urbanMSP

Speaking with many of my clients about future needs for office space I have gotten many interesting responses. The overall majority plan on keeping close to the same amount of space, but the spaces themselves may be changing as they figure out how to best allocate space for distancing now and in th...

Some of those older buildings have pretty high fees, though, to cover the increased maintenance cost (especially if it had been deferred for a while), and then there's also the increased chance of special assessments. So it can end up being a wash.

That makes sense, all things considered. Most of the things people want to live downtown to be near aren't open, and right now the common areas and amenities in these buildings (if they have them) are shut down too, at least for a while. Plus, if someone can afford a downtown condo, they probably ei...

Downtown needs more practical shopping like this, so I think it will do well.

Whatever you think of the City Council's proposal, the Charter Commission was way out of line. They took powers that had been granted to them by circumstance, not by statute. What does this mean? Either they have the power to do something, or they don't. The City Council knows full well how the Cha...

Surely it's not a mystery to anyone why they did this?

It's a mystery to me as to why they didn't foresee the inevitable outcome, unless they did so knowingly and wanted to look like they were doing something.

Honestly, City Pages hasn't been all that great in recent years. There's been some good work here and there (the story they did on the CTC, in particular, stood out), but it's definitely declined over time.

The 2021 city election season is going to be something, alright.

Doesn't Amazon already run charter buses to their Shakopee distribution center for their employees? I imagine they'd do that for this one too if the need arose.

This place seemed to be on borrowed time even before this year. It was really hot 15 or so years ago, but it struck me as more about drinks and the scene rather than the food, which was better elsewhere (and probably cheaper to boot). I'd bet that many people who loved it in its prime haven't been t...

It sounds funny, but consumers wanted independent and funky until they didn't and then that changed; none of the previous iterations were wrong---just not right for the present. Yeah. I'm not going to get into the whole "Uptown sucks now" argument, because that's subjective based on what people lik...

I'm not sure where else something like this could go besides a suburb with a lot of open space left. Finding a site large enough with sufficient transportation access further in would be difficult, and besides, with the emphasis on converting industrial space to other uses, it's not like they're bei...

It's less than two spaces per unit, so it's reasonable for the area. People will still need to drive to places and there's no street parking around it.

I can definitely understand the appeal of these for people who want the SFH life but don't want to commit to buying one yet (or ever). Yeah, over a long period of time, buying a home would be less expensive than renting something expensive like these, but I get the impression they're intended for pe...

It's an interesting move. If other financial services firms don't follow, it could be bad for Piper as they would be outside of the downtown labor pool and talent network. Can't most of this work be done remotely, though? I don't see this as being much of a factor for downtown companies going forwa...

I wonder if Piper is looking for some concessions in order to remain in their current spot rather than being really serious about moving. If they were truly committed to it, I think they would have just up and done it. Not saying they won't move, just that it might not be their main goal here.

I haven't been able to find any other mention of that location closing, so I'm not sure where they're getting their information from in that article. I wouldn't treat it as definite without verification. Having said that, yeah, the mall is in rough shape. Even if the Macy's thing isn't true, Sears i...

That's not that big of an imbalance, considering that people in Dakota County benefit from core city transit by having transfer options when they arrive (either by taking the transit that does exist (especially the Red Line which is specifically designed as a transfer route), or by driving to a par...

Doesn't hurt that there are plenty of Delta flights between MSP and ATL too.

The first bit is about Dakota County's interest in transit, which of course they recently demonstrated by causing the CTIB to collapse. Yeah, because we were getting a lousy deal. Dakota contributed 13 percent of the funding and only got 7 percent of the spending. Sure, I get that the money doesn't...