Kraus-Anderson, HQ Apartments, Finnegans "Brewtel" - 9th St S/5th Ave S

[go4guy]

Agreed. If the uses of the business have adequate windows, and keep the sidewalk lit at night, that should be sufficient for this location. And the streets are way to big here. They can be reduced without anyone noticing.

[Nathan]

To me, it seems like a socially acceptable way for city-dwellers to slam a project.

Great point, and I'd have to say I agree with you.

I'd say it's the lack of ground floor uses, fine to drive past but not a great pedestrian experience, doesn't relate to its neighborhood context in any way. It's a single use building, no commercial or retail.

[mattaudio]

I know we can't expect ground floor uses in periphery neighborhoods like this, but I wish we at least had some guidelines and incentives to create smaller, modular sidewalk-facing spaces on the ground floors of buildings. It doesn't take a lot of square footage to activate a sidewalk. There's a few storefronts in my neighborhood that are literally less than 200 square feet... one of them has an occasional shop owned by a neighbor. We were walking by and realized they were open, and stopped in to say hi. It's not complicated, we just need to do it.

And if we really want to embrace the Anything We Can Get mentality, we'd start looking like Richfield.

[EOst]

Building one building on one block isn't how cities should work.

Why? Don't just say "because" here.

And what do you mean that's what they do in NYC? A lot of the new buildings going up will only take a quarter of a block or replace a building that already is a quarter.

Well, first of all, Manhattan's blocks aren't really comparable to downtown Minneapolis blocks, because the dimensions are radically different. Blocks in Manhattan are long and skinny (nearly twice as long as a DT Minneapolis block, though narrower), so just by necessity you're going to see more projects using part of the block instead of all.

You also see that because land in Manhattan is dramatically more valuable, and it's vastly more built-up. The economics of a skinny tower make sense in Manhattan, because you can charge astronomically more per square foot, and because there's no room or air rights to build anything wider. That's not at all the case in Manhattan.

Finally, you do see bigger projects in Manhattan in areas that aren't heavily built already. Look at the plans for the Hudson Yards redevelopment. There aren't a lot of full-block pedestals there, it's true, but there are plenty of full blocks being built by single developers on master plans.

[FISHMANPET]

Even if a "normal" person may not be able to properly articulate it, one of the things that's desirable about an urban location is the older buildings with much smaller footprints, but still forming a complete block face. It gives a kind of variety that just can't be had when you build a block (or even a quarter block) at a time (and this holds true for super block apartment buildings or SFH subdivisions).

Whether or not a person is able to articulate that regardless, I think deep down that's what they want out of a new building. So when they say it's too "suburban" they mean it's not a bunch of individual small buildings. Now, whether or not that's feasible is one thing, but I think it's a desire, if only a subconscious one.

[John]

Good urbanism can be very boring architecturally. There's not really anything wrong with the architecture here, just with the urbanism.

An odd comment as if good architecture and good urbanism are distinctly separate entities. It's not a dichotomy. In a city they are both inherently important for a building to be successful.

[FISHMANPET]

Boring does not mean bad.

[John]

Boring does not mean bad.

It's all subjective. I guess I would never consider a building with good urbanism as "boring".

[min-chi-cbus]

I think you could. Think of some of the Chicago-style townhomes that are 25 feet wide, go all the way to the limit of the parcel, and are stacked side by side along the block in varying heights. Not all of them are interesting and diverse in style either, and those areas do tend to look "boring", but the urbanism is outstanding. Also, according to WalkScore.com the area just north of Southdale in Edina is highly walkable (i.e. urban?), and I used to live there and I can tell you it is extremely boring and uninspiring.

However, I will agree that, generally speaking, the better the urbanism the less boring an area will feel -- I just don't think the correlation is perfect, or 100% (maybe 90%).

[mattaudio]

I think that speaks more to the correlation of walkscore and urbanism, not the correlation of urbanism and boring.

[mullen]

i'm happy that KA is a company comitted to downtown and wants to expand on their block. hopefully they can produce a building for the neighborhood as iconic as skyscape. that soviet style concrete tower really inspires.

[go4guy]

haha. Agree. Skyscape is awful.

[xandrex]

Whether or not a person is able to articulate that regardless, I think deep down that's what they want out of a new building. So when they say it's too "suburban" they mean it's not a bunch of individual small buildings. Now, whether or not that's feasible is one thing, but I think it's a desire, if only a subconscious one.

Perhaps that is what some people mean (though I don't know how difficult it is to say "it needs more and smaller buildings on the blockface"...it's repeated ad nauseam here), but it seems a little too omniscient to say for certain.

[PhilmerPhil]

Boring. Good urbanism.

[Tcmetro]

I'm less concerned about the architectural qualities of the building and more about how much surface parking they want to build.

[min-chi-cbus]

I think that speaks more to the correlation of walkscore and urbanism, not the correlation of urbanism and boring.

I used the direct comparison of being urban and boring with the Chicago example.

[EOst]

I'm less concerned about the architectural qualities of the building and more about how much surface parking they want to build.

The city seems pretty keen on that land being developed; I doubt it would stay surface parking for long.

[mattaudio]

I think that speaks more to the correlation of walkscore and urbanism, not the correlation of urbanism and boring.

I used the direct comparison of being urban and boring with the Chicago example.

I'm referring to your Southdale example. For the other one, I cannot imagine how 25' attached homes would be boring.

[contrast]

haha. Agree. Skyscape is awful.

Disagree. The urbanism of Skyscape is quite good. First story commercial topped by 3 levels of housing with a tower pushed back from the street corner- it is very good. The architecture is nothing special- for both the tower and lower floors, but for me, this fits the boring architecture, but good urbanism. Compare that to Stanton's 516 8th Street where the street presence will be a massive parking ramp crushing a few street level windows? I'd take Skyscape street level urbanism any day.

New KA headquarters- active first level will make all the difference. It shouldn't be leasable tiny storefronts. It just can't be a blank wall or frosted glass- it has to consistently give something to the street- whether it is their cafeteria, lobby, and some office space. I don't see great architecture here (of course it would be nice, but not required), but the urbanism of how this meets the street is what matters for this location.

[David Greene]

Similarly, brownstones of the quality you find in historic places would be prohibitively expensive to build now; skilled craftsmen are rare now and demand skilled wages.

I don't know about that. All of the woodwork in those brownstones was machined and I'll guess installing it is really not much more difficult than installing ranch-style trim today. I assume the same was true for the stonework -- it's not like they had masons hand-cutting everything. One of the reasons Victorian architecture could be so elaborate is that they used machines to cut out the expensive skilled craftsmen. Hence, the Craftsman movement as a reaction to Victorian architecture.

I'm guessing we don't build like that today because the same materials are not available (not much old wood remains anymore and mill shops aren't mass-producing the same designs) and building in a Victorian or Edwardian style would (not wrongly) be called "fauxstoric." We don't build things like that anymore because tastes and styles have changed.