Uptown - LynLake - The Wedge - News & General

[MNdible]

If my wife and other female friends are any indication, the internet is where all shoes are now purchased.

Paying for prime retail space and for pesky employees is for suckers.

[grant1simons2]

I still like to get my shoes and all in person, how do you know if it feels good or if it's a right fit, all shoe sizes vary

[Wedgeguy]

I still like to get my shoes and all in person, how do you know if it feels good or if it's a right fit, all shoe sizes vary

I have to agree with you. Shoes and clothes are meant to be tried on to see if they fit properly., looks good on you, and saves you the trouble of having to send it back for an exchange or refund.

[Nathan]

those of us with larger size needs live the internet and free return policies!

[TommyT]

I'm with you guys on trying everything on, but that's because I'm a really small guy (5'3") that almost nothing fits the same. I can be an x-small in one brand and a medium in another! Same with shoes, range from 7 - 8 1/2.

[lordmoke]

Not quite Uptown, but this is ridiculous. The city is (seriously) ordering demolition of a kid's tree house. The documents even have a handwritten letter from the poor kid attached.

http://minneapolismn.gov/www/groups/pub ... 130469.pdf

From this agenda:
http://minneapolismn.gov/meetings/zba/WCMS1P-130450

[David Greene]

Jesus.

[MNdible]

So, this is clearly a complaint driven issue. If you looked at the photos attached to the appeal, you'd guess that the treehouse belongs to the neighboring house, as it's much closer to that house than to the owners' house. Does that mean they should tear it down? Probably not, but I'd probably also be miffed if I woke up to find something like that going up in my front yard.

[FISHMANPET]

It's a complaint driven issue by a turd of a neighbor. The owner has attempted to contact him and he gets no response. Instead of talking with his neighbor like a reasonable human being he want straight to the city.

This is why we can't have nice things.

[lordmoke]

City Pages loves these kinds of stories, so I sent it to them. If the neighbor is going to act like a tool, hopefully he at least gets publicly shamed for it.

[min-chi-cbus]

It's a complaint driven issue by a turd of a neighbor. The owner has attempted to contact him and he gets no response. Instead of talking with his neighbor like a reasonable human being he want straight to the city.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Unfortunately in this day and age we are encouraged to avoid conflict resolution and instead go to the authorities (I.e. "Rat somebody out"), if for no other reason than for legal purposes (covering your ass).

[grant1simons2]

Meh, don't think it's a "in this day and age," problem, just a person who doesn't know how to deal with people it seems.

[seanrichardryan]

18th & Emerson is not Uptown.

[Smoothuser]

Google street view of treehouse construction. Looks like it's topped out at 1 story. http://goo.gl/maps/uIvtn

[Nathan]

18th & Emerson is not Uptown.

isn't that exactly what he said in the original post?

[twincitizen]

I'm sure this news will be posted elsewhere on the forum, but since the majority of the properties are in Uptown, I thought it should be shared here:
http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/b ... ments.html

CPM teamed up with a Chicago-based investor to purchase 11 apartment buildings (407 units) from Warner Properties, which has held many of these properties for decades. 7 of the 11 buildings are in Uptown, and a few of them are pretty prominent.

Warner Properties' website, showing all 11 properties: http://www.warnerproperties.net/buildings/index.cfm

I'd love to see some investment in the Dupont/Emerson Court complex. I don't know how easy it would be to remove that gray paint from the brick, or what it looks like underneath, but I'd suspect those buildings used to be a lot more attractive. Does anyone have an old photo from before they were painted? It currently resembles a prison. Presumably the purchase included this extra parking lot across Dupont: http://gis.hennepin.us/property/map/def ... 2924440060 It's small, but could definitely be assembled and developed into something. Ideally, you'd buy up everything on that side of the alley (this lot, plus four others) and develop something that scales up to Elan to the south.

[twincitizen]

Responding to a post in the Uptown Hotel thread:

Kind of wonder if there's any possibility of doing mixed use retail, hotel, office. The demand for office is obviously there.

While I think that's a great idea... I worry that we've now had so much development in Uptown and points east toward Lyn/Lake along the Greenway that it'll be years before transit can remotely catch up. Uptown is really a car sewer, even with all the density. I hope Metro Transit and the City are really looking at this and taking the steps to get things moving.

I just feel like we've been studying and studying this corridor - all while hundreds of thousands of new apartments keep being built. At some point things are going to become crazy (and not in a good way) for Uptown.

Great post. Absolutely yes, we should be hammering Metro Transit and the city/county about this. Lake Street arterial BRT needs to be operating by 2020 and Midtown rail by 2030. Period. Those are both on Hennepin County (their property) to provide support and push Met Transit/Council to make it happen. I have good feelings about Lake Street aBRT becoming a reality, but not likely to be in operation before 2019. As for better north-south transit...yeah we're kind of screwed. Hennepin aBRT has basically fallen off the map and Lyndale was never on it to begin with. Nicollet streetcar doesn't really do a damn thing for Uptown. SWLRT helps a little, by hopefully reducing some of the cut through traffic from West Lake and inner St. Louis Park.

