RBC Gateway & Four Seasons - 37 stories - 519'

[Tyler]

Not naive at all, imo. Rich people love luxury hotels, and will travel to destinations just because these hotels exist. Especially early on, there will be many coming through just to check out the property/service/food etc. and if reviews are good many more will come who otherwise never would have.

[Tyler]

You’ll also get the people who will come simply by seeing the hotel on the four seasons website. They won’t necessarily know anything about minneapolis, and might only venture out on four seasons recommended/curated excursions. It’s definitely a whole different animal then exists here otherwise.

[Tyler]

Just to keep posting— if you look at their website you’ll already see how they will be catering luxury leisure travelers in a way that’s totally different than anywhere else. And that’s only going to expand. Sure, it’s now the most luxurious hotel in town for people who were coming anyways. But it will be much more of a destination/draw than people might think.

[TroyGBiv]

I was an ad agency guy and staying in a hotel for 500 a night wasn’t really a big deal… things have changed and budgets have been much tighter for agencies over the past 5 to 10 years… but many agencies are owner by a holding company and they negotiate corp rates that are pretty competitive. I stayed at the Mandarin Oriental in Miami for many years and those rooms were 500 to 800 but our negotiated rates were always around 295 to 395… sometimes even less. And the executives that were higher up than me would book suites for much more. But this economy and covid have trashed the travel industry and most agency people I know travel less than one tenth of what they did pre-Covid and work from home. It will be interesting to see how they do. A friend from here came back last month to visit family and he stayed at the Hyatt on Nicollet and said that it was pretty trashy. I think we might see more hotel renovations as the travel economy picks up…

[seanrichardryan]

As downtown workers return, there's a new tower on the Minneapolis skyline
The RBC Gateway tower is the tallest office building to be built downtown in 30 years.

https://www.startribune.com/as-downtown ... 600153179/

[grant1simons2]

Not a single door on Nicollet

The lobby entrance set back on the plaza doesn't count.

Small retail spaces booming in North Loop, could easily bleed into downtown starting here, and developers just don't even try instead.

[altus4]

There's been some coverage recently of the Gavin Kaysen restaurant and cafe:

https://mspmag.com/eat-and-drink/foodie ... staurants/
https://www.startribune.com/new-four-se ... 600160776/
https://press.fourseasons.com/minneapol ... staurants/

[Blaisdell Greenway]

Love this writeup from Lileks. "It's fine!"

https://www.startribune.com/rbc-gateway ... 600177035/

[BigIdeasGuy]

Yup pretty much, but then what's the last building over 5 stories that's been significantly better than fine.

Maybe 11 on the River but is it?

[Anondson]

Yup pretty much, but then what's the last building over 5 stories that's been significantly better than fine.

Maybe 11 on the River but is it?

Residential? Hard to say.

The new city office building though is quite above fine. IMO.

[BigIdeasGuy]

Yup pretty much, but then what's the last building over 5 stories that's been significantly better than fine.

Maybe 11 on the River but is it?

Residential? Hard to say.

The new city office building though is quite above fine. IMO.

That's fair, I would rate that one noticeably above fine. The larger point I was trying to make is that no one would confuse MSP's recent vertical building as architectural masterpieces.

[StandishGuy]

I dunno. I've traveled to Denver, Portland and Boston n recent years, and this building is better than what I've seen in those cities. Minneapolis has a far better skyline IMO.

We're just not going to get premier architecture like in NYC, Chicago and Toronto as a second or third-tier metro. IMO it matters more what happens at street level anyways, and Nicollet Mall is really faded in the last decade as a shopping and entertainment district. This building does little to improve that.

Also, I find Lileks obnoxious. Are his articles supposed to be funny or just trolling?

[Didier]

I, too, do not get Lileks.

[AccordGuy]

I dunno. I've traveled to Denver, Portland and Boston n recent years, and this building is better than what I've seen in those cities. Minneapolis has a far better skyline IMO.

We're just not going to get premier architecture like in NYC, Chicago and Toronto as a second or third-tier metro. IMO it matters more what happens at street level anyways, and Nicollet Mall is really faded in the last decade as a shopping and entertainment district. This building does little to improve that.

Also, I find Lileks obnoxious. Are his articles supposed to be funny or just trolling?

I have been to those cities as well and I agree that our skyline is much better than most cities our size. What we did not get is a plethora of plain boxy glass and metal skyscrapers in the 60's and 70's. RBC does not bother me at all but I think we missed the boat on having something "iconic".
The leadership in the city of Minneapolis just does not care about great architecture, they are more interested in just getting something built. I have been to Chicago many times and nowhere do I see these ugly precast and metal structures like the ones going up all over the place here and in many other cities I've visited like Milwaukee and Denver. Truthfully, I would take a surface lot over ugly, cheap looking infill anyday.

[RedDutch]

It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall at United Properties backroom discussions and see if they think they missed the boat by not adding more condos and height.

[VacantLuxuries]

You can’t zone for good architecture though. When you try, you get the weird buildings made of different panels trying to meet the letter of the building materials laws.

Commercial real estate lenders also don’t really care about architecture. They just want their loan paid back as quickly as possible. A private company building a headquarters would care more, but we don’t have the space pressures (or location pressure on our suburban corps to move to chase talent) to do that yet. To get there, it will take a lot of smaller, in your view blander, buildings to create the pressure for speculative residential and office developments to feel they need to compete on style in order for their buildings to be successful.

And the street level experience matters to making downtown a place where people actually want to live and work. For all the skyline prestige they bring, the inward, skyway mall focused nature of our big four harm the vitality of downtown, making it less likely people will want to spend time there.

I’d rather we fill every remaining surface lot with ‘okay’ towers that have great street activation, so that when one of the older, <5 story buildings or crumbling ramps is ready for demo, there’s a critical mass of activity to support a developer who wants to build the next skyline defining building.

[bapster2006]

RBC - Four Seasons tower Minneapolis from 750 ft 4-23-2022 by Matt Bappe, on Flickr

[Nick]

It looks nice enough on the skyline, but the Nicollet frontage is pretty bad. They put the kitchen in at Nicollet & 3rd, no doors, and blinds most of them time I’ve gone by. Feels like it’s been time to throw in the towel on Nicollet for a while.

[Trademark]

Honestly i don't get the fascination with making the skyline look more attractive. Are we creating more housing? Reducing parking? More sustainability? Anything beyond that seems like a waste of time and money and trying to hold developers to arbitrary standards will push more away and result in less developments.

[martykoessel]

Honestly i don't get the fascination with making the skyline look more attractive. Are we creating more housing? Reducing parking? More sustainability? Anything beyond that seems like a waste of time and money and trying to hold developers to arbitrary standards will push more away and result in less developments.

I agree! The commercial core of downtown has felt depressing as heck since COVID hit, and until street-level activity builds, the skyline is next to irrelevant. Skyways don't help, since what's left of the office worker population appears nervous about mingling on the creepy streets. Plus the trees on Nicollet Mall keep dying.