Western U Plaza - (300 University/Old Home Dairy)

[mulad]

The old St. Paul Casket Company building -- Landfill Music and Books is in there, but I've never visited so I don't know how much room they occupy.

[Minnehahaha]

Not to keep things off topic too long, but since we're already there...

I'm always watching for any hint of something happening with the St. Paul Casket Company building. I believe Landfill has been closed for quite a while, but it has also been the longtime warehouse for the Cheapo/Applause record stores. With the Cheapo chain being a shadow of what it once was, I can't see them needing that much storage space in the long term.

It sounds like the owner was really in wait-and-see mode when this video was made a while back: http://legacy.mnhs.org/transitions/vide ... n/al-brown

[mulad]

I see that some demolition work has happened at the Old Home site.

[Wedgeguy]

I see fences up and a trailer on the site. But I do not see much of anything else really happening with this project.

[mamundsen]

Reading the first page of this thread. The trailer had been there for about a year back in February (according to the comment).

[nate]

There is a second trailer on site today, along with a half dozen trucks or so. One of the big overhead doors into the existing building was thrown open, and I could see people milling around inside. Looks like this one might finally be coming to life!

[Wedgeguy]

There is a second trailer on site today, along with a half dozen trucks or so. One of the big overhead doors into the existing building was thrown open, and I could see people milling around inside. Looks like this one might finally be coming to life!

Glad to hear! I'm looking forward to this project and seeing how it turns out. How well they can integrate the new and the old together to play off each other.

[lordmoke]

Site looked active the other day (demo and digging.)

Finally(?)

[gcm]

Based om what I read in The Villager, I think the renderings of this project can be scrapped.

"The original plan called for an new four story addition to the Old Home building ... the National Parks Service determined that addition would overshadow the historic structure. It recommended attaching only a three story addition behind the Old Home building".

End result is 18 apartments in the Old Home building and 42 in the building behind the Old Home building. Phase 2 will be a two story building on University with commercial space on the main floor and 8 apartments above.

[lordmoke]

Piece formt he STrib: http://www.startribune.com/blogs/283421241.html

Thread should probably be changed to Western U Plaza.

[acs]

Good infill project, but why does it seem like all the projects along the green line once you get into St. Paul are either low income/homeless/elderly living or a combination of the three?

[twincitizen]

Pretty much anything east of Fairview can't support market rate rents at this time. It would be nice if there was public funding source to support the financing gap to make market-rate units work, but the optics of public money going towards non-affordable apartments are...not great. Ideally, everything would be 80% market rate and 20% affordable, but those projects are few and far between and reportedly very difficult to put all the financial pieces together. If we could strengthen that aspect of housing finance, I'd bet we'd see a huge move towards that type of model. Instead we're just seeing a lot of continued economic segregation. The good news for Midway/Frogtown is that there is SO MUCH land available for redevelopment, that the affordable projects coming along now aren't really precluding market rate from happening in the future.

[acs]

I realize there are fears about gentrification and that the city wants to take advantage of the big pot of TOD money before it's gone, but do we really want to create an RCAP around our metro's main transit link? You can run transit to an already impoverished area and hope to make it better, sure, but it shouldn't be done the other way around. If light rail isn't the magic bullet that lifts people out of poverty then all you've done is create another ghetto. This is a bigger problem for the central corridor because it is the line that all other metro lines branch off from and if the neighborhood is discouraging then it turns people away from the entire system.

[mulad]

View from University & Western:

_mg_9090-edit by Mulad, on Flickr

West side of the building:

_mg_9091 by Mulad, on Flickr


_mg_9093 by Mulad, on Flickr

Southwest corner:
_mg_9094 by Mulad, on Flickr

Southeast corner:

_mg_9095 by Mulad, on Flickr

East side, showing the generally "L"-shaped layout:

_mg_9096 by Mulad, on Flickr

[nate]

There is a lot I'm not liking about this as it takes shape.
-At least a few walk-up units, or even small patios, would liven up the Western façade.
-Three stories seems very short for a full-block building. Why not go with four, and keep much of the parcel open for a future development?
-No University street frontage? I thought this was going to have at least that.

[mulad]

Hmm. Are there two separate projects on this block? This doesn't really match the renderings for either one, though the positioning most closely matches this presentation listed on the first page of comments: http://www.stpaul.gov/DocumentCenter/View/63602

[nate]

This project continues to get worse. I haven't passed by in daytime lately, otherwise I would grab a picture, but they infilled 90% of the window openings on the existing building with EIFS, leaving only a single small opening on the second level, which is filled with a cheap-ass aluminum widow. It looks hideous.

I imagine the street level spaces will be somewhat difficult to rent with no windows.

[gcm]

[seanrichardryan]

Really? Is it 1975? That was not part of the original proposal.

[EOst]

Wow, they really ruined that building.