urbanMSP

Although I think that Daily piece was a poorly conceived and executed article, I do think that the fact that the bigger developers usually sell their projects to out of state investors is an important part of the story. It was something I said to many reporters and most chose not to use that informa...

Also, at the planning commission meeting, the owners of the parking lot that Opus is now developing said that they offered validated parking for various businesses, and lots of them dropped out of that program, including Loring Pasta Bar. Of course nobody's writing that story. Ok, I'll write it her...

I just want to say that I was fairly annoyed with how that article turned out on a few levels.

...or it means that Dinkytown has had room for businesses other than those that cater mainly to college students. With HoH gone, they are now the oldest business in the area. Obviously, something's been going right for them for most of their existence. To look for reasons for them to be worried abou...

I had a pretty good time on Monday. Two Indeeds, free dinner, some mingling and a show. I'm curious to see how the sticker charts turned out and how that will influence the discussion among the planning group, and I think the art cart thing is going to be a lot cooler than how it was described durin...

At least the food will be good!

(PS-I had nothing to do with setting this up and have only been to one SAP meeting. My boss is our representative at that, as this is more in her wheel-house)

You're probably right that there are ways to get around a lease, but the Book House (and Podium) aren't the best example. The 3-year lease the Book House signed 2 months before finding out HoH was selling was designed to allow HoH to boot us. They inserted a 60-day notice to vacate clause that had n...

This is where I get really squeamish.. I agree, the buildings are old. And I agree that because of their age, worn-look,materials used (in SOME buildings) that they have character. But I really struggle with the idea of blanketing so many places in our city with historic preservation, particularly ...

I am appreciating this conversation as well. There were some Save Dinkytown people using bad scare tactics, like suggesting Al's was in imminent danger, and frankly I've found most of the people in the Save Dinkytown group to be really uninformed. But it was clear that there are real, coherent reas...

I think this is the best conversation on this site in aaaaaaages.

Cool.

At that point, The Book House and The Podium had already left, and HoH and Duffy's were leaving no matter what. You were fighting to save non-historic, empty buildings, and doing so in part by distributing propaganda with extraordinarily misleading parking statistics, among others. They were accura...

This is a really stupid discussion, and I wish I hadn't contributed to dragging it down like this. The UrbanMSP/Streets.mn cabal is never going to agree with Save Dinkytown when it comes to the Opus development. My hope in joining the Facebook group was to get the group thinking more critcally abou...

Just because I'm the only one on here talking to you guys doesn't mean I stand alone with my opinion. I have no idea what Dinkytown's future benefit will be to the kids in the Opus building, because the ability to use Dinkytown's pre-existing uses as a guide for what the future uses might be has now...

THIS IS NOT SPOT ZONING. Spot zoning is zoning without planning. As had been explained to you many times the city's comp plan sets dinkytown as an activity center and thus c3a rezoning is perfectly legal and planned. The Opus project was not presented as part of a larger plan for the "activity...

And the nicer buildings actually have more local businesses than chains. I'm not in Dinkytown at the moment but I'll need to do a count next time I'm there on this because this does not sound right. It will pain me to include Purple Onion in the count because I wish Potbelly hadn't taken over their...

Everyone's experience of Dinkytown is different, and you can't say that anyone's view is right or wrong, it just is. The parts of Dinkytown that are important to me are different than the parts of Dinkytown that are important to you. About the only common ground on that front is that we've formed o...

I just don't see how your opinion that Dinkytown is "dumpy" is relevant to the discussion at hand. One man's dumpy area is another man's charming bohemia, especially with the diverse array of functioning businesses Dinkytown's historically supported. There are some bleak situations in Minn...

As someone who is from another city but now lives nearby, I have to say that most of Dinkytown is pretty dumpy. These various redevelopment and new high density projects are only going to help the area's economy by bringing new residents. Again, if someone wants to build on a dumpy parking lot...gr...

Regarding parking, I'll agree that there are many students who have use for a car even if they live 1-2 blocks from campus. Matt, you point out trips home, summer internships, jobs off campus during the school year, or just for leisure. There are, however, options to do these things without the use...

The decision of existing landlords to not charge full or market rents is not the city's problem or Doran's. Land (and building value) will go up because living on campus is far more desirable than it has been in the past. We didn't complain when Mesa booted out whatever was in the second half of it...