St. Paul Athletic Club - (340 Cedar St)

[spectre000]

The owner John Rupp, is appealing to the city Board of Zoning and Appeals to allow some very large dynamic signs on the western and northern face of the building. The District Council just had a meeting regarding it. There was some agnst about the additional "sign pollution". The meeting with the city is scheduled for early next month.

I guess this render wasn't just someone's fantasy. LOL. There are also plans to have a scrolling display like MPR's as well.


I could go both ways on the idea. It could give the area a little taste of "Times Square". Or it could be really garish and out of place. But I say try it out. I know the city council, and particularly Dave Thune, have been strongly opposed to the high number of billboards throughout the city. I think it'll be a tough sell for the owner.

[Le Sueur]

I'd be happy with the signage if the fantasy building was built(or any building for that matter), but if St. Paul doesn't find anything to put here, and it is just a fancy plaza for ten years I think a giant wall of advertising would be out of place.

[aguaman]

there should be a compromise here that if this new sign is allowed downtown, 5 billboards should be removed. start with these three:

two on top of the Rossmor Building:
http://maps.google.com/?ll=44.951365,-9 ... 5&t=h&z=20

one here above Babani's:
http://maps.google.com/?ll=44.949861,-9 ... 7&t=h&z=21

[mulad]

I've noticed that the MPR sign has been turned off lately. It had started looking pretty bad with all of the burnt-out LEDs, but I don't know if that's why it's off, or if there were some concerns related to CCLRT construction.

[mattaudio]

They're incandescent bulbs right? I wonder if construction vibration was lowering the life of the ticker.

[mulad]

No, it uses LEDs -- it might be a hybrid design which was originally built for incandescents, but the individual "bulbs" were arrays of ~20 LEDs. When it was working, I could hear clicking noises and something that sounded like fans running when I walked underneath it, so it may not have exactly been solid-state.

Anyway, I guess my point was there's a chance that a new big display goes up downtown, it could end up looking pretty bad after a while if it isn't designed properly -- and components will eventually go bad no matter what you do. The MPR ticker is about 8 years old at this point (it went up during the MPR remodel, which was still underway in 2004 when 89.3 became The Current), and was probably in need of significant repair two or three years ago. It's a Daktronics display -- they're based in Brookings, SD, so you'd expect them to build hardware that holds up to our weather pretty well, but I can't say if this was poorly designed, poorly maintained, or what...

[Le Sueur]

After looking at that silly fantasy rendering 3 or 4 times I got to thinking... We should salvage the old JumboTrons out of the HomerDome and hang them in downtown St. Paul

Then the image of Vintage Twins players on that wall could become a reality.

[thumbnail]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zTTiHQyQm7k/T ... ntdome.JPG[/thumbnail]
So happy this old animation made it into the new stadium!
[thumbnail]http://aeryssports.com/from-the-third-b ... _181-1.jpg[/thumbnail]

[twincitizen]

Ha! I own a "Walks Will Haunt!" T-shirt. Long live the poorly drawn pixelated ghost!

[Suburban Outcast]

I guess this render wasn't just someone's fantasy. LOL. There are also plans to have a scrolling display like MPR's as well.

Even if they built a tower, it's gonna probably end up like the Penfield and get downsized to only a few floors high .

[mplser]

then they wouldn't have built a tower, now would they? optimism!

[Suburban Outcast]

Woops, bad choice of words on my part. Another proposal for the station that I found on a MinnPost article from September shows this:
This seems the most realistic for the time being, hopefully the Green Line does fuel a high-rise getting built there in the next few years or so. It would make the dynamic signs on the Athletic Club fit in more with the station area than just having that skyway connection.

[aguaman]