urbanMSP

What I read on "Skyscrapercity" is the $50 million will be put into a capital improvement fund for future arena updates as needed to keep it competitive. Target Field has a similar fund, which allows for incremental updates to the facility over time, without needing explicit new public fu...

The first two levels are enclosed with cinder-block masonry; they're starting to put in sheetrock on upper floors, which should move quickly I think. As of this morning, forms are being set to pour the floor of the 9th floor (ceiling of the 8th floor), leaving just one more level until this is toppe...

Yeah - go stand around the KSTP tower on University for a few hours someday, and tell me that it couldn't be handled by a single traffic lane. Rush hour might get tight, but (a) that's what happens in a city, and (b) I-94 is a hop, skip, and a jump to the south.

Absolutely it could be better. But it couldn't be worse than an empty lot next to an LRT station.

Of course, everything we're talking about here is merely academic. There is no way that this line moves forward, politically, without getting to Eden Prairie. Nearly all of the moderate, business-friendly DFL state representatives elected from the southwest suburbs in 2012 campaigned heavily on gett...

Yeah, it's true that most of Eden Prairie (by area) is your standard McMansion suburb; however, EP is big (a full 6 mile x 6 mile township), and most of the rental units (and non-lily-white population) is located near the EP center where SWLRT is meant to go. If they were proposing to run SWLRT thro...

Well, it's not like it's impossible to squeeze multiple events into the arena over a few days: http://bigstory.ap.org/content/staples-center-host-6-playoff-games-4-days I'm not saying we should consolidate the two arenas into one; just that the two-arena setup is a result of the unique regional equi...

Startribune story:

http://www.startribune.com/local/minnea ... 85411.html

Here's another interesting study from SWLRT, this time about demographics along the line: http://www.southwesttransitway.org/dmdocuments/SW-Housing-Inventory-Final.pdf Particularly interesting are the demographics for SouthWest Station and EP City Center, which have a much larger distribution of poo...

I don't necessarily buy the argument that we're a large enough metro for two major arenas. After all, Staples Center in LA houses 2 NBA teams + 1 NHL team with roughly the same capcities as what our two arenas manage for those sports.

Yes, there was quite a parade of fire trucks and ambulances past Annie's while I was eating lunch. 14th Ave is shut down from 4th St to 5th St.

Tear down both Xcel and Target Center and build a new stadium on the Green Line in Midway!

[/troll]

I'm mostly in favor of the Nicollet streetcar because it will help get that Kmart town down.

Well, it's still 6 stories in close proximity to an LRT stop. I can't complain too hard about density in Bloomington.

Foundation pouring is underway. It's starting to look like they're going to leave the foundations from the House of Hanson building in place and integrate them into the new structure.

Are the seating problems (basically, the price distribution of the seats) fixable in a renovation?

Terminating SW and Bottineau at Hopkins and Robbinsdale, respectively, seems like a no-brainer to me - you can leave open the possibility of extensions in the future. They achieve most of the benefits of the full lines at fractional cost. Unfortunately, I think that federal cost-effectiveness criter...

Not to nitpick, but it looks like you didn't truncate the SWLRT at SouthWest Station, which is the current plan.

^^^ I understand where you're coming from, but your two ideas here are really off-base. (1) Graves is just not going to tear down his hotel tower and build a new one next door - it just doesn't make sense economically. The market doesn't support it, meaning it would take huge government intervention...