urbanMSP

As property-tax revenue drops, partial redevelopment eyed at Eden Prairie Center The JCP location at EP Center is identified as a potential redevelopment location. You may know its perpetually empty parking lot as the site of Mt Eden Prairie during last winter's snow-fest. It's disappointing that c...

Fridley Station: 8/421 (2%)

I just took 6d6 psychic damage from reading that.

Strib op-ed from a few days ago - look at the 2nd one down by Thomas Fisher. He proposes linking the boulevard-ization of current I-94 with building a new I-94 along Pierce Butler Route, which sounds nice and easy in principle but would easily outstrip SWLRT in terms of largest public works project...

This is exactly why the parking minimums bill is (or *was*) such a big deal. Fidelis can so highly prioritize parking, without any loss of realized value, because every other competing property is also mandated to have lots of (mostly unnecessary) parking. If you remove the mandated parking minimums...

The latest SWLRT problem: Wrong placement of tracks Despite the KSTP-esque headline and credulously framing the "concerned neighbors" as acting in good faith, the real nuggets from this reporting are: Won't affect the overall price tag of the project This is an operational concern, as any...

Welp, I stand corrected. So much for my pithy, oversimplified explanation

Well shit.

I mean there's probably something to that... all the players here have a deep history building roads and highways, so it's a predictable target to build roads and bridges even if they're dedicated for buses in the end.

Plus no tunnels.

If they tried to route a freeway through one of the many narrow isthmuses, or bridge it over one of the lake channels, I can't even imagine the level of pushback they'd get from the millionaire mansion owners on the lake. A legal fight for the ages. Or maybe they'd just tunnel it under the lake - wh...

And let's all be thankful that Lake Minnetonka physically precludes just about any feasible idea for a third ring road.

Har Mar has got to be a pretty attractive redevelopment opportunity, given the Rosedale proximity and being right on an A Line stop, no? I'm not sure how Roseville has this area planned currently, but my understanding of the pending housing legislation is that parking requirements would be very mini...

An important difference from a Bearpath mansion is that an Urban Bearpath could someday be relatively easily repurposed into a normal apartment or condo building, whereas a Bearpath McMansion is a Bearpath McMansion forever.

Chaska has excellent urban form in its downtown (especially after the recent road diet on Chestnut) and Chanhassen has densified somewhat along its weird semi-walkabale-but-mostly-driveable main street, so I'm disappointed to hear it from those two mayors especially. At the end of the day, they fear...

Getting back to the substance of the issue here - I could have sworn I read somewhere that the 25' clearance was needed for construction worker safety, which implies it's not an operational requirement. Can anyone verify that statement? Furthermore, it's stated in the article that the 25 foot cleara...

Will Uber and Lyft really leave Minneapolis? Maybe. Here's how it could play out. I don't use Uber/Lyft and don't know anyone who drives for them, so I have the luxury of being a disinterested third party in this. At minimum, if Uber/Lyft withdrew and no other rideshare service replaced them, I'd b...

Agreed on the shorter track segments! I really think that the Midtown Greenway is the next logical step for a light rail extension after the SWLRT and Bottineau extensions. They shouldn't have nearly as difficult of a time with securing ROW and the county has left space in the trench for a light ra...

One thing that bothers me with this project (and other transit projects) is how the cost of the Highway 5 bridge is being attributed 100% to this project, when in reality only a portion of the bridge reconstruction costs should be rightly attributed to this project. According to MnDot, that bridge (...

As someone mentioned upthread, once the extensions are complete, we will be nearing a point where the track infrastructure and the color line designations will be less tied to each other - for example, a new "Silver Line" connection SPUD to Brooklyn Center becomes possible, or an EP to MOA...

There have been a number of experiments housed in the lab over the years. Basically, any experiment which requires ultra-low background / shielding from cosmic radiation is a good fit for an underground lab. Natural radioactivity in the rock overburden is then the background signal that you largely ...

Time to go read up on extraction techniques for helium. Hope these leases can provide meaningful benefits for all Minnesotans.

And as someone who used to work as a physicist in the Soudan Underground Lab, I can arrest to the acute need for helium in scientific research.