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Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: July 2nd, 2019, 8:58 am
by NickP
It looks like it’ll be the entire reminder of the block.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: July 2nd, 2019, 9:19 am
by mattaudio
It looks like it’ll be the entire reminder of the block.
That's disappointing, then.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: July 2nd, 2019, 10:16 am
by luigipaladio
I wasn’t able to open the Strib article. Just exactly what is being proposed and who is proposing it? Seven stories of apartments over one floor of retail/childcare will fall short of the height of the New Thrivent building. That will give us two somewhat squat bits of infill.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: July 2nd, 2019, 10:32 am
by SurlyLHT
It would be eight stories, daycare on the first floor with play area then next floor will house a burn non-profit and families and then above that apartments. Nothing seems set in stone however and they'll submit it to the city in the Fall. I don't mind it given that it is very neighborhoody and will give the area more of a sense of place. It's also nice to have shorter buildings and more light.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: July 2nd, 2019, 10:35 am
by MNdible
The rendering in the article must be the old plan, right? Because it seems to show an 11 or 12 story building.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: July 2nd, 2019, 10:54 am
by neck
The rendering in the article must be the old plan, right? Because it seems to show an 11 or 12 story building.
the caption says "this rendering shows an earlier 11 story version of the building; the developer now plans to build an eight-story building" (paraphrasing)

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: July 2nd, 2019, 11:07 am
by MNdible
They must have changed the caption, because it didn't say that before.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 4th, 2019, 5:46 pm
by bapster2006

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 8:12 am
by Multimodal
Is daycare a good use for a first floor?

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 8:50 am
by squrtis
Is daycare a good use for a first floor?
As opposed to a second or higher floor? Yes. Imagine trying to evacuate a daycare with infants and toddlers using stairs verses a door straight to the sidewalk.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 8:53 am
by trkaiser
There are also obvious concerns about safety, so some urban schools (like Primrose) like to take spaces that aren't directly accessed from the street.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 8:54 am
by dajazz
Is daycare a good use for a first floor?
As opposed to a second or higher floor? Yes. Imagine trying to evacuate a daycare with infants and toddlers using stairs verses a door straight to the sidewalk.
This. And downtown daycares should strongly be encouraged if you want to continuing bringing more residents in.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 10:21 am
by twincitizen
Also, this is just a weird comment in the context of downtown Minneapolis retail vacancy. I assume Multimodal is insinuating that a daycare is too boring/inactive of a retail use to bless the sidewalk frontage of this building (Please do correct me if I'm wrong and that's not what you meant). That's patently absurd. This area and most of downtown is an absolute dead zone with vacant ground floor commercial space or worse, no commercial space whatsoever, with no improvement on the horizon. I will literally take any ground floor commercial use that isn't a blank wall. Even some of the new hotels are a total disaster for ground floor activation (AC Hotel on Hennepin...WTF?!)

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 10:58 am
by Multimodal
And downtown daycares should strongly be encouraged if you want to continuing bringing more residents in.
I just asked if the first floor was appropriate. Nobody’s talking about banning daycare downtown.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 10:59 am
by Multimodal
Is daycare a good use for a first floor?
As opposed to a second or higher floor? Yes. Imagine trying to evacuate a daycare with infants and toddlers using stairs verses a door straight to the sidewalk.
Is this very different from evacuating senior housing?

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 11:15 am
by Multimodal
I assume Multimodal is insinuating that a daycare is too boring/inactive of a retail use to bless the sidewalk frontage of this building (Please do correct me if I'm wrong and that's not what you meant). That's patently absurd. This area and most of downtown is an absolute dead zone with vacant ground floor commercial space or worse, no commercial space whatsoever, with no improvement on the horizon. I will literally take any ground floor commercial use that isn't a blank wall. Even some of the new hotels are a total disaster for ground floor activation (AC Hotel on Hennepin...WTF?!)
I don’t believe it’s patently absurd.

