urbanMSP

How feasible and likely is it that Hennepin County is able to consolidate the Juvenile Court buildings on 5th and Park?

Isn't the bulk of that building the juvenile detention center? That seems hard to move to a different building.

The land they're sitting on with the building and adjacent parking lot is now perfect for residential development overlooking The Commons.

The parking lot and empty lot sure do.

The parking ramp is open and offering free parking through tomorrow. The skyway connection is open too.

Apartments are called Sora - https://sorampls.com/

Despite being located within the boundaries of Downtown West, they're marketing this as "East Town"

I hate that the CBD is called “West”. To me west is west of the Orpheum.

Sora Apartments fully wrapped up. I can't imagine walk-up units along 5th Ave are leasing well, but who knows.

Sora Apartments fully wrapped up. I can't imagine walk-up units along 5th Ave are leasing well, but who knows.

Seems like a good time to have a private entrance so you can avoid shared spaces...

I wonder if the city will do anything with the blank concert portion of the old Thrivent building

The former Thrivent building is owned by Hennepin County, not the city.

I think any changes to the building are going to be on hold for a while. Many county employees won't be back in the office until at least September, perhaps even later. Once that happens, there will likely be a focus on spending money for inside renovations (safely spacing folks) before they start cutting holes in the exterior of the new building.

I'm confused by the idea that offices of the future will require a lot more space per worker. We know that the "six foot rule" is completely unscientific, COVID-19 can easily spread further than that indoors. So it's either safe to work inside (at whatever distance) because people are vaccinated, or it's not.

I'm sure they'll spend money on interior renovations first though, I agree with that. I wish they'd eventually replace those awful red-tinted windows.

I'm hoping this pandemic will lead to improved building ventilation, which will help with not only the acute effects of respiratory pandemics but also a whole host of chronic health issues, instead of just moving the cubes further apart, which, as you say, won't really do much at all. I'm guessing chances are about 50-50.

Maybe they can commission a giant mural for the blank wall - would be cheaper than structural changes.

The best thing to do would have been to ensure that this building covered the blank wall.

Since that's out of the question at this point, a mural is the next best thing. Especially given how close this is to US Bank Stadium, this is an incredible opportunity to incorporate art and culture into our skyline.

So, my understanding is now that fomite transmission is a red herring (so we can stop worrying about elevator buttons), there's two main ways of transmission:

1) Carrier sneezes / sings / coughs / yells on someone spewing massive quantities of droplets. Mitigation for this wearing cloth masks, plexiglass screens, the six foot rule to prevent the spray of droplets from reaching another person

2) Infectious does builds up over time in the air of a poorly vented environments, like a bar, and person receives an infectious does by spending a large amount of time there. Mitigation for this is using drive-thrus or curbside pickup, or at the very least minimizing your exposure time using takeout instead of dine-in,, better ventilation, better filters, operable windows to dilute the virus and reduce the dose you receive. This is not norovirus where just a couple of virons can make you sick, the thinking is it takes at least 100.

The way to make offices safer would seem to be to both increase allotted space and improving ventilation.

I'm confused by the idea that offices of the future will require a lot more space per worker. We know that the "six foot rule" is completely unscientific, COVID-19 can easily spread further than that indoors. So it's either safe to work inside (at whatever distance) because people are vaccinated, or it's not.

I'm sure they'll spend money on interior renovations first though, I agree with that. I wish they'd eventually replace those awful red-tinted windows.

It's completely unscientific, but there remains a lot of "hygiene theater" to assuage the concerns of the public (or, in this case, employees). Based on the outreach to workers, it seems like the county is considering renovations to offices to allow people to spread out (which includes some offices being moved to another building or split between buildings). Of course, nothing is finalized yet.