urbanMSP

Here's the stuff I know you guys want:

250 units
* 111 One Bed
* 41 Two Bed
* 98 Studio
107 parking spaces
Above grade parking, but concealed by brick
Currently 2544 Sq Ft of retail, but Dan wants to add more and is open to split leasing
Study space on every floor
Rooftop amenity level with pool, hot tub, etc.
175 feet of used space currently
Material are brick, glass, metal and fiber cement possibly
Concrete construction'

20161101_182319 by grant.simons, on Flickr

20161101_182325 by grant.simons, on Flickr

20161101_182332 by grant.simons, on Flickr

20161101_182339 by grant.simons, on Flickr

I'll scan the full packet tomorrow.

I gotta say this 15-25 stories range is just not a great place for a lot of these buildings, considering the foot print. Either build taller or narrow.

I'm inpatient

img001 (1) by grant.simons, on Flickr

img003 (1) by grant.simons, on Flickr

img004 by grant.simons, on Flickr

img005 by grant.simons, on Flickr

img006 by grant.simons, on Flickr

img007 by grant.simons, on Flickr

img008 by grant.simons, on Flickr

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img010 by grant.simons, on Flickr

One minor gripe... the parking podium looks like it is mostly using angled parking decks to spiral up, rather than short sections of ramp connecting larger flat decks. This would make adaptive reuse of that parking space more difficult in the future - especially prime street-level real estate.

I mean, it's kind of a terrible design. They should go big podium, narrow tower if they really want height at this location. It seems unnecessarily out of place in this location - a well-done tower could fit in pretty well, but this seems lazy. As downtown infill, or even as infill in Stadium Village it might be meh, but here it will stand out at least as badly as the Chateau, and maybe more because it's a more prominent location. With that much visibility, it needs to be more sensitive to its location. Actual preservation of the first-floor retail footprint seems like a reasonable expectation, and not one that's incompatible with a tower if done well.

Are you the one that tried pointing out to him that recent grads probably can't afford this, and he told you that "people in your field might not"?

I am! Actually, I told him that grad students couldn't afford to live there, since he kept mentioning them as potential tenants. Very few grad students are making more than what a full teaching/research assistantship pays (many make much less) which is, as of this year, about $1500 a month. The absolute minimum rent for the smallest unit in the building is >70% of that.

I wasn't offended by his response--though it was, tbh, tremendously tin-eared--but it illustrated pretty well the casual dishonesty of his presentation. This is not a building for 4th years and grad students. Hell, I know tenured professors who don't make enough to afford the 2 bedroom units.

Because if so, I can see why you didn't like him. Dan is kind of a jerk in that way, he's defensive about his pricing and the way that they build housing. But the crowd tonight was attacking all the wrong things. The meeting started off with a guy constantly interrupting asking, "Who cares?". And then it went into a number of points from the board about how they believe that there won't be any demand for this, and it's too big. The people who spoke didn't approve of it, the people I spoke to afterward want to see it evolve a bit more. There were a lot of people who thought this building is nearly completed design wise, when it's really at maybe 10% if that.

I mean, of course the crowd was going to be hostile, and everyone knew that from the start. But I can't imagine a presentation style less well-adapted to a hostile crowd than what he did. After we left, my partner, who doesn't really follow this stuff and really couldn't care less, kept going on about how poorly he came off. So it wasn't just a hostile nerd like me.

I don't think anyone in the room really thought this was the "final" design, but I also don't think it mattered. No-one there cared about finishes or lighting designs. The things people cared about--preserving the contributing building in the historic district, changing the massing, modifying the setbacks--were things that Oberpriller basically ruled out changing from the very beginning. I don't care if he replaces the cement board with Carrara marble and adds an out-of-this-world light feature in the crown, it still has those problems.

I thought that the presentation by the MNSAH guy--I didn't catch his name, unfortunately--really crystalized my biggest objection to this. I don't care about a tall building here, though I'd hope it was less boxy. But I do deeply care about destroying a contributing structure in a brand new historic district. It's honestly a little shocking that they're trying.

You forgot to mention that they probably won't be using that entrance/exit any more.

Well, when I left he had only said that they might, but seemed reluctant about it. Certainly the parking entrance is more visible on 4th, so I'm sure he's hesitant to change it. Did he change his tune at the end?

5 feet actually

D'oh! Thanks for catching that.

^That reminds me of Spinal Tap!

Just for reference, here's the hotel proposal from a couple years ago.



Right away the hotel proposal looks like a much better fit in the neighborhood, although all of these would be a million times better in the Hollywood Video/McDonalds parking lots.

