urbanMSP

The Woolworth building is having a Brokers party today. Had some food spread on a table and open doors with the redesign concept rendering on a board outside.

Rumors swirl about Grand Avenue lot!

http://www.twincities.com/2016/05/04/st ... al-estate/

I will wager money, there will be no Apple Store on Grand Ave. anywhere. Grand Ave businesses chased Apple off the last time Apple looked. Grand businesses told Apple to GTFO because of parking, that Apple customers would use up all "their free parking".

No successful businesses on Grand! We want only mildly successful.

At this point the repeating rumor of "Apple considering Grand Ave" again and again borders on the kind of sad clickbait rampant right now, "[celebrity] moving to [random town]" the naïve keep falling for.

Agreed. While I'd love to see an Apple Store in Saint Paul, it just isn't going to happen on Grand Ave.

Bummer. I have fond memories of those apartments from my Macalester days. Too bad they got that rundown. At the time, they were nicer than the ones across the street above Coffeenews (now French Meadow).

Interesting developments in the Macalaster neighborhood. Tom Wellna, who up until last week headed the High Winds Fund, was let go. High Winds is Macalaster's neighborhood development arm. The rumor is that Wellna was backing neighbors who are resisting more commercial development in that block. He apparently got crossways with the college leadership on the issue.

I know that's just rumors, but why on earth would anyone object to replacing that existing commercial building with commercial development? There are no residents who live within a block of there (except for Macalester students).

I should have been more specific, the issue was across the street, neighbors are on Lincoln Ave, south of Grand.

Interesting. Wellna's been there since I was a student in the late 90s. I remember interviewing him for the school newspaper.

CRBE seeking tenants at the Silgan Building in Hamline-Midway.

*locked* http://finance-commerce.com/2016/05/one ... r-license/

Also, Can-Can Wonderland has an instagram if you want to check on their progress.

https://www.instagram.com/cancanwonderland/

Parking Pain on Payne
http://www.lillienews.com/articles/2016 ... 9D-parking
“Destination Payne"
Frustrating article. But underneath it, sounds like a reasonable plan: Share the darn off-street parking!
Lots of talk about lack of parking, parking minimum "issue," but no real explanation for the what the issue is. It sounds like there may be some people actually looking to remove or amend parking minimums in the area, but the article just alludes to changes rather than giving specifics.

St. Paul tops 300,000: http://www.startribune.com/met-council- ... 379001091/

Looks like Minneapolis numbers in there too - 412,517

Take your replies here please: https://forum.streets.mn/viewtopic.php?f ... 19#p116319

Thought this was a good article summarizing St. Paul projects in the coming year(s). Nice map they included as well.

http://www.twincities.com/2016/05/12/st ... s-of-2016/

Great find! I forgot about most of these projects and I even found some new ones too. There's a lot going on in Saint Paul, which is wonderful.

Department of HHS needs about 100k more office space somewhere in St. Paul:

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/b ... seeks.html

I'm curious where they land since that is the amount of space Cray was looking for.

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/n ... -paul.html

100 room hotel planned at 360 N. Robert St.

*The developers plan to incorporate the Endicott Arcade, a single-story retail center on the east side of the building, into the hotel's entry.
*To help finance the development, Madison and Stencil plan to seek historic tax credits to "put [the complex] back to its original condition," he said.
*"I don't have a brand yet, but we've talked to a number of different flags," Crockarell said. "We've kind of picked one, but we haven't signed any contractual papers yet."
*Most of the tenants have agreed to move into other office buildings that Madison owns.