urbanMSP

I've gotta assume that SPUD will get some type of long-term parking setup when Amtrak moves in, but at the very least, you could probably do the Ramp-Ride-Fly thing at the ABC ramps for the Empire Builder as well.

It totally would be. But if there's one thing that Mankato will never accept, it's that the Civic Center will never be much more than the Maverick Hockey arena, no matter how many hotels they build or how much money they pour in.

I still don't understand why the Wilfs are greedy bastards and the Pohlads are upstanding civic advocates in the eyes of people here. They're not that different. Because, when Target Field had some cost overruns, the Pohlads covered them out of their own pocket, but when the final numbers came in f...

To my mind, "tower" signifies a building that has a footprint:height ratio below a certain point, not just a building above a certain height. So, like mattaudio said, is The Bridges a tower? Maybe, maybe not, but Middlebrook Hall certainly is, despite being only a few feet taller. So I can...

Cool! While Stadium Village does have a lot of pizza places, none of them sell quick slices, at least as far as I'm aware.

Yeah, but according to the Strib articles, at least, WF was previously looking to build a large campus out in the suburbs. So if they would have been leaving their other downtown locations anyway, its better that they stay downtown, at least.

The latest I've heard is by the All-Star Game, so, before July 15th. I'm thinking, based on nothing, that they'll maybe aim for the service changes that come with the end of spring semester, which would be late May.

Well, there's a rendering in the link above, so you can imagine it. It doesn't look too bad.

Not in most cities, but in this fair city, parks are the job of the semi-autonomous Parks and Recreation Board, not the City Council. The Yard, however, is going through the City Council instead, which is apparently terrible. That's how I understand it, at least. I may be way off.

City Council passed it. Hopefully the lawsuit doesn't become an issue.

Is there even the slightest hope of the LRT and transit center being moved to closer to the new center of the mall? Or is that just a pipe dream, as I suspect?

I agree with Viktor's points. If there was a danger of the next council killing this deal off, then, yeah, rush it through. But I think the new council will be more likely to push to make this project the best it can possibly be, so they should be given a chance to do it.

I'm no structural engineer, but it seems to me that there would be a difference between a parking ramp designed to let a generic building be built on top of it, and a ramp designed to let a supertall be built on top of it. So, unless, as Scott suggests, there's already a proposal out there that Ryan...

There's defined, permanent bike lanes crossing the mall now, between Ford and Murphy Halls. Been there for months.

The re-opened bus stop at Coffman was very well-used today. Shoulder-to-shoulder crowds at times this afternoon. The lack of NexTrip signs at East Bank and West Bank bus stations seems like a pretty big omission, considering the high usage of the stops. Do they at least have the Connector-specific ...

Construction fences came down all along the Washington Ave Transit Mall this morning. The only ones remaining are there to keep people out of the 'amentiy zones' in the median. Bike lanes along the Mall are open, and I even saw a biker using one this morning. ETA: Amenity zones are open too! But ev...

Isn't there a streetcar planned for West Broadway after Nicollet-Central is complete?

Agreed. Ideally, the city wouldn't have to fund this, but there's lots and lots of subsidies less worthy than this one.

Well, remember that quarter-mile spacing means that no point on the route is more than an eighth of a mile from a stop.

Correct, but on the busier routes, pretty much every stop has at least one person using it.