urbanMSP

Perhaps I’m just being dense, but why would a developer want to spend a bunch of extra money for initial construction to make their building taller that it would otherwise have to be? And then have to continue spending extra money because the taller building is less efficient to operate? It would be...

In the original Nicollet deal, the developers were proposing to “harvest” the air rights over the Handicrafts building and use them to bump up the allowable FAR for the condo tower. I’d be concerned that any development on the Handicrafts site will ultimately limit the ability of the adjacent site t...

Everything is relative. The Hilton is 287' tall. It is a tall building.

I don't love the Hilton, but I'm not sure what makes anybody think that it's going to be significantly taller than it is.

I go to loring park to watch cat videos on my iPhone every Tuesday if you want to join me sometime.

Worst pick-up line ever.

60% of the time, it works every time.

Depends on who the developer is. The Hilton was sharply criticized for its blocky, massive design when built, and actually went through a revision which improved it slightly. I doubt that would happen again. I think it would happen again. Look at images of the large convention center hotels built a...

According to this MSP Business Journal article, a new 1,000 room hotel is being proposed near the Minneapolis Convention Center. Well, that's not really what the article says. It says the county is paying somebody to study whether or not it's feasible. Aren't there other parcels within a few blocks...

Oh. Village Green and BKV. I think we know what this will look like. poor handicraft.

Zing!

It should be noted that there are roughly 160,000 people who work downtown and 35,000 people who live downtown. This is not a justification to ignore downtown dwellers (far from it), but just an effort to keep things in perspective. The real estate supported by these jobs generates a huge chunk of t...

(Yes, I also drive a car.)

And you've got a sense of humor about it too!

Again, the answer is not removing cars or limiting auto traffic.

You say that now... this is not exactly consistent with other things you've said on the board.

Is there a new rule that every KSTP story must now contain the phrase "taxpayer money"?

I don't disagree that my views may be somewhat radical, but what would happen if they were implemented? Traffic would be pretty bad for those driving downtown if we converted many of those one ways to leafy residential streets, leaving a few major thorough fares going N-S/E-W. Ultimately though, do...

St. Paul was able to get a dedicated sales tax slush fund back in the 1990's to fund this sort of thing. Minneapolis has kindly agreed to dedicate its sales taxes to funding statewide amenities (Metrodome, Convention Center, Target Center, and now Vikings Stadium). Also, obviously, land is cheaper i...

It seems that every street in this area is an arterial. Where are the neighborhood side streets? Where are the calm, tree lined streets with boulevards? There needs to be a major adjustment in the way automobile movement is handled in this area for any real tides to turn. I don't mean to be snarky ...

I think the real issue has been that people have been sitting on the blocks assuming that the downtown core would expand in that direction, and they'd be able to sell the blocks for tower money, not for residential money. Well, the residential could still be a tower Even so, it would demand only a ...

The thing is, we're really not talking about very many blocks in play. The Stadium is going to take probably three blocks out of play. HCMC is probably going to take another couple blocks. That really doesn't leave us with that much of an area, and I think we're already starting to see some more mov...

I understand it's not difficult, but it's much easier if it's done as part of the initial building design rather than a change later on.

I guess I find it amusing that the Mill District has special zoning because of its historic nature, when the overwhelming majority of it was bulldozed and asphalted back in the middle of the last century. I mean, I'm not calling for the Washburn-Crosby A mill to be razed (again), but it does seem s...

And looking at the submitted plans for this site, I don't see anything that would prevent them from carving off a chunk of the space for retail. They'd have to put in a new storefront, but that should be about it. I was by this site today, and the one thing that could be problematic (and something ...

OK. But sometimes the cost of the retrofit would make it uneconomical. For example, I bet if U.S. Bancorp Center had another 1 or 2 retail/restaurant spots facing Nicollet, they would be leased no problem. But at this point, there is no way they would retrofit. They'd have to completely rework the ...