Downtown Minneapolis - News & General Topics

Downtown - North Loop - Mill District - Elliot Park - Loring Park
Multimodal
US Bank Plaza
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby Multimodal » December 3rd, 2018, 1:56 pm

What seems to be happening now is that some people are discovering that they need cars less than they used to.

It’s not uniform across age & income level, but there are some surprising changes (suburbanites downsizing to the urban core and young people moving back to cities, for example).

For the past 100 years, car ownership was something to aspire to. Autos were beautiful, if not reliable. The call of the open road, the new drive-throughs and drive-ups, motels, interstate highways, etc.

If you look at cars today, there’s a broad swath of very generic looking vehicles that most people buy (Asian & American, mostly), and a small elite of expensive vehicles (generally European, but some duded-up American trucks & SUVs and Asian aspirational brands). Roads are congested, parking is getting rarer & more expensive. Washington Ave. has transformed from a series of surface parking lots to a dense urban core in just the past decade or so.

Even people who say that you’ll take their car from their cold, dead hands are often buying very generic vehicles that are more about utility than aspiration or sportiness or design. These people are attached to their vehicles because that’s all they know—and they were brought up thinking only poor people didn’t own or use cars.

There is little holding Americans on to their vehicles other than inertia. As parking & driving get harder & more expensive, as things get built closer together, as transit becomes more widespread & useful, and walking & biking become normalized, society will change.

Didier
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby Didier » December 3rd, 2018, 2:30 pm

There is little holding Americans on to their vehicles other than inertia.
More than 3.6 million people live in the Twin Cities metro, and fewer than 750,000 live in Minneapolis or St. Paul. Downtown Minneapolis has 44,000 residents and 160,000 daily workers. No matter how you look at it, most of the Twin Cities build environment will never be hospitable to a car-free lifestyle.

Silophant
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby Silophant » December 3rd, 2018, 2:32 pm

You're spot on. Literally every residential project that's been presented to the DMNA over the past year that's included less than two parking spaces per unit has had at least one (former suburbanite) committee member questioning why the developer is making the crazy assumption that every unit won't have two vehicles, and expressing flat disbelief when they are told that the developer's existing buildings only get about one spot used per unit, and they don't want to build a pile of expensive parking spots that would sit empty. It's hard to imagine that different people have different lifestyles.
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Didier
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby Didier » December 3rd, 2018, 3:18 pm

To be sure, my point was more that car-free lifestyles are possible in some parts of the city, but that the metro at large is not at all hospitable to walking and taking transit anywhere, much less everywhere.

xandrex
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby xandrex » December 3rd, 2018, 4:08 pm

I've always thought buildings with more parking spaces downtown always come down to:
-Wealthier renters in expensive buildings who want to keep their cars (especially if they work a corporate job on a suburban campus).
-The inability to park cars for free on streets most of the time.
-Lack of basic services for car-free living open on nights and weekends.

The first two probably aren't going to change (parking isn't going to get cheaper on downtown streets and weaning the wealthy off their cars will take a while). But fixing the third could go a long way in getting more car-free residents downtown. These days, it seems downtown does have a decent number of services – Target, Lunds, Trader Joe's, CVS/Walgreens, more restaurants/non-clubby bars/liquor stores, etc. But downtown lacks any sort of retail node and is instead half-finished corridors around downtown (Washington, Nicollet, Hennepin, 1st). Uptown, CenHen, Stadium Village, Central/Lowry, and even HiLake have better concentrations of everyday retail than just about anywhere downtown.

amiller92
Wells Fargo Center
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby amiller92 » December 4th, 2018, 10:16 am

When I lived downtown, before the Hennepin Ave L&B opened, I'd drive across the river for groceries once a week. Once the new L&B was there, I could get my everyday shoppings done between it, CVS, and Target. And there was a Macy's for non-everyday shopping.

Even though I didn't use it much, I kept my car because I had a parking space. Probably should have gotten rid of it when my wife moved in with me, but instead we rented a second parking place in our building for pretty cheap. She needed a car to get to her suburban job.

Fast forward a few years and we bought a house, replaced the falling down single car garage with a two car one and that car I almost never use is still sitting there. I gotta get rid of that thing.

billhelm
Nicollet Mall
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby billhelm » December 4th, 2018, 11:03 am

a lot of downtown residents use uber and lyft on nights and weekends, even to go to places like target. I know because I pick a lot of them up. It's not the cheapest, obviously, but it's probably less than the cost of car ownership if they have cheaper modes available during the week.