This isn’t a comparison between having a blank wall or a daycare; it’s, as you initially surmised, a comparison between daycare and a more active use.

I ask this because of experience in the suburbs, St. Louis Park specifically. There’s a lot to like about Excelsior & Grand, but that daycare really deadens one whole building. Likewise, between the internally-focused senior center and the daycare itself, TowerLight on Wooddale is not only a dead block, but a dead corner and dead plaza. The dark-tinted windows don’t help. It really isn’t much different from a blank wall.

All the fancy street lights, wide sidewalks, bike parking, big windows, and brick buildings in the world won’t make it feel any more active. It’s dead.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 11:27 am
by dajazz
And downtown daycares should strongly be encouraged if you want to continuing bringing more residents in.
I just asked if the first floor was appropriate. Nobody’s talking about banning daycare downtown.
Did I say you were? No.

First floor is absolutely appropriate for a daycare /thread.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 1:07 pm
by luigipaladio
Whenever the discussion goes to ground floor retail this far from the core of downtown, I always wonder what kind of commercial uses people are imagining would even be attracted to such spaces. Undoubtedly the Elliot Park area could use a decent grocery store and some small service oriented operations, but is it even remotely likely that a swarm of interesting retail outfits will suddenly materialize to fill all kinds of space on the ground floor of every new building in the area? We can’t get enough viable retail to fill in available space on the Mall. Commercial retail is a very unstable and uncertain field right now. Maybe Amazon would come in and open a variety of store fronts for their different product lines and have an electronic kiosk inside of each store front to handle all sales - wouldn’t that be exciting? Sorry to be snarky on this, but I just don’t see much potential for filling commercial space in every new building that gets built anywhere near downtown. The daycare proposal here is about as real and practical as it gets.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 1:20 pm
by Multimodal
Whenever the discussion goes to ground floor retail this far from the core of downtown, I always wonder what kind of commercial uses people are imagining would even be attracted to such spaces. Undoubtedly the Elliot Park area could use a decent grocery store and some small service oriented operations, but is it even remotely likely that a swarm of interesting retail outfits will suddenly materialize to fill all kinds of space on the ground floor of every new building in the area? We can’t get enough viable retail to fill in available space on the Mall. Commercial retail is a very unstable and uncertain field right now.
A city’s downtown core supports high-rent destination retail & dining. Rents on Nicollet Mall have to be astronomical. A few blocks away, and a block from The Commons, can likely support everyday dining/coffee, retail, & services for people who walk.

Big box, commodity retail is being killed by Amazon, which has cheaper commodity items. People still need coffee, a drug store, yoga, and other small independent retailers.

Re: Thrivent Headquarters Block - 6th St and Portland Ave

Posted: August 8th, 2019, 1:39 pm
by HKM
Whenever the discussion goes to ground floor retail this far from the core of downtown, I always wonder what kind of commercial uses people are imagining would even be attracted to such spaces. Undoubtedly the Elliot Park area could use a decent grocery store and some small service oriented operations, but is it even remotely likely that a swarm of interesting retail outfits will suddenly materialize to fill all kinds of space on the ground floor of every new building in the area? We can’t get enough viable retail to fill in available space on the Mall. Commercial retail is a very unstable and uncertain field right now.
A city’s downtown core supports high-rent destination retail & dining. Rents on Nicollet Mall have to be astronomical. A few blocks away, and a block from The Commons, can likely support everyday dining/coffee, retail, & services for people who walk.
A diner on the SE corner of 7th Street & 5th Ave is coming with the six-story apartment building on the existing surface lot; the daycare is supposed to be only one ground floor retail tenant in the new Thrivent HQ block- when it was announced there was also a coffee shop mentioned. I have not seen any mention of retail next to current Thrivent building on the west side of 5th Ave but the first floor seems to be quite tall for a lobby so would imagine there's retail opportunity there.