urbanMSP

I'd like to see the buildings, or at least some significant parts, preserved: This was really a game changer for office real estate. It was built in the early 1950s, not only as an early example of modernist architecture in our city, but also as one of the first examples of large-scale office space...

I had bids for a garage rebuild earlier this summer... I hope you are expecting something close to $30k for approx 22x22 garage. No frills, no ADU, not even attic space built in... standard 2 car. $30k. OUCH! Yeah, expecting that neighborhood, maybe higher as there is some extra cement work to be d...

If you make it an ADU, you gain all your urbanist cred back plus at least 2x more. (we replaced our falling-down 1939 garage with a big one three years ago. I'm not ashamed) I've thought about it (in the sense of, "hm, I wonder if we could do an ADU"), but don't think the extra expense is...

I'm meeting a contractor about building a larger garage at the south Minneapolis home we're purchasing.

In my defense, the 1940s era single car garage that's there has roof, structural and concrete issues and needed to be replaced anyway.

And it’s not possible to remodel either TCF or US Bank to accommodate track and field. So if we wanted the summer olympics, we'd have to build yet another stadium.

Why is it not possible?

Work is now very much underway. Finally.


North Loop 8.7.2015 by Matt Brillhart, on Flickr

I hope they're not painting over the signs! http://ghostsignsmpls.blogspot.com/2012 ... hat-2.html

I'm very pysched for Modist as well, along with Lucid. We love Fulton and frequent it often. We tried Freehouse for the first time 2 weeks ago... I must admit, I wasn't all that impressed. The food was 'okay' and the beer fell far short of what I was hoping to have. So we walked to Fulton afterward...

You also generally cannot buy a single family home in south Minneapolis for that price range (you can, but it's going to be a less desirable area and/or need major work). For $250k? You most certainly can. It will be a small house but it won't be a craphole in an "undesirable" area. Did I...

And I think they are driven by two completely different, polarizing priorities: the condo boom driven by excess -- over-leveraging by banks and home owners, and the notion of guaranteed (6%-7% annualized) returns in a marketplace that was desperate to ride any kind of wave it could find Those thing...

I think you have a very specific view of what a condo is that doesn't match reality. Condos are not a new concept. Condos aren't new at all, but they're RELATIVELY new to the Midwest (relative to the coasts, for instance, where condo living was much more prevalent). Do you think that the proportion...

There's a host of other reasons apartments are popular today, but the boom isn't being driven by the same things that drove the condo craze in the 2000's, which was largely driven by the notion of guaranteed returns on housing investment -- which certainly does not exist today. No one factor explai...

Can you provide any examples? I can't think of anywhere in the metro where condos on average are cheaper in cost/SF than comparable single-family homes (comparable cost or size or sub-market). I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but there are a few potential questions in there. Let me start wi...

I am not sure one way streets are exactly the cause. I live on a one way street in very neighborhood-y uptown. I would say wide streets maybe. But even Lake and Lagoon, while not ideal, manage to coexist with an urban, walkable neighborhood. One way doesn't help, but yes, it's not the historical is...

Let's face it, condos are a major luxury -- they're insanely expensive on a $$/SF basis and it's no wonder they're built more sparingly and/or in larger, more expensive or "hot" (speculative) markets. Condos in the Midwest (or South) never made a ton of sense to me, simply because of the ...

My point is that the condo shortage is more about the cyclical nature of real estate markets than it is about construction defect warranties. At least, that is my take on the matter. I have no expertise at all on the liability issues, but it seems to me that any discussion of the lack of condo deve...

If there is a leaking window in one unit, a lawyer will go to ALL owners, try to push forward a class action type of suit and push the scope as far as possible - not just new flashing, but new windows, new install, new siding which means different trades, scaffolding, material cost, etc. So it's al...

After having said all of that, I hate to now say this...retail just isn't that great this far north of the traditional retail further south. I don't think it has anything to do with where it's "traditional" to shop. I think it has to do with where the people are, and, as you point out, th...

The issue is really developers in our downtown have had the luxury of large empty vacant lots to develop their projects. It's much easier here. There's no need to build more complicated and costlier multi- use projects. This is very unusual for an urban core in most cities in the world. 801 Marquet...

This sounds SHOCKING until you realize that there is and will be a bike bridge at 24th

Is there a plan to replace the steps on the east side of this bridge with a ramp?

Gateway Park as currently designed is useless. Cancer Survivor’s Park is bad. Yes, they are not destinations, nor are they designed for “play.” ... If a theoretical project at 3rd and Hennepin had 3 bedrooms (it won’t), where would a family go for play space? 4 blocks just to GET to green space and...