I'm really disappointed in the massing. It just sucks. Anytime your building section is literally a rectangle -- that's a problem. It's not really sensitive at all to anything. I agree it's a lazy design, regardless of what stage it is at. If this is 10% design they shouldn't have presented it to the public (I doubt it's 10% design). The proportions are terribly and I agree the effort to maintain the facade and--more importantly--retail here is embarrassing. I wasn't hoping for much, but this is worse than I was expecting.

It looks fine to me.

That process should mean something!

Why?

I mean, it does mean something. It means we have to consider it in future analysis. But that doesn't mean it should be set in stone forever. It's kind of extraordinary to suggest that even the entirety of today's electorate should be able to bind the future, much less the small portion of it that gets involved in these things.

I feel like there may be an element of "Why bother with a good design?" I mean, student renters clearly don't care, since all the other buildings keep filling up, and the hysterical Save Dinkytown folks are going to be implacably opposed to anything changing in Dinkytown no matter what the building looks like (See the Venue, or the previous hotel design). Why spend extra money for a good design to please a tiny population of urbanism/architecture buffs on the Internet?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a little disappointed in the design too, but I can see why it's being proposed.

I feel like if they were smart, they would have included street level perspective renderings within the packet that try to demonstrate how at the eye level of the pedestrian, the scale above is minimized to an extent. By showing these birds eye perspectives at uninhabitable viewpoint, he was emphasizing its hulking mass and height.

In reality, its shooting down an alley way and block on three sides etc. - if was trying to sell it I feel he should have emphasized those points.

Saying that, I understand that the zoomed out views are a necessary part of the presentation, but they could have added other supporting "real life" views

At minimum, I'd like to see a greater set back from the historic facade. Apparently I'm a "fetishist" in that I think preserving a facade is a good compromise between adding density/activity and preservation, but as done here the facade gets lost in the big rectangle behind it.

I'm also not in love with the specifics of the design, but the general notion looks fine to me with some improvements.

Honestly, the wiser preservation would have been to push for the facade in the prior hotel design.

I feel like if they were smart, they would have included street level perspective renderings within the packet that try to demonstrate how at the eye level of the pedestrian, the scale above is minimized to an extent. By showing these birds eye perspectives at uninhabitable viewpoint, he was emphasizing its hulking mass and height.

In reality, its shooting down an alley way and block on three sides etc. - if was trying to sell it I feel he should have emphasized those points.

Saying that, I understand that the zoomed out views are a necessary part of the presentation, but they could have added other supporting "real life" views

Maybe they workshopped that and realized that the street-level perspective is as bad or worse than the NIMBYs (i.e. "Save Dinkytown" folks) feared!

Why?

I mean, it does mean something. It means we have to consider it in future analysis. But that doesn't mean it should be set in stone forever. It's kind of extraordinary to suggest that even the entirety of today's electorate should be able to bind the future, much less the small portion of it that gets involved in these things.

You might be right in the long term, but I don't think it's reasonable to have to relitigate a process like this every two years. What's the point of a process that is advertised to have meaningful consequences if they don't even last until the ink is dry?

At minimum, I'd like to see a greater set back from the historic facade. Apparently I'm a "fetishist" in that I think preserving a facade is a good compromise between adding density/activity and preservation, but as done here the facade gets lost in the big rectangle behind it.

It's fetishistic (really just facadism) to slap the exterior onto a completely new structure, as the current proposal is doing. But there is obviously a range of possibilities here. A larger setback (30'? 40? the building is 50') would convey the historical intention of the building much better, even if it meant demolishing a portion in the back. They could make that slender tower 25 stories for all I care.

You might be right in the long term, but I don't think it's reasonable to have to relitigate a process like this every two years. What's the point of a process that is advertised to have meaningful consequences if they don't even last until the ink is dry?

I get your frustration, but aside from federal judicial appointments, I can't really think of any government decision that can't be undone by body that made it at any time.

And really, preservation is litigating proposals that would change things.

It's fetishistic (really just facadism) to slap the exterior onto a completely new structure, as the current proposal is doing.

In my mind, the problem with granting these buildings historic protection is that there's so little there to protect. Brass tacks, these buildings are little more than a (not particularly remarkable) brick facade with some interchangeable commercial space tacked on behind. It was probably fetishistic to protect them in the first place.

Just coming back to something here, it's pretty unbelievable that working adults would want to live in the middle of Dinkytown. Stadium Village has the light rail and enough diversity in uses (nearby hotel, offices, restaurants) that it's at least conceivable older people would want to live there, but what benefit is there to Dinkytown other than student-centric bars and restaurants?

Well, apparently a lot of former hippies think it's the best place in the world, so maybe when they're done protesting the development, they'll use their white-collar jobs to move into the development?