urbanMSP

What percentage of voters do you think could name their county commissioner? 10%? No more offices people vote for based on how the name sounds please. Yes, 100% yes. I'm pretty sure the reason that Blaha almost lost the State Auditor race is strictly because she has a funny name, because she's obje...

Everybody loves this, so I'll just let it go. But one last point is that a facility like this is going to generate an unusually large number of semi-trailer trips (since what they're fabricating will be material intensive and bulky when completed). The good news is that these trips will presumably b...

If you look at the Hennepin County plat maps, part of this site is an L shaped property with it's primary frontage on Upton (the Martina storefront). The Zumbro Cafe portion of the lot is part of a different piece of property that's shared with the corner lot. I assume that they'll need to replat th...

It's a totally valid question, but I guess I'd argue that no modern factory is going to have the jobs per square foot that would justify it locating in such a prime, central location. I mean, I get it -- this building is currently available, and apparently at attractive enough rents to make it work....

Such a small footprint on this building -- hard to believe that they can get this to pencil out!

Also, plans for the amphitheater, which looks... much less interesting than anything we've seen so far. Seems awfully generic, cut-and-paste.

Legalizing marijuana is a slam dunk in the sense that you should be able to get a good number of votes for it, but a real legalization bill (as opposed to the one they snuck through last session) will have to drill down into the details of regulation, taxation, etc. and so will likely take some sign...

While this is a cool project, it's kind of a bummer that this will preclude any large scale redevelopment of this area.

Floyd Olson erasure.

Interesting that it appears the tower they're proposing would be 'L' shaped to fully build out the available piece of land. Not many of those around. It also will presumably be zero lot line with a lot of adjacent properties.

I feel like a surprising number of breweries that have opened up recently are using the Brewpub legal framework as opposed to the Microbrewery. This would allow one of them to open up in a downtown location and sell the beer that they're producing at their main facility. Think Town Hall or Freehouse...

While I never loved Rock Bottom, it was useful as a spot to meet up easily with larger groups before downtown events for snacks and drinks. There are now surprisingly few options downtown!

Obviously there's a ton of demand in this area, but between the green line and the E Line, most of this should be very well covered. I could see trimming it down to just the northern section of the loop, and then extending service into the core of downtown. So maybe University Avenue to Broadway to ...

I mean, it's also entirely possible that Metro Transit staff got way out over their skis and were developing plans to take a bunch of land without warning the city about it, right?

It will be interesting to see where they propose it. My suspicion is that St. Thomas is going to view hockey as perhaps their premier sport after the move to D-1. Football has long held this spot, but unless/until they move up to a better conference and build a much larger football stadium, they're ...

I'm not sure where in the zoning code it's coming from, but per the COW document, they're asking for a reduction from 15' to 2' sideyard setback. Look at the 3-building 44 North development kitty corner to this - probably 4-6 feet set back with the U of M owning the land on each side. On one hand, I...

What the city should really hold them to is the sideyard setbacks. It's preposterous to build a residential building with tons of windows only two feet back from the property line. Truly bonkers that anybody would think this is acceptable, but inconsistent decisions from the planning commission have...

That's very strange. I actually see the tweet embedded in the post!

Sorry! It's displaying correctly for me.

In case you can't read it, the St. Thomas hockey coach indicated that an on-campus arena is "real close."

We've been discussing the St. Thomas athletics facilities in a couple of different threads. While they're still talking about locating new baseball and softball facilities at the southern end of the Ford redevelopment, this showed up on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JessRMyers/status/1572624846105808...