urbanMSP

Yeah. As far as I can tell, Mercil's didn't have a basement, so that second hole full of rubble is actually the house's foundation.

I walked by at about 6:30 and all three buildings were down. Hope it's not another month of nothing before they start digging the foundation.

The sidewalk around this site was barricaded off on Friday, so it looks like they'll be starting demolition this week. Finally.

As far as the Campus fare free zone goes, I hope they be sensible about it and include the Stadium Village station in it. Since the point is to make it easier to get around the Minneapolis campus, they might as well include all three stations that serve it

Gah, I can't believe I mispelled Shepherd. I even work in a lab there! No, you're right, they won't tear it down until it actually gets bad enough to get condemmed. They're actually putting in a new elevator right now (and about time, too). About Civil, the story I heard is that Minneapolis was arti...

Yes, definitely do that. The new library and offices look amazing, to the point where it's a letdown to go up to the unchanged second floor. I agree that Nanotech should have been taller. I realize that they had trouble even getting the funding they did, and that they didn't want the building toweri...

The Noodles closed down on Monday, so demolition of the existing buildings should happen within a week or two. I'm excited for another shiny new building, though I was also counting on the amount of construction between me and my classes shrinking, not growing, this semester.

So this would be behind University Village? I like that idea, it'll help renew a sketchy couple of blocks.

I like it. Amundson's always been a boring building. As far as a Keller Hall expansion, it could sure use it, but there's really nowhere to put it, except in the CSE courtyard between Keller and Lind, which I'd rather avoid. That's a nice green space to have, even more so now that the Nanotech build...

Yep. The bookstore doesn't have the Apple Store branding, but it does sell and repair (or at least send in for repair) Apple products. A separate Apple Store in the university area wouldn't make much sense.

I went to a seminar at Xcel HQ a couple days ago, and there's a couple boards set up in the SE corner of the lobby detailing the new HQ building plans, including a footprint drawing. (I tried to get a picture, but my phone crashed instead) So, I can confirm that they're definitely planning to includ...

I hope it goes north of the three apartments. Last summer, I sublet a room in the attic of the house next door to them (on 15th Ave) and it was a deathtrap. Not just un-airconditioned in the 100 degree heat, but infested with mice and rewired shoddily besides. The sooner it gets pulled down, the bet...

No, I'm pretty sure it is. Except for the ground floor, of course. That yellow insulation will get covered up.

I'm hoping, probably in vain, that they start leaving them on all night now, and that the Capella and Wells Fargo towers will follow suit. I'm as much for energy conservation as the next guy, but the skyline looks so cool when those three buildings are lit up, along with the Target building. I think...

Meh, anecdotes don't equal data. I'm a EE major at the U, living in stadium village with 3 other guys. We're all white, middle-class males, and none of us have cars during the school year (during summer, with internships, two of us do). My guess is that the car ownership rate, averaged out among all...

During the fireworks tonight, the lights on the top of the IDS Center were red, white and blue. Is that capability new? I'd never seen them anything but white before.

Yes. South half of the same block.

I was walking past today, so I took another picture now that the exterior is completely done.
It certainly doesn't look like anything else in the area, but I haven't decided yet whether I like it or not.

Which 11 story tower? Is the Arby's project supposed to be that tall? Cool.

This makes sense, though. I had heard a rumor that Noodles was relocating to SVF, but had ignored it, since I couldn't see a reason to move from their perfectly good location to one further away from the actual campus.

Yep. That's about the size of it.

Specifically, the top couple floors of that building are the control center that runs the transmission grid for the upper midwest. Almost every big substation from the Dakotas to Michigan is controlled remotely from there.