urbanMSP

That firm is 100% unf

Okay, I'm old so you're going to have to help me out here. I'm taking from context that this is good, but I don't have any idea what it actually means.

Like a grunt when you find something really attractive

Were you expecting a new tunnel connection?

No, it's just interesting that one of the reasons for the location is for connections to city hall. Maybe this will put more people on the street level as the skyway haters have wanted.

Yeah, there were several pictures of Harpa during the presentation. Not that the city has pre-financial-crash Iceland money, but I'm confident that this'll be an impressive building.

This project has a lot of potential, I'm excited to see what this firm comes up with. Here's hoping they go out on limb with a really cool design we can be proud of that won't look dated soon after it's done.

could look like this... https://www.dezeen.com/2011/08/25/harpa ... rchitects/

Harpa was constructed almost a decade ago for 164m Euro. It's an incredibly detailed and gorgeous building. Designed by two architecture firms and a well known artist. Does anyone know the budget of this new city office project? For some reason I doubt it will be anywhere near 200m dollars, so I think we should keep our expectations a little more reasonable. I'm sure it will be a nice quality building though. I secretly hope they keep up use of the same granite most of the civic buildings have.

Does anyone know the budget of this new city office project? For some reason I doubt it will be anywhere near 200m dollars, so I think we should keep our expectations a little more reasonable.

Based on the design fees of $6.2M, if it's based on an average 12% of construction budget, safe to say probably $75M-100M budget would be my guess. It has not yet been set though.

Actual quote from a city person working on the project when I said I was encouraged by the Harpa pictures appearing on the presentation: "Well, we don't have an Iceland budget".

However, the city is focused on this being a 75-100 year investment, so I'm not expecting an Opus concrete panel special either.

Way more people live in Minneapolis than Iceland, which is weird to me.

Way more people live in Minneapolis than Iceland, which is weird to me.

Weird how countries where people don't demand their governments refund them a latte's worth of tax money have nicer things than we do.

A few more details on the city office building being designed for 6th St and 4th Ave. Zero parking onsite. First two floors are very open with lots of glass and light. Two skyway connections on the back side facing the ramp. Keeps the skyway to the Government Center of course. Designs of the outside should be public in March. It was noted that the look is something Minneapolis hasn’t seen before.

Input meeting

https://www.facebook.com/events/1968811339828206/?ti=as

I went to the public input meeting; some information and terrible photos:


(click to enlarge)

The Henning Larsen team emphasized that these renderings look much more final than they actually are. This view is from the northwestern corner of the building (closest to city hall), looking south along 4th Ave. They said this is a bit inaccurate, as the main entrance vestibule would about where the woman in the black skirt is standing (directly in front of the reception desk). There will also likely be a small grab-and-go style coffee bar (or similar) near the bottom of the "signature staircase" in the northwest corner of the building. They mentioned Penny's on Washington as inspiration.

They said they want the building to be usable by the public in many contexts, eg. reading the paper with a coffee, meetings, eating lunch; not just for city government services. There will be a wide variety of seating and standing drop-in options throughout the public areas of the building.



(The north arrow is wrong in this image.) This is the less-preferred potential ground floor layout. I failed to take a photo of HL's preferred option, which would move the retail (aforementioned coffee bar) to the northwest corner.

The MPD space is apparently some kind of youth services location, which will mostly(?) be run by a non-profit entity. Sounded like it'll include overnight holding cells, basically, but with a nicer name. This will have a separate entrance on 5th St, and will mostly be hidden under the signature stair. There will be a vehicle entrance on 5th, with some room for police cruiser parking.

The yellow rectangle on the left is the public restrooms. The ground floor space will be open during skyway hours (10pm); not sure whether that'll include the restrooms, but someone requested it. Also suggested was the idea of making the restrooms accessible 24 hours, via a bank-atm-entrance-like setup.

The red conference center will hold about 150, is dividable into 3 parts (flexible, so 2/3, 1/3 split is possible), and will be accessible to the public (not sure on the details there), and reservable/rentable for private conferences. They showed this rendering (from their U of Cincinnati project):





Main entrance is on the top right (NW corner) somewhere, with secondary entrance below the skyway (SW corner). The white strips in the trees in the NW are benches, I think. Not much room for green on the 5th and 6th St sides, but it sounds like there will be planters by the building.

They emphasized that the first two levels would be all glass, and the inside and outside would blend together. They also assured the woman from the Audubon Society that there would be bird-safety features, and that bird safety will be given priority over beauty.