The City is doing a great job on bike-walk stuff though. The 36th St cycletrack and future 29th Street woonerf, for example. Improvements to the bottleneck cycletrack will draw more people as well. Of course improvements are needed in The Wedge and Whittier to get people there, and hopefully that is coming.

As for cars themselves, I'm really hopeful that a decent percentage of the scores of people who are currently car-lite in Uptown will decide to give up car ownership. I bet a great deal of the people riding the 4, 6, and 17 into downtown everyday still own cars, even though they rarely drive them, and never drive them to work. What a waste of money. As the neighborhood continues to densify, adding amenities while simultaneously making parking more scarce, I really hope these car-lite people trend away from car ownership, choosing to bike/bus/Car2Go for non-work trips as well. I drive from Whittier to Richfield for work, but practically refuse to drive my car around the neighborhood once I've parked it for the day. If I can make my girlfriend walk from Grand all the way to Lunds, then dammit, other people can too!

[PhilmerPhil]

The City is doing a great job on bike-walk stuff though. The 36th St cycletrack and future 29th Street woonerf, for example. Improvements to the bottleneck cycletrack will draw more people as well. Of course improvements are needed in The Wedge and Whittier to get people there, and hopefully that is coming.

All in all, Uptown is pretty bikeable, however the core streets are still extremely hostile for biking. Hennepin, Lagoon, Lake, Lyndale, etc. are terrifying for most people to feel comfortable on. I've recently started pedicabbing a little bit in Uptown and the issues with it's core bikeability have really jumped out to the foreground for me. Relative to my experience pedicabbing downtown, traffic actually moves really fast on Uptown arterials, or when it's not moving fast, it's congested at the lights, leaving very little room to navigate on a bike. 29th St, the Greenway, Bryant Ave, 36th St, etc. are all nice options, but none of them provide the business access that the major streets do.

At some point, and it might not be in the next decade, these streets are going to need a paradigm shift that supports their walkable surroundings at the cost of making them easy for driving a car.

[David Greene]

As for better north-south transit...yeah we're kind of screwed. Hennepin aBRT has basically fallen off the map and Lyndale was never on it to begin with.

I'll bet once SWLRT gets a bit more settled Hennepin will jump up. It was put lower on the list due to the SWLRT study. With bus realignment around the LRT we'll have lots of opportunity to improve things.

[uptowncarag]

Responding to a post in the Uptown Hotel thread:

Kind of wonder if there's any possibility of doing mixed use retail, hotel, office. The demand for office is obviously there.

While I think that's a great idea... I worry that we've now had so much development in Uptown and points east toward Lyn/Lake along the Greenway that it'll be years before transit can remotely catch up. Uptown is really a car sewer, even with all the density. I hope Metro Transit and the City are really looking at this and taking the steps to get things moving.

I just feel like we've been studying and studying this corridor - all while hundreds of thousands of new apartments keep being built. At some point things are going to become crazy (and not in a good way) for Uptown.

Great post. Absolutely yes, we should be hammering Metro Transit and the city/county about this. Lake Street arterial BRT needs to be operating by 2020 and Midtown rail by 2030. Period. Those are both on Hennepin County (their property) to provide support and push Met Transit/Council to make it happen. I have good feelings about Lake Street aBRT becoming a reality, but not likely to be in operation before 2019. As for better north-south transit...yeah we're kind of screwed. Hennepin aBRT has basically fallen off the map and Lyndale was never on it to begin with. Nicollet streetcar doesn't really do a damn thing for Uptown. SWLRT helps a little, by hopefully reducing some of the cut through traffic from West Lake and inner St. Louis Park.

The City is doing a great job on bike-walk stuff though. The 36th St cycletrack and future 29th Street woonerf, for example. Improvements to the bottleneck cycletrack will draw more people as well. Of course improvements are needed in The Wedge and Whittier to get people there, and hopefully that is coming.

As for cars themselves, I'm really hopeful that a decent percentage of the scores of people who are currently car-lite in Uptown will decide to give up car ownership. I bet a great deal of the people riding the 4, 6, and 17 into downtown everyday still own cars, even though they rarely drive them, and never drive them to work. What a waste of money. As the neighborhood continues to densify, adding amenities while simultaneously making parking more scarce, I really hope these car-lite people trend away from car ownership, choosing to bike/bus/Car2Go for non-work trips as well. I drive from Whittier to Richfield for work, but practically refuse to drive my car around the neighborhood once I've parked it for the day. If I can make my girlfriend walk from Grand all the way to Lunds, then dammit, other people can too!

Give up my car!!!! Are you out of your mind. I reverse commute and choose to live in uptown. I make several stops on my way home. Having a car is freedom. Don't you just ever drive around? I go on road trips and often just drive for the hell of it. Seriously? I would never give up my car.