urbanMSP

I sure love living in an extremely wealthy country that constantly feels like it's held together with spit and scotch tape.

Been a hot streak for downtown Minneapolis news lately. Paywalled article from MSPBJ about how Hempel will be opening a food hall on the ground floor of the Lasalle Building, occupying the space that used to be filled by the Rock Bottom Brewery.

https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2025/03 ...

Man, this forum hates St Paul!


I, for one, love Minneapolis' biggest suburb.

In all seriousness, I think historically a lot of bad decisions and good money have been spent maintaining the idea that Saint Paul is literally a twin (and not just geographically a twin city) and deserves to have ...

Sherman Associates and Hempel are pushing for a new adaptive reuse tax credit

It's not all good news though. Sherman wants it, in part, because they would take advantage of it to rehab and reuse the Wells Fargo operations center instead of moving forward on the Harmonia development.

If it's not going to be rail or fully dedicated ROW, I don't see the point in spending more than $100 million on this. Arterial BRT or keep the 54.

Hopefully between Ecolab, Securian, the museums, and Xcel Center there's enough of a base to sustain downtown til whatever comes next...but it's hard not to feel pretty damned pessimistic these days.


Unscientific sample size of two, but the hockey fans I know are hoping a new Wolves/Lynx ...

James Crockarell keeps sapping Downtown Saint Paul's vitality, even from beyond the grave.

The Downtown Saint Paul Lunds & Byerlys will be closing at the end of March: https://www.twincities.com/2025/03/07/d ... -march-26/

I get that hooking up South Dakota and Wyoming is designed to give the four US Senators without a stake in long distance Amtrak a reason to fight it being cut, but even with the current services covering 46 out of 50 states (and 92 out of 100 US Senators), that likely wouldn't be enough if the ...

I think it's pretty clear that the DFL isn't willing to fight for Northstar and Met Council sees the writing on the wall.


I'd go a step further and say I would have been upset if the DFL wasted limited political capital fighting for this. This was always where we were heading from the day it ...

I do like that it's conditional on the FTA grant being forgiven. That's my usual frustration with the budget hawks saying "cut Northstar, cancel SWLRT," etc. At least this legislator recognizes that the are potential consequences that would need to be addressed or mitigated before we could just ...

When I searched to find these plans, I found an earlier incarnation that had been submitted to the City of Bloomington in August 2024.

It's too bad they laid out all that surface parking for two parcels of retail in the originally submitted plans, consolidated it into one corner parcel, and kept ...

Even if the buyers were looking to build a housing project from scratch in Downtown Minneapolis, I sincerely doubt they would start by looking for an existing tower to tear down when there are surface parking lots, 1-3 story buildings, and even entirely empty lots still available.

As it stands, I ...

So Hennepin County offers a benefit to their employees that costs them virtually nothing, improves morale, and is a carrot they can use to attract qualified private sector workers to their employ, and they're supposed to give that up? For the benefit of REIT companies? To save skyway restaurants ...

There are examples of sales like this in other US metros - just try a search for "tower sells for 90% below" and you'll find examples in NYC, SF, Chicago, etc.

I tried adding cities like 'Toronto' and 'London' to the search and it doesn't seem like it's happening in other places.

I guess it comes ...

My vote would be for either a MIA satellite or for the Cycling Museum of Minnesota to get a permanent space to display their collection.

I mean...

The deal closed Thursday. Onward said it still exploring options for the future of the property, whether to convert all or some of the building to another use other than office.

"The purchase of the Ameriprise Financial Center is another demonstration of our desire to be an active ...

In this case the statement implies that rich people are entirely at fault for being uncomfortable without spending a second to ask why they might are. Is it a person experiencing homelessness keeping to themselves or is it someone doing hard drugs in the open or somewhere in between, I think most ...

My guess is that a perfect storm of factors seem to be making this a priority now:

- A mayor up for reelection struggling to find things he can point at to show he's actually able to affect positive change, despite being the most powerful Minneapolis mayor ever.
- That same mayor's favorite ...

Well, would you look at that.

Turns out words like "quorum" actually have a definition and it isn't subject to being changed to "Whatever grants the GOP the maximum amount of power."