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jtoemke
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby jtoemke » December 4th, 2018, 12:07 pm

This week's Planning Commission submissions:

Outside Downtown —
Units: 243

Parking Spaces: 125
Ratio: 0.514 park/unit

Bike Parking Spaces: 244
Ratio: 1.00 bike park/unit

Downtown —
Units: 1082

Parking Spaces: 991
Ratio: 0.915 park/unit

Bike Parking Spaces: 806
Ratio: .745 bike park/unit
Was there any more info on these new projects?

bapster2006
Foshay Tower
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby bapster2006 » December 4th, 2018, 4:56 pm

45th and Minnehaha: approved
47th and Hiawatha: denied
44th and Harriet: approved
2325 E 38th: approved
12xx 4th St SE: approved

KML_1981
Nicollet Mall
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby KML_1981 » December 17th, 2018, 2:52 pm

New webcam for "East Town Apartments". Sorry if this had it's own thread, but couldn't find it with a quick search.

https://app.oxblue.com/open/Frana

twinkess
Target Field
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby twinkess » December 17th, 2018, 8:04 pm

Where IS the webcam thread? I was looking for it the other day.

twincitizen
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby twincitizen » December 17th, 2018, 9:23 pm

It's under Anything Goes: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1841

Has anyone updated the Google Map at the top of this thread? Do we care about that anymore or was that more of a 2012-2014 thing? Is it so out of date it's not worth the time?

Observation on this forum's 6.5 year anniversary month: The pace of downtown development was significantly slower in the first couple years of this forum's existence (mid-2012 to mid-2014). Man we really thought things were going well then, with LPM and Nic on 5th downtown, like 10 buildings simultaneously under construction in Uptown and around the U, plus the mere announcement of Ryan's Downtown East / Wells Fargo project. People were already predicting an apartment slowdown by like early 2014. Whoops. Obviously the bump at the end of this year was accelerated by not wanting to get caught up in Inclusionary Zoning (mandatory 10% affordable housing inclusion), but those projects still would have come through the pipeline in early 2019. Almost certain 2019 will be slower than 2016-2018's blistering pace.

Silophant
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby Silophant » December 17th, 2018, 9:45 pm

Every so often I look at it, think "I should update this!"


then I look at how much of a task it would be and give up before I even begin.
Joey Senkyr
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alexschief
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby alexschief » December 18th, 2018, 9:51 am

Last night I did a little bit of searching and totaled up the year-end totals from the Minneapolis Planning Commission. With the caveats that may have double counted something, sometimes in presentations slightly different counts are presented, the entire phased Calhoun Towers project is being counted here, and not every approved project gets built, here are the numbers:

Total Proposed Units: 6,965

Total Proposed Car Parking Spaces: 5,869
Car-Parking-To-Units Ratio: 0.84

Total Proposed bike Parking Spaces: 6,077
Bike-Parking-To-Units Ratio: 0.87

The unit numbers are ahead of the rate the city will need to accommodate projected growth, but that's as it should be, given the current strength of the economy and the apparent likelihood of a downturn in the future. It's good that the city is banking housing now. I'm really glad to see that the car-parking-to-unit ratio is comfortably below 1, and am really happy to see the bike-parking-to-unit ratio is higher. I don't see a trend month-to-month in the data (and didn't expect to see one), but maybe one day this holiday period I'll be sufficiently idle enough to look up the numbers from previous years.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby FISHMANPET » December 19th, 2018, 3:39 pm

The Upper Midwest of the MS society has left their location in the mill district at 200 12th Ave. S (to 2829 University Ave SE) so this building is now empty. The property including parking lot is about .75 acre, but a bit under 3/4 of the block is a building the UofM appears to be leasing (University departments are there but not owned by the University)

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MN Fats
Union Depot
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby MN Fats » December 21st, 2018, 1:37 am

Good spot for a tower??

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Nathan
Capella Tower
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby Nathan » December 21st, 2018, 4:45 am

I would hope the block can develop in 2 or 3 separate parcels. I'd really like some retail on the corner diagonal from gold medal park.

Anondson
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby Anondson » January 21st, 2019, 8:55 pm

Minneapolis Regional Chamber to merge with Move Minneapolis

https://finance-commerce.com/2019/01/ch ... anization/

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby FISHMANPET » January 23rd, 2019, 11:15 pm

The Upper Midwest of the MS society has left their location in the mill district at 200 12th Ave. S (to 2829 University Ave SE) so this building is now empty. The property including parking lot is about .75 acre, but a bit under 3/4 of the block is a building the UofM appears to be leasing (University departments are there but not owned by the University)
And drilling was happening yesterday and today.

sanchopanza
Metrodome
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Re: Downtown Minneapolis General Topics & Development Map

Postby sanchopanza » February 11th, 2019, 7:33 pm

Does anyone know if there is such a thing as "Minneapolishenge" for sunsets/sunrise?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanhenge

I am thinking that Mpls might have a chance in both summer and winter and STP might in winter due to the grid alignment. My mind is wandering with these snowy days.

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