RBC Gateway & Four Seasons - 37 stories - 519'

[LakeCharles]

Well, this sure is a tangent...but let me just say, I was born and raised here, and I have never used the word irregardless or most of these other supposed regional dialect words. I am from SLP....do I need to be from the country or something? So I am not sure I buy that saying things wrong is really a "regional dialect" of Minneapolis. Maybe rural MN?

I agree that it is not "MN" dialect. It's first recorded use was South Carolina, and others claim it's birthplace is in Indiana. But irregardless, we can certainly say it is a North American English oddity.

[Wedgeguy]

I would love to see Duval simply tweak the square floor plates to match the angles of the streets surrounding that block. It would maintain the simplicity and make the shape 1000x more meaningful.

Getting back to the real thread at hand. I agree that the building can have 4 sides, but it does not have to be a square. Look at the John Hancock Tower of Boston. It is a parallelogram with no square corners going up the tower. Nothing says this tower has to have 4 square corners. I'm fine and encourage that the west wall would more follow Hennepin and create a unique floor plate. You could still do square on top of that for the residential to have a simple setback on the way up. MO

[twincitizen]

I'm super-intrigued by the tv-studio thing. It would be a great way to give the building active street-presence on multiple sides, without it being 100% retail/restaurant, subject to vacancy, etc.

I am curious about how vehicular access will be handled though. Obviously there will be no curb cuts on Nicollet, unless you count any streetcar alignment that might curve through the block. I'd think the city's preference would be for the principal vehicular entrance to be on 3rd Street, so Hennepin and Nicollet faces can be people oriented. A curb cut on Washington would be pretty awful, with cycletracks going in there next year. For these reasons, I'd strongly prefer the diagonal streetcar alignment that clips the eastern corner off the block. If all/most vehicular access is going to be on 3rd, you'd probably not want to have the streetcar tracks be perpendicular to that.

[Wedgeguy]

Not sure which street or corner would be best for the TV/Radio station. SW over looks the senior housing and Eclipse. NW would be Eclipse again and Whole Foods. NE would be the street car and the Voya Plaza which would be lifeless. That leaves the SE corner with the Marquette Plaza park and the upcoming monsters called Nic 2 and 3. Unless Opus pulls a rabbit out of their @@@, that would be about as good as looking at a parking garage.

[lordmoke]

The United proposal actually looks like it routes the streetcar tracks UNDER the tower, which is my favorite thing about that one. If something similar to that could be worked into Duval's proposal, that would be wonderful.

[Elliot Altbaum]

Mortenson releases some details. 31 story tower with 273 apartments, 7 story hotel, and 60k sq ft of office.
http://www.startribune.com/blogs/285966111.html

[Nathan]

Mortenson has released their plans.

http://www.startribune.com/blogs/285966111.html

[seanrichardryan]

Oooh/ I like it.

[mattaudio]

Would these have podium parking in addition to underground parking? If it's just underground parking...
I know it's universally hated to have slip ramps between street and sidewalk up to parking garages (fmr 4th/Nic ramp, Northstar, Center Village, St. Paul Macy's, etc) but if it goes below ground rather than up, it actually works quite well without cutting off the sidewalk frme the street. Examples:

- NOC at Washington/Central https://goo.gl/maps/iEPdI
- Government Center https://goo.gl/maps/TFCee

Edit:

Not sure which street or corner would be best for the TV/Radio station.

The description I saw was that the TV studio would be on one side of that center-cutting plaza, and the radio would be on the other side. And the center plaza/restaurant would be convertible into space that could host broadcast events.

[lordmoke]

Now that's a nice looking tower. Can we get this one and Duval's- split the parcel? Build this instead of The Eclipse? It would be like our own miniature WTC complex.

[Wedgeguy]

Reminds me of a rehashed Target Tower that they put on hold! Maybe they could have saved a dime on some of what they had already applied for at that site.

But still better that the Doran by a long shot. Second best for me, Duval still has a sizable lead for me.

[mnmike]

Like the tower...but is that a parking podium? Really don't like that if that is the case. Everyone came with a decent proposal, in my opinion. I would really hate to see a parking podium here though!

[mattaudio]

If this is going to be "iconic" by any means, it cannot have a parking podium. Imagine if we had no crystal court, but a big IDS parking podium. Imagine if Pillsbury Center / US Bank Plaza had no wonderful interior space for humans, but instead had a parking podium.

