urbanMSP

Frankly, I don't think you understand what the purpose of a vision is. A policy plan should properly focus on needs, prioritizing projects for legislators to later identify funding for. But if we look at your "fiscal constraints" excuse, it fails to account for the continued borrowing capa...

Keep in mind that this is their vision for what transportation in the Twin Cities will look like 25 years from today. In that light, the lack of vision for higher capacity transit service in major job centers such as Southdale and the 494 strip, as well as for high speed transit between the downtown...

Actually non-federal aid streets in Minnesota use the MN MUTCD, which has a standard of 6000 vehicles per day. That opens up quite a bit more Minneapolis streets for centerline removal, although I'd guess they'd require additional treatments on most of them to satisfy liability concerns. Edit: my ba...

Since they're building two buildings in addition to the ramp, it seems that it was a design failure not to screen the parking with more active uses. This design strikes me as insensitive to the traditional urban context of the neighborhood.

This block is roughly the size of a long city block in Minneapolis, and this developer is planning on plopping this building in the middle of the parcel rather than in one of the corners so that the land and street frontage could be maximized. Minnetonka actually produced a wishy-washy mixed-use pla...

Did they mention if they were going to put the design concepts online anywhere? They don't appear to be on the awkward, intentionally-limited public input site.

It's not really clear to me what benefit this reclaimed space along the frontage road will offer. If it were offered up as a redevelopment option, that might be something, but if it's just more "green space" that nobody is going to take ownership of, I'm not convinced. The Lowry hill NA h...

Thanks, Matt, for posting the pics. Otherwise we'd probably have to wait several weeks for the consultant whose sole purpose is to manage the web site to upload them. A few questions: were there any details as to what the "additional green/pedestrian/bicycle space" would entail? Sure, sepa...

It seems I did not consider a fourth scenario, in which the "residential apartment tenants" referred to in the article do not in fact exist. I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt that MN state law applies to nonexistent leases.

Wow there are/were apartments up there? Those must have been cool. They either 1) didn't actually get a week's notice, 2) got paid off for their week's notice, or 3) should sue the landlord for breach of lease. MN law does not allow less than a month's notice for residential tenants.

Cool those would have been some good details for your earlier post.

What do you mean by substantial? I think it would be hard for it to be as substantial as TractorWorks or Tower Lofts, not only in terms of sheer mass but also monumentality. Don't get me wrong, I'm optimistic 729 will be a good addition to the neighborhood, I'm just trying to indicate this neighborh...

Whether 10 or 11 stories, it will be shorter than the Tractorworks building kitty corner, and likely won't be noticeably taller than nearby buildings like Tower Lofts or the Holden Buildings, which are around 90'.

-“Green alley” proposal to pedestrianize the ROW could be a model for future development on adjacent parcels within the superblock, addressing issues with poor connectivity in the neighborhood ... -Landscaped plaza adjacent to Washington Avenue will draw pedestrians through the block, providing a m...

The u's contribution to the great sprawl effort is more than fulfilled by the umore park development. Looks like at least one of these parcels is in the path of the grand rounds missing link. Assuming that this area will continue its trajectory towards high-intensity development, it may make sense t...

The funny thing about this park & ride brou-ha-ha is that the Community Works tentacle of the SWLRT project commissioned a report last year that found that park & rides were not cost-effective anywhere on the line except Eden Prairie. Apparently that part of the project is merely PR, but sti...

Mostly because there are so many that, combined with the ultra-low speed limit and the long stops at every cross street, it can take a very long time to get down the Mall. I mean, today, I rode an 18 from the Central Library to Nicollet/Franklin and it took twenty minutes, a lot of which was becaus...

This site was fully cleared by 2005. I remember because I had to mow it when I worked grounds for the U, and I absolutely butchered a small rabbit there that summer. It tore me up every time that happened, the only downside to an otherwise great job.

I lived in Plymouth near the segment in question 15 years ago, and heavy backups were a daily occurrence then, too. That is the nature of an auto-dependent transportation system. Why is it all of the sudden necessary to add lanes to pretend to fix it? MnDot could have spent $50m on building a proto-...

days like today, where I wait for nearly a half-hour for a train to show up Is this happening often? That, to me, would be a bigger deal than the long runtime. Reliability was really the only reason to build a surface light rail line here (well, that and to surreptitiously reconstruct University Av...