urbanMSP

https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/ ... 4PyEv81zbc

Another proposal for the public works site bites the dust.

Too bad. This was a pretty great proposal for Edina.

Not really, it was pretty terrible from both a planning perspective and a resident perspective.

The plans for the neighborhood (from a decade ago) called for mixed use, multistory buildings with underground parking.

The overall project was a senior co-op (good, in theory, but more later) and a 2-story, single use restaurant with surface parking. It's atrocious use of what little space the city owns and has complete control over.

A restaurant would be great there, but not a standalone 2-story building with surface parking. Terrible land use (80+% of the city is SFH zoned, and that's not changing any time soon).

As for the co-op, my partner & I actually went to one of their sales pitches. Honestly, I think it's that potential residents were too smart to fall for this terrible idea. With co-ops (or at least this co-op), you buy a certain percentage of the value, but never 100%. What? Right, you can never own 100%.

And whatever percentage you do buy, is the buy-in percentage in perpetuity. If you want to sell, the new owners buy *only the percent you paid for* and they will never own more than you owned.

So, unlike a condo, (a) you never own 100%, and (b) you don't decide on the management agency because they own it and you just pay whatever maintenance fees they demand. It's a croc of poop, honestly.

IIRC, co-ops are less about building equity and more about long-term housing solutions. They're extremely uncommon outside of New York, and really only make sense as an alternative to traditional ownership models if there's a significant cost difference.

I don't think they're extremely uncommon. Maybe for all-ages properties they are rare, but senior co-ops seem somewhat common. I believe all the "Applewood Pointe" places that United Properties has built across the metro are structured as co-ops.

Are there any developers willing to build mixed use anymore absent the city forcing them to include ground floor retail as a condition of being able to build their apartments, or the city coughing up huge amounts of their taxpayer's money for a subsidy?

The Trilogy development at Blake and Excelsior is unsubsidized full market rate and has four ground floor retail spaces.

Though in comparison, the 325 Blake is being subsidized for affordable housing and only one building (that has not been started) will have ground floor retail. The site has separate single story restaurant building back by the creek, not by the street.