The only building downtown that seems to integrate a parking podium in a decent way is 5th South 6th. But that building is by no means iconic, given its prominent corner on Nicollet Mall.

[mullen]

the city specifies in the RFP height and something iconic and this is the best three of our local developers can do. this mortenson project is fine infill on another block. not at this intersection of important mpls streets. if this is the best these developers can come up with during a downtown boom time I have little faith for a buildng to ever exceed the IDS.

the Duval proposal should be given time to refine. it does the best of delivering on the promise for a great building, even that star trib article on the building expresses skeptism by an "expert". it's like we have such a low , humble opinion of ourselves we can't fathom 80 stories here in our little burg.

[John]

Matt and Mullen, you are right on the mark with your comments. This Mortenson proposal is decent high rise infill and actually would have worked well where Nic on Fifth is located. But in no way does it come close to being "iconic" in any sense ( perhaps in Fargo ND ). I mean get real... Just reinforces my opinion that many of the current developers in this town are provincial and backwards.

[talindsay]

I like the way that United's proposal interacts with the area and with the streetcar but would be disappointed to see this entire block given over to private residences and a hotel. Their tower portion strikes me as less than graceful, but I'm not a skyline fetishist so I don't really care that much what's above the seventh floor; from the street theirs would look great but I'm afraid it doesn't have much active use.

I could pretty much say the exact same thing about Doran: their interaction with the streetcar is a little more straightforward and less creative, and their conical building is more interesting but also seems a weird throwback to 1960s design to me, but at the base they're proposing the same thing as United, and I'd rather see a broader diversity of active use.

Duval's tower is an interesting proposal, and in theory I love the mix of uses they describe. We have no idea how they intend for it to interact with the street however, and in the absence of real descriptions their proposal sounds a lot like it may be a city-in-a-tower model, where there isn't much interaction with the street at all. The tower itself is bland, which I don't mind above the seventh floor, but we know so little about what's happening at the ground level. On top of that the proposal seems incredibly ambitious, and I can't help but wonder how likely it is that this would actually get built if the city chose it.

Mortenson appears to me to have the best combination of mix of uses and achievable plan: like Duval, they're proposing a variety of uses, to include residential, hotel, retail, and office. They're also proposing real investment in the streetscape, multiple structures, and claim of interacting well with the area. We don't have a good image of how it interacts with the street or the streetcar however, and the one streetscape image they provided isn't too promising: I see a big wall, which might be glass but might also be concrete. The Library's plaza is small and heavily used, so if their plaza interacts well with the Library's plaza (which is certainly plausible given how soft and relatively low-use the actual driving lanes of Nicollet Mall are right here) then the building itself won't have to have amazing street presence, but I'd rather see a more open engagement with the street than that image demonstrates.

Anyway, Mortenson and Duval are both proposing a broad mix of active uses that should make the area busy throughout the day while United and Doran are proposing only residential and hotel. Given that Mortenson's plan seems extremely achievable I think I like that one the best; but if Duval can demonstrate that their plan is actually achievable, and gives us some sense of interaction with the street, it could also be solid.

The most important thing in this spot is to have excellent interaction with the street, with a mix of uses that encourages foot traffic throughout the day. Secondary is interesting architecture within the first six or seven floors, where pedestrians will engage with the building's façade. Any tower component, and any effect on the skyline is a pleasant bauble but not nearly as important.

[Nathan]

I love how everyone wants to give the Duval project time to refine, but not the other developers. It shows the preference to height as icon, not actual architecture. I'm not sold on any of them, but I'm not playing to Duval just for 900ft.

[talindsay]

I love how everyone wants to give the Duval project time to refine, but not the other developers. It shows the preference to height as icon, not actual architecture. I'm not sold on any of them, but I'm not playing to Duval just for 900ft.

Can I get an amen? Preach it! (I completely agree).

[FISHMANPET]

I'm not sure why we have to choose between nice looking sky scraper and good street level presence. IDS proves we can have both, so let's not just dismiss anything about the 7th floor as unimportant.

[David Greene]

I love how everyone wants to give the Duval project time to refine, but not the other developers. It shows the preference to height as icon, not actual architecture.

Err...people have said they like Duval precisely because of its simplicity and dislike, for example, Doran due to its complexity. In other words, they like its architecture in comparison to the others.