urbanMSP

The Wells Fargo may also not have been built as Class A. If I remember, its purpose was to house a lot of back office type jobs, and not necessarily executive teams. So why spend the extra money to make it Class A space, when the tenant doesnt need that.

Does anyone know if the U of M owns that parking lot next to this? (C97) The only reason I ask, is the U tends to name their parking lots in this type of manner.

- Bloom has the river site
- Harbor Bay and Titan have the Michael's/Center Street ramp as well as the current Hilton project across the street
- EKN has the Virgil's site, along with the Legion hotel project, and the Holiday Inn redevelopment

So UMR is joining the anti-place ranks of Mayo in buying property and turning it into unactivated and unused plazas (at best) or surface parking. Well, this space is already over by the large city park, and was an under utilized space, so not that big of a deal here. UMR is also filling space in th...

VFW was bought and torn down by UMR. No immediate plans, except I think turning it into green space for the time being.

I'm more interested in the two buildings in the background of the rendering. ☺

That is the Harbor Bay proposal to replace the city owned parking ramp.

I like the new entrance much better now with that courtyard area. Great re-design

They delivered the crane this morning. Haven't driven by since 7am, but assume they started assembling it today. Going to be fun to watch this one go up.

Does anyone know what TC&W pays on taxes for their property the rail lines sit on? Seems like with how long of a stretch they have thru valuable areas, they would be paying way more in taxes than there infrequent service could possible recoup. Or are they getting a sweetheart deal? Maybe it is t...

I also heard than many of the units are not even completed yet. And with their proposal adding more units, they must be happy with the demand.

Just talked to a friend with Optum and we were talking about their new office park. He mentioned they would have preferred to be downtown, but went with the standard suburban office park because of PR image. Talked about had they built a big new tower downtown like they would have preferred, that ma...

I may be in the minority, but I actually like this proposal. And could Phase 3 still go where the auto shop is? Seems to be the perfect size for a tower at the corner, which i think would be a better spot. A tower right next to the existing tower always felt a little awkward to me, but that is just ...

^ Agreed. In this project, I don't see making the tower portion 10 stories or less doing anything but making the project worse. If that is the only thing changed, that reduction in height lessens the appeal of this project. It then seems like 1 big complex, instead of multiple buildings. Not to ment...

^ I disagree. I like the differences in height. A bunch of 6 story buildings all in a row is boring and plain. 17 stories is not that tall in this part. And if the demand is there where a developer can make this work, more power to them. I love the idea of having more residents around here.

It just looks squat. The main portion needs to be twice as tall as the upper portion to make it look better. This will be good for this area, but sure is disappointing

^ True, but isn't the thought that the two parcels will likely get redeveloped into buildings with max height of about 70 feet? If so, this would then fit in nicely.

Article also mentioned they will hold a meeting with the neighborhood group sometime in early April for the St. Mary's hotel. I think this project would also include condos. Between these three projects, EKN is pumping a lot of money into Rochester. They must be confident in the market.

Moving talk of the Alatus project and 2nd street over hear. I am hoping the added space given by this project allows the 4 lane blvd to connect from Uptown to just east of St Mary's. This stretch is too critical to make it 3 lane, in my opinion, since this is a major transit road and does get very b...

As I understand it, this would replace that office building, but also add a bunch more office space on top of that. (Maybe replacing the West Bank Office Building?)

As well as a possible hotel component and a residential component.

I think one big reason is lending. FHA isn't the only one that limits amount of rental units. FNMA also requires at least 51% owner occupied units in a project for the project to get CPM approval, which is a standard approval for FNMA. Since almost all loans are completed to FNMA guidelines, this is...