Rochester

mulad
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Rochester

Postby mulad » May 25th, 2014, 5:13 pm

I'm not sure what this building is at Broadway and 3rd Street SE -- six-story building on a normal-sized parcel:

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IMAG0062 by Mulad, on Flickr

ImageIMAG0063 by Mulad, on Flickr

Minneboy
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby Minneboy » May 25th, 2014, 8:00 pm

Probably just another hotel.

lorwest
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby lorwest » May 28th, 2014, 7:54 pm

It's an office project called "the Plaza on Historic 3rd".

http://postbulletin.typepad.com/kiger/2 ... -roch.html

Minneboy
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby Minneboy » May 28th, 2014, 9:20 pm

It's not a bad looking building plus it adds a little umph.

mattaudio
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby mattaudio » July 1st, 2014, 8:25 am


Minneboy
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby Minneboy » July 1st, 2014, 8:43 pm

Did you drive down for the donuts?

mattaudio
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby mattaudio » July 2nd, 2014, 7:13 am

No. I refuse to go there. Just walking by as we had business in Rochester on Monday morning.
Last edited by mattaudio on July 2nd, 2014, 8:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

mulad
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby mulad » July 2nd, 2014, 8:30 am

My first thought on seeing that Walmart shuttle was, "They could make a connecting shuttle to the new Menards!" (though maybe that shuttle goes to the south Walmart instead of north?)

I hate how big-box stores decide to build at brand-new interchanges on the fringes of developed areas (the new Menards is northwest of the new interchange on US-52 at 65th Street, more than two miles north of their old location). It's not hard to fix -- Develop/redevelop in town (perhaps using LEED-ND as a guide?), don't rely on frontage roads (really hard to serve with transit), stack something on the big-box property (parking levels, shopping levels, or both), move the building up to the street, and have a street-facing entrance that is as good as or better than the one facing the parking (and actually staff it and keep it open for the same hours).
Last edited by mulad on July 2nd, 2014, 8:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

mattaudio
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby mattaudio » July 2nd, 2014, 8:43 am

We actually stopped at the new Menards (twice) on Sunday evening. It's rather inconvenient, even for driving, because they overbuilt the entire area. You exit the freeway onto a stroad (which was previously a two lane country road), then go a half mile west to a secondary stroad (gotta space out those interchanges for the hypothetical 2030 traffic assuming compounding yearly increases in demand), then a frontage road around the side of Menards, and finally into their parking lot. It's nothing besides a giant Menards and a bunch of pavement. The rest is all empty fields. Awful.

Edit: Oh, forgot to mention. They are widening the 55th Street NW bridge over Hwy 52, probably to put in double left turn lanes at this diamond interchange. I've NEVER seen congestion at this interchange, although I've used it many times.

Mdcastle
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby Mdcastle » July 2nd, 2014, 9:15 pm

I'm sure Menards would disagree on whether all the alleged problems are "hard to fix". Put a second door in where you'd have to have more space devoted to cash registers and employees to staff them in case all the foot traffic on the street wants to make an impulse purchase of plywood? Completely shut the store down for a few months to rebuild when they could built a new one nearby? (Although they do level and rebuild when there's no other choice)? Structured parking? As a frequent Menards customer I certainly don't want to pay for the increased pricing due to these changes.

75th street- the plan is for double left turn lanes now, then a diverging diamond in the future, and finally a SPUI when the structure needs to be rebuilt.

mulad
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby mulad » July 3rd, 2014, 12:05 am

To be clear, I meant that they should have fixed it in their original site planning and design. They should have moved closer to the center of town rather than further away from it. By continuing to build as cheaply as possible, they're continuing a race to the bottom.

mattaudio
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby mattaudio » July 3rd, 2014, 8:20 am

The people who shop at Menards should be the ones paying for Menard's decisions which make them money. Stroads and interchanges cost money. This interchange was $11.6 million dollars, and that didn't even include the multi-million-dollar bridge that was built with the ROC52 project, and it doesn't include the 55th St NW bridge being widened right now to allow for more turn lanes onto Hwy 52. Let's lowball it and assume $15 million total. That's $150 for every resident of Rochester.

But who gets the benefit here? Nearly exclusively the speculative land owners who were waiting on the interchange to develop their greenfield sites. Menards owns that entire northwest corner, and there's signs up all over listing outlots for sale (they have their own commercial RE department). A new interchange probably doubled or tripled the value of their property. That's the only reason why it's valuable, and that value should be captured to pay for the infrastructure cost.

Right now it's residents of Rochester or the state forking over cash to Menards.

Mdcastle
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby Mdcastle » July 3rd, 2014, 9:24 am

The residents of Rochester elected officials who wanted suburban growth, so that seems to me like it's fair that they pay for it (although I wouldn't have objected to a TIF district). I imagine as fast as Rochester's growing there's going to be a lot of housing built for people that want breathing room out in their equivalent of exurbs and a lot of other businesses that will utilize the new interchanges too.

mattaudio
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby mattaudio » July 3rd, 2014, 9:48 am

It's criminal that it wasn't presented to the public as a way to spend $150 per human being in the City of Rochester in order to hand Menards millions of dollars.

Wedgeguy
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby Wedgeguy » July 3rd, 2014, 1:16 pm

To be clear, I meant that they should have fixed it in their original site planning and design. They should have moved closer to the center of town rather than further away from it. By continuing to build as cheaply as possible, they're continuing a race to the bottom.
More building goes on around the edge of town than in the center, at least do it yourself projects. You are also catering to the surrounding communities, not just Rochester proper. They put themselves where the easiest access to the great people would be. That is why they have 2 store there. One near I-90 and the other on the north end on 52 where most of their customers would be coming in from.

mattaudio
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby mattaudio » July 28th, 2014, 8:14 am

This is beyond unfortunate. Mayo is putting office space on one of the most prominent corners in Rochester.
http://www.postbulletin.com/business/ma ... 48722.html
Of note, this building was once the Rochester downtown Dayton's, designed by Victor Gruen with clear resemblance to downtown St. Paul, the original Southdale store, etc.

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Nathan
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby Nathan » July 28th, 2014, 8:33 am

This is beyond unfortunate. Mayo is putting office space on one of the most prominent corners in Rochester.
http://www.postbulletin.com/business/ma ... 48722.html
Of note, this building was once the Rochester downtown Dayton's, designed by Victor Gruen with clear resemblance to downtown St. Paul, the original Southdale store, etc.
unfortunateI i think its pretty awesome, its going to be like target corps meeting hall...

mattaudio
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby mattaudio » July 28th, 2014, 8:38 am

Maybe we read it to mean different things. I see "The space should be ready for staff to move in by November" and assume this is going to be "war room" space where teams can congregate for projects. It would take a lot of work and care to craft it into something like what Target has done.

But even if this is an employee "student union" as good as what target did, is it pretty awesome when we look at the alternative? Target replaced multiple storefronts on Nicollet Mall with a private space. Mayo is replacing at least one storefront, with easy conversion to multiple storefronts based on my walk through the building, into private space.

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Nathan
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Re: Rochester - General

Postby Nathan » July 28th, 2014, 9:35 am

co-locate for groups and individuals sounds like flexible open space to me... who knows until they do it but it's still good to have people in and out and keep the space active.

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Re: Rochester - General

Postby mplsjaromir » July 30th, 2014, 7:44 am

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