urbanMSP

St Thomas has announced a 10 year $300M expansion plan for their St Paul campus. The plan includes 14 new, expanded, or renovated buildings:

1) Loras Hall (education building) will be relocated 100 ft west to make room for:
2) New science and engineering building - 137,000 sqft
3) New South Campus boilers in the basement of the facilities and design building
4) 2 additional floors on the Anderson Parking Ramp - 300 added spaces
5) Renovation of Brady Education Center
6) New arts building replacing social work building - 65,000 sqft and 290 underground parking spaces
7) New Grand Apartment - 112 beds, 13k sqft of retail space at Grand and Cleveland
8) New Grand Apartment - 140 beds, 5 floors
9) 2171 Grand renovated from 34 beds to be used for administration
10) new residence hall replacing JP2 - 416 beds, 70 underground parking spaces
11) Ireland Hall renovation - loss of 203 beds by switching to suite style rooms
12) Chapel of St Thomas Aquinas addition - 6k sqft for wedding prep space
13) Residence hall replacing faculty residences - 256 beds and 190 underground parking spaces
14) Murray Herrick renovation - 72 beds changed to 16k sqft of academic space.

Overall I think this looks to be a good plan, but I'm sure the neighbor's will oppose it vehemently as they do anything with UST. St Thomas has done a good job especially recently of making sure that their buildings use high quality materials and fit in with the campus look so these should be nice additions. The engineering building especially is sorely needed with it now being the most popular major for freshmen. I think the parking might be excessive but it's all going to be underground or added onto an existing ramp so it won't be adding new surface lots at least. The retail on Grand will be nice. It's sorely needed in this area as there's really nothing close by except Davanni's.

Edit: Link below

http://www.stthomas.edu/news/campus-mas ... g-parking/

Cool, do you have a link to any sort of resource for this? Do they have a big.pdf type thing?

Seems to me like there could eventually be a market for much more storefront space along Grand from Cretin to Cleveland to support the university and the neighborhood? Let homeowners do what they did a century ago in neighborhoods like this where there was demand for incremental intensification: add storefronts to the fronts of their homes. Zero setback on Grand!

Sorry, I forgot to put the link in there. It's been added to the original post.

"As the state's largest private university takes the first steps in a major expansion, its neighbors in St. Paul hope for relief from traffic and housing woes."
http://www.startribune.com/st-thomas-ne ... 411018165/

The proposed new $175M arena…

“The project cost includes demolition of three buildings on UST’s South Campus in St. Paul to make room for the arena – McCarthy Gym, an intramural facility; Cretin Residence Hall, built in 1895 and remodeled in 1989; and a service center.”

https://www.minnpost.com/sports/2023/01 ... on-campus/

Cross-posted from the other thread.

More pictures on the front page of https://tommiesports.com.

woof.

I mean it's looks like a St. Thomas building that happens to be an arena. Not sure what else anyone would expect?

They should make it look as much like a Medieval Times as possible.

It's tough for St. Thomas that "UST" fits right into "jUST say no to ______". I've seen some lawn signs.

https://www.startribune.com/editorial-s ... 600362555/

On the bright side, the arena does kind of look like a Medieval Times.

https://www.advocates4rd.org/

It's tough for St. Thomas

Said no one, ever

That is a fascinating level of commitment to the architectural bit.

Fingers crossed for wall torches in the concourse!