urbanMSP

Virtually no project of any kind gets done in most of greater Minnesota without the city providing financial assistance through grants, waiver of fees, tax increment financing, or tax abatement. This quote astonishes me. I don't even know how true it is, but the statement at its face is an admissio...

I read the data slightly different than you, but I still draw most of the same conclusions. I wouldn't say C Line has "no pattern" - it appears to be following the same "January dip" pattern as most of the lines, albeit with a higher amplitude than the others. I also wouldn't say...

Found the area plan: Study, land use concept

There's some kind of redevelopment plan for the EP Town Center area (roughly the area along Singletree Ln), written maybe 10 years ago, that identifies the Walmart, Emerson, and Costco parcels for future redevelopment and grid infill. Probably mostly aspirational, but yeah, an extension of Commonwea...

EP's biggest culinary destination - Asia Mall - is actually pretty close to the Town Center station, at least as the crow flies.

As property-tax revenue drops, partial redevelopment eyed at Eden Prairie Center The JCP location at EP Center is identified as a potential redevelopment location. You may know its perpetually empty parking lot as the site of Mt Eden Prairie during last winter's snow-fest. It's disappointing that c...

Fridley Station: 8/421 (2%)

I just took 6d6 psychic damage from reading that.

Strib op-ed from a few days ago - look at the 2nd one down by Thomas Fisher. He proposes linking the boulevard-ization of current I-94 with building a new I-94 along Pierce Butler Route, which sounds nice and easy in principle but would easily outstrip SWLRT in terms of largest public works project...

This is exactly why the parking minimums bill is (or *was*) such a big deal. Fidelis can so highly prioritize parking, without any loss of realized value, because every other competing property is also mandated to have lots of (mostly unnecessary) parking. If you remove the mandated parking minimums...

The latest SWLRT problem: Wrong placement of tracks Despite the KSTP-esque headline and credulously framing the "concerned neighbors" as acting in good faith, the real nuggets from this reporting are: Won't affect the overall price tag of the project This is an operational concern, as any...

Welp, I stand corrected. So much for my pithy, oversimplified explanation

Well shit.

I mean there's probably something to that... all the players here have a deep history building roads and highways, so it's a predictable target to build roads and bridges even if they're dedicated for buses in the end.

Plus no tunnels.

If they tried to route a freeway through one of the many narrow isthmuses, or bridge it over one of the lake channels, I can't even imagine the level of pushback they'd get from the millionaire mansion owners on the lake. A legal fight for the ages. Or maybe they'd just tunnel it under the lake - wh...

And let's all be thankful that Lake Minnetonka physically precludes just about any feasible idea for a third ring road.

Har Mar has got to be a pretty attractive redevelopment opportunity, given the Rosedale proximity and being right on an A Line stop, no? I'm not sure how Roseville has this area planned currently, but my understanding of the pending housing legislation is that parking requirements would be very mini...

An important difference from a Bearpath mansion is that an Urban Bearpath could someday be relatively easily repurposed into a normal apartment or condo building, whereas a Bearpath McMansion is a Bearpath McMansion forever.

Chaska has excellent urban form in its downtown (especially after the recent road diet on Chestnut) and Chanhassen has densified somewhat along its weird semi-walkabale-but-mostly-driveable main street, so I'm disappointed to hear it from those two mayors especially. At the end of the day, they fear...

Getting back to the substance of the issue here - I could have sworn I read somewhere that the 25' clearance was needed for construction worker safety, which implies it's not an operational requirement. Can anyone verify that statement? Furthermore, it's stated in the article that the 25 foot cleara...

Will Uber and Lyft really leave Minneapolis? Maybe. Here's how it could play out. I don't use Uber/Lyft and don't know anyone who drives for them, so I have the luxury of being a disinterested third party in this. At minimum, if Uber/Lyft withdrew and no other rideshare service replaced them, I'd b...