urbanMSP

It seems the mistake the developers made was presenting this as one project, when it's really two projects by two separate developers. The next mistake they made was reactively pulling the project instead of stepping back and trying to educate the Planning Commission on the financing of these proje...

Even if you absolutely have to build separate physical buildings for financing reasons, though, there's no reason not to allow shared access to the amenities. That is a deliberate choice they're making.

I guess I'll be the contrarian, then, because I don't see the point of segregating the units unless it's to make the people in the more expensive units feel better about not having to mingle with poor people. I live in an apartment building that is mostly market-rate, but also has some units that ar...

Anyone know if there are development plans yet for the site between I-35 and the train tracks in Lakeville? I see it's zoned as medium density residential, and I know eventually the city wants to connect the north and south segments of Kenrick Avenue. Do you mean the area near the Target and the fo...

How do they construct the arenas is Casinos? I’m thinking of the Mohegan Sun Casino in CT that hosts the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun. Those are typically attached to the casino/hotel complex and aren't within the towers themselves (which are usually just the hotel portion). As was mentioned above, the b...

Which is funny, because the rink has been operating since before most of the current residents likely moved to the area, and the building has been around longer than most people have been alive, period. Yeah, on a busy night, there was a lot of street parking, but people should have known that when ...

A suburban apartment building with little parking isn't going to get many tenants. There's the obvious getting-around-suburbia component to it, but also, there are some people who need spaces for their work vehicles too.

Best Buy is another example of a company that was remote-friendly for a long time, then wasn't after a management change. I suspect some companies will be like that in the future too. It's why I would be leery of moving too far away from an employer's office location.

I believe they got much of it after Oracle bought Retek and moved them into their building, though it wasn't all at once (Ryan Companies used to have a floor it it too for their HQ).

How do we know for sure they will keep paying the lease? Maybe they can pay a fee to break it early.

There's been talk of them vacating City Center since I worked in their City Center offices fifteen years ago, right around the time the Brooklyn Park campus was built. This has been a long, long time coming. The main thing preventing it was departments wanting to be downtown, since everything was fo...

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.