:00 am

People aren't thinking likes it's 1961. They're thinking like it's a suburb in 2016. Plenty of big boxes are still going up in the suburbs and Robbinsdale is obviously valuing low prices, parking, and selection over cuteness and "walkability" like people in the city seem to like.
Well that's an interesting statement given that the cities are now growing faster than the suburbs by embracing that exact "cute" attitude.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby David Greene » August 22nd, 2016, 9:31 am

On the other hand Monte does make a good point about the demographics of the area. What it needs is better transit access.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby sdho » August 22nd, 2016, 11:03 am

Walkability and practical grocery selection are not inherently incompatible. See: Trader Joe's at Lexington/Randolph, or the Southdale Byerly's. TJ's is medium-sized and has combined surface/structured parking and a decent pedestrian presence. Southdale Byerly's has a larger surface lot, but it's mitigated pretty well and walkable around the site.

The Uptown Lunds and Edina/50th & France Lunds are other examples that show that a big box can exist in a walkable area without destroying it (although neither particularly contributes to it, either). The parking is pretty prominent for the Richfield Lakewinds, but that's mainly due to the oddly-shaped site and the lake behind the store. The store design is pretty walker-friendly.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby Mdcastle » August 22nd, 2016, 11:15 am

Maybe we should built a light rail line from Robbinsdale to jobs downtown and at the Target Brooklyn Park campus? Aren't plenty of city people opposed to that rail line?

So what kind of selection and prices to Trader Joe's and Lunds/Byerly's have compared to HyVee? Byerly's closed in Bloomington because it was just too expensive for the area once their sweetheart lease deal ran out and it was getting time to make an investment in their freezers.

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby Silophant » August 22nd, 2016, 11:28 am

Maybe we should built a light rail line from Robbinsdale to jobs downtown and at the Target Brooklyn Park campus? Aren't plenty of city people opposed to that rail line?
No? There's a bunch of people opposed to the way the route cuts through parkland south of Robbinsdale, avoiding the most transit-dependent populations in the metro instead of serving them, and there's some opposition to spending an extra couple hundred million dollars to get it all the way out to the cornfields where one single corporation has made a foolish investment, but I don't think anyone's arguing that Robbinsdale shouldn't get LRT.
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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby sdho » August 22nd, 2016, 11:50 am

So what kind of selection and prices to Trader Joe's and Lunds/Byerly's have compared to HyVee? Byerly's closed in Bloomington because it was just too expensive for the area once their sweetheart lease deal ran out and it was getting time to make an investment in their freezers.
TJ's is dirt cheap, but seems to depend on a heavy stream of customers, so you probably can't pop one up willy nilly.

The new store doesn't have to be a Byerly's or Lund's. Some of what would make a store more small-downtown-friendly is expensive, like structured parking. But much of it is cheap or even saves money, like just providing a smaller surface lot, putting parking in back, etc

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Re: Robbinsdale, Crystal & New Hope – General Topics

Postby Mdcastle » August 22nd, 2016, 6:24 pm

So where are the developers clamoring to build a small grocery store? Where are the residents asking for one? Since I doubt residents will pay for something more upscale than Cub, it would have to be cheaper than Cub which is going to be hard to do in a small store (except for apparently Trader Joes.


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