Again, this is a picture of the less-preferred layout. Preferred would move the public service area to in between the purple "building core" blocks. The city is planning on implementing a new service model, that sounds kind of like a Genius Bar. The front desk would be staffed by "superstars" or whatever, who would likely be able to handle any simpler request directly, like parking permits, etc. They'd then help you set up meetings with the appropriate departments, which could take place in the drop-in work spaces / public seating areas behind or near the service counter.



Looking at the NW corner. I asked someone from HL for a sneak peak at a rough exterior design and was denied, of course. He suggested I look at HL's Cincinnati or Microsoft projects, but said that those aren't "quite right". He also said that they don't have an unlimited budget, it won't be all glass, it won't quite be "iconic", but it'll be "very nice". They didn't show exterior designs today because they were still working out the budget constraints, and didn't want to present something then have to walk back the design due to costs. He said they're trying to be a good role model for other buildings, regarding the street-level experience, and the blending of the skyway and street-level.



(Taken from the facebook page.) They showed this image, and said that this was the less-preferred layout of the skyway. All of the orange is publicly-accessible space; the sides of the staircase will have seating and maybe tables.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the noises they made about the plans for the project. It sounds like there's a strong emphasis on making it a usable and inviting public space on the ground and skyway levels, as well as a first-class office for city employees.

The next public meeting (with exterior renderings) will be sometime in April. The ramp demolition will start in July; move-in in 2020.

Couple more tidbits:

- Tristan Al-Haddad will be designing one signature artwork, and will help "identify public art opportunities to integrate into the building."
- You can email comments to COBinfo at msrdesign dot com.

One of the people involved emailed me some more information about the exterior. Hope he doesn't mind that I'm sharing here; omitting names to protect the guilty.

We are designing a building skin that is similar to the three examples below. It is safe to say that these examples are of comparable cost point and articulation strategy to our Minneapolis proposal…but it will not clone these. It will be unique to this project. The first, Microsoft Denmark, is a very close example like [someone] said. The second rendered example is University of Cincinnati Linder Hall under construction now in the American market. The [third] is a construction close up photo of headquarters for Jotun, a Norwegian paint company, showing close up detail. By comparison, our project is leaning more toward silver metallic.

MS:


U of Cincinnati:


Jotun:

Wow. I'm impressed. Looks like it will be a good addition to downtown. I especially like the grand entrance to the skyway system.

One of the people involved emailed me some more information about the exterior. Hope he doesn't mind that I'm sharing here; omitting names to protect the guilty.

We are designing a building skin that is similar to the three examples below. It is safe to say that these examples are of comparable cost point and articulation strategy to our Minneapolis proposal…but it will not clone these. It will be unique to this project. The first, Microsoft Denmark, is a very close example like [someone] said. The second rendered example is University of Cincinnati Linder Hall under construction now in the American market. The [third] is a construction close up photo of headquarters for Jotun, a Norwegian paint company, showing close up detail. By comparison, our project is leaning more toward silver metallic.

MS:


U of Cincinnati:


Jotun:

Am I wrong that these look kind of retro '50s, but with bigger windows?

Although logistically it most likely wouldn't work. It'll be great to see a large crosswalk lined up with the main entrance along with landscaping connection to the Government Center Plaza. Given that the street is a one way, maybe when the light changes for the LRT have a light for a massive attractive crosswalk for people cross over to the plaza? Then open that end of the plaza up more toward the side with the new building? Perhaps there's even the opportunity to take half a block of 5th street and close it cars with the ramp gone. I'm not a traffic expert, but there seems to be possibilities.

I had the same thought about closing the half-block of 5th St, but it appears that the remaining ramp on the other half block has an exit onto 5th St. It seems like it would be possible to modify that area to exit only onto 5th Ave, but I'd imagine the new owners would fight it on general principle.

I think it's worth sending them an email mentioning it, though! COBinfo@msrdesign(dot)com

We had a nice little group of Streets.mners at the meeting last night. It's fun to be involved in the planning of this in a small way.

I stressed high quality flooring/paving materials (getting away from standard concrete sidewalks and polished concrete flooring) and a strong connection/flow between ground floor and skyway level. It will be interesting to see what Henning Larson produces for renderings in the next public meeting.

The city CFO Mark Ruff said demolition of the existing ramp starts June 18th.

From the StarTribune,

"When the new office building is complete, probably in the fall of 2020, the city will vacate offices in the Crown Roller Mill building, the Public Service Center just north of City Hall, and the City of Lakes building just north of that."

"The offices for the City Council, mayor, police chief and fire chief will remain in City Hall. Ruff said the city is considering what to do with the fire station at the corner of Portland Avenue and 3rd Street and the First Precinct on 4th Street, where the city pays $30,000 per month for parking"

http://www.startribune.com/minneapolis- ... 477460473/

The City of Lakes and Public Service Center would open up some nice real estate for development.