urbanMSP

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/b ... -lund.html

Big changes for the Byerly's plans. They have completely re-oriented the site and there will now potentially be 87 more housing units than previously announced, even though there will not be any housing on top of the grocery store building. Phase one includes the rebuilt grocery store and a 7-story, 109-unit apartment building.

Slide #2 on that link made me LOL. See if you can spot what I found so funny.
Slide #4 is the previous site plan. I much prefer the new one.


Looking north-northeast. The L-shaped building is part of phase one. The other two buildings, with 137 units combined and first floor retail, will follow demolition of the existing store and as market conditions warrant.

Will they still have bus stops/benches in the grass along France? http://goo.gl/maps/IM5Ex

I wonder if at some point there's some sort of fixed transit along this stretch, it would make sense to place it in that greenway between France and Xexes.

Although there's enough ROW on France to fit whatever they'd want to build, yet it's further from the higher density residential closer to Xerxes.

France is 8 lanes in spots, but the traffic all seems to use one lane (right lane northbound, left lane southbound) since most traffic turns into the shopping areas. Very stroady.

There might be a sidewalk in that rendering...I can't tell. I do believe the bus stop/retaining wall issue was brought up by the planning commission regarding the previous proposal. I hope they address it here. That Macy's Furniture Store building due south of here, also lacking a sidewalk along France, is going to look very out of place pretty soon. Scratch that-- it has looked out of place for 40 years. What the hell is that, a bomb shelter?

There BETTER be a sidewalk along France now! All this talk about making the area bike and pedestrian friendly and also more "urban-feeling" won't amount to squat without sidewalks! As a kid growing up in my teens and biking over here we always had that element of danger since all of the "stuff" was on the East side of France while the sidewalk (a narrow, dangerous one that hugs the street) was on the West side of France Ave.

Byerly's can't have a sidewalk by themselves though, it has to be a joint effort, but I think it's necessary (as are the bus stops/benches)!

Ok I know I sound like a broken record about this... but this time I'm dead serious. Wouldn't France be a great spot for a multiway boulevard to emerge incrementally over time? Really it just needs two through lanes.

Just from looking at that site plan, this seems like a pretty good example of very experienced, very credentialed planners putting out a product that some rando off the street could do better if they just had a better mindset. Yes, the area is very auto-centric right now, and probably will be for a while. But why aren't we at least doing basic things that can make the area retrofittable down the line? Why aren't we arranging the buildings better? Why are they just plopped there with no respect to the street and the surrounding area? It's just puzzling to look at.

Ok I know I sound like a broken record about this... but this time I'm dead serious. Wouldn't France be a great spot for a multiway boulevard to emerge incrementally over time? Really it just needs two through lanes.

Matt, at lunchtime and rush hour all lanes are used and full. There are just so few roads that actually run north south and have any access points that this road is the one main thoroughfare. There are some horrible developments around that area that gave no thought to getting people in and out; one in particular, West Elm, is really difficult to visit at lunchtime. It's hard to imagine that 30 years ago much of the area between Southdale and 494 was just gravel pits.

I agree, France is WAY too busy to rely on only 2 lanes in each direction. There are times where it gridlocks with 3 or 4 in each direction!

At least this road is wide enough for a multiway boulevard for once

But whenever mattaudio brings up that idea, I tend to think about setting aside exclusive lanes for transit. An LRT or BRT line would fit. Just judging by where the sidewalks go, it looks like the right-of-way is 120 feet wide (similar to University Avenue in Saint Paul) right by Southdale, though it narrows down to the north and south. But of course there's a lot of grass and/or asphalt (parking lots) beyond the street right-of-way that could be acquired without any impact on buildings.

Nick and nordeast homer have great points, though -- the street network needs to be filled in (both for cars and for people who want to get around by transit, on foot, or by bike), and as buildings age and get replaced, they should be arranged in a more traditional way to make it an actual urban place.

When I have a dull moment at work, I may look through Edina's Comp Plan to see if there is any reference whatsoever to recreating (or just creating?) a street grid between York and France (and in the Edina industrial area west of 100). One would hope that would be the case, but you never know...

Also, we should all probably send notes to the city planner and/or traffic engineer about this very issue. Seriously.

The planning commission and city staff will at least read it and it might give them something to think about (maybe not for this project, but for future redevelopments)

While it's good to see more units and more ground-floor retail proposed, I can't really understand why they wouldn't want to build or at least preserve ROW and provision for a through street there. I get that Byerly's wants to be on France and that no one wants to live right on a mini freeway, but this isn't a very good solution.

The new Byerly's plan was approved by the City Council, though it was only the preliminary site-plan review.

So here's my beef with placing the Byerly's right on the corner in an effort to make the area appear more pedestrian friendly and not a sea of parking lots. Unless you actually put an entrance along the street, the result ends up looking like a giant impenetrable facade. They did it with the Centennial Lakes development (West Elm, Five Guys, etc.), the LA Fitness development in Richfield, the Chipotle/Potbelly corner in Richfield at 77th and Lyndale, the new CVS on York by the Galleria. They all end up with these fake (or insignificant) "entrances" that face the street, but the real entry is around back where you can park your car. I find it very uninviting, and I blame planning commissions for wanting new developments to have the appearance of an old Main Street (but not actually forcing the developers to create it), and not making the larger transportation changes that would be required to actually make that happen - and in reality, those changes are probably never going to happen because the buisinesses know that most of their customers (especially along France) are always going to arrive via car, so they're certainly not going to agree to build something without a giant parking lot. I equate it to the fake vintage look they tried to pull off with Block E (we'll build this one big building to look like a bunch of smaller buildings) - if you try to make something look like something else, it's usually going to fail.

The 50th and France area is a good example of the Main Street look, but they have giant parking ramps, and a bigger nearby urban population of people more likely to walk. The new stuff on Excelsior is the same (except for the faux-old look) - entrances actually oriented to the street, but with those ramps that you need to actually accommodate your customers.

Exactly. Pro forma new urbanism.

I happened to drive by the site the other day, and the new Byerly's under construction is nestled along France. And that seems to be what the Edina City Council asked for. Here's a quote from this article http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/b ... l?page=all:

The biggest change in the plan at first glance is the orientation of the 47,000-square-foot Byerly's store so that its pushed up against France in what is now part of the parking lot.

That met the city's desire to have a more urban-feeling dense development and to hide some of the parking lot from the city's main drag. Previously, the store was located in the back half of the site and the front of the store faced France.

The problem is that this new structure has basically NO windows. Right now it's a huge wall along the street. It's still under construction, but it looks very bad right now. Sure the parking lot is now obscured somewhat, but this massive blank wall might be worse.

Agreed, it really looks terrible. It's a blank wall on top of a blank retaining wall. I can't see how you'd expected anything better given the circumstances. Edina is the loser here.

it's still WAY better than where we were before this proposal...

I drove by the other day and actually thought to myself, that looks really nice...much better, and has really nice finishes. Looks like it is going to be a beautiful store. Guess I had a totally different reaction than the last few people.

It's kind of odd that Edina is insisting on (maybe) better urban design along a stroad of the worst form. I guess we have to take small steps but this hardly seems like an amazing improvement to me.

Maybe the long-term plan for France is a multi-way boulevard with a streetcar