urbanMSP

The wait is agonizing. Can they drag this out any fricking longer?

If the state was going to give them some of what they wanted, I wish we had given them the sales tax exemption instead of the property tax exemption. A sales tax exemption, a one-time subsidy with less direct opportunity costs and which is overshadowed by massive budget surpluses, seems much more appealing to me than an ongoing subsidy with ongoing opportunity costs via property tax exemption.

The property tax exemption was clearly the most important one, though.

From Finance & Commerce: "Estimates put the sales tax exemption for the soccer facility between $3 million and $5 million".

Doesn't seem like all that much.

http://finance-commerce.com/2016/05/sal ... r-stadium/

Today's MinnPost story said a retroactive sales tax exemption is essentially a formality.

A similar article about that from F & C:


http://finance-commerce.com/2016/05/sal ... r-stadium/

Don't think these have been posted yet. Here are the 'opening day' stadium site plan that goes before the CAC tonight and the Planning Commission June 10th. The draft AUAR is due on Monday 5/30 (probably Tuesday).

https://www.stpaul.gov/sites/default/fi ... MITTAL.pdf

and updated master plan:

https://www.stpaul.gov/sites/default/fi ... EVISED.pdf

Looks like there is a lot of RAARRR PARKING in the 'opening day' layout. Hopefully, the full site development doesn't get stuck in bureaucratic gridlock and stay that way.

Would there ever be a possibility to land-bridge across I-94, possibly closer to the Pascal bridge? This could eventually tie into redevelopment near the Snelby intersection, thereby creating an eastern arc that allows for human-scale land uses and a walkable-bikeable corridor that crosses I-94 while bypassing the awful Snelling superstroad section.

As I'm sure you all heard, Dayton pocket-vetoed the tax bill due to a clerical error (a $101 million clerical error), and the soccer stadium tax break was in that bill. So now the fate of the stadium is in question: http://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/06/07 ... -bill-veto (sorry for the MPR link all you MPR haters)

Wonderful news.

This was pretty optimistic of him, "'I trust that our legislators and our governor will do the right thing and they'll have a special session and they'll hash out all the details and make sure that everyone in Minnesota wins,' Thao said."

From the outside, not knowing what I don't know, this is a frustrating little ballet between the two sides. But this pocket veto was a pretty bold move. Either everyone comes back and figures some stuff out (in which case the soccer stadium is likely fine), or else everyone goes home with nothing to show.

I'm mostly optimistic that it's the former, but with Daudt (and, frankly, Dayton) I wouldn't be terribly surprised if both sides overplayed their hand here.

Yeah, pretty sure that the drafting error was just the excuse that Dayton was looking for in order to veto the tax bill and therefore gain a little more leverage over the Republicans to come to a global agreement.

Brian Quarstad had this on his site, fiftyfive.one, last week before the pocket veto, http://fiftyfive.one/2016/06/mn-governo ... dium-bill/

I've been trying to get some feeling from the articles and tweets out there and there is this that Brian writes, again from last week:
"Dayton seemed to be using the bill as leverage for a special session in which he made 19 demands that he claimed had to be included in special session tax bill. When asked if he was willing to make concessions on his demands he seemed to back down a bit. 'Well, I’m going to stand with what I said, they need all these things to be in there.' He then added, 'but we will have to see what happens.'"

That last part of Dayton's quote gives me some hope.

BQ: Midway Center adjacent to the MN United stadium site, is one of three locations in the running for building 400,000 to 700,000 square feet of office space for Prime Therapeutics Headquarters.

Here's the source for that: http://fiftyfive.one/2016/08/sources-pr ... ice-space/

Mayor Coleman seems to be pretty optimistic about this happening:
http://m.startribune.com/mayor-to-propo ... tion=local

Pledging for 3,000 new jobs in 3 years, focused on high poverty areas of the city. Gee, I wonder what could fit that bill? This might be the easiest campaign promise he'll ever make, right in time for him to run for Governor in 2018. Sorry to rain on the parade, but my day job is sniffing out bullshit and this reeks.

Will Coleman be running as a Republican?