urbanMSP

St. Olaf Catholic Church is working with Aeon to:

A) rehabilitate the existing supportive housing building on 2nd Ave and 9th St, and add 27 additional units on a portion of the green space next to it.

B) build a new 70-unit affordable housing building on the parking lot on the corner of 3rd Ave and 8th St, with 60 parking spaces for the church's use.

There's some more details in the weekly bulletin.

Nice.

This is awesome! The more affordable housing we get the better.


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Certainly better than nothing, but remember that St. Olaf's property makes up 3/4 of a skyway-connected block inside the CBD (three blocks closer-in to the core than the Kraus Anderson block!) The "highest and best use" for this block is very, very high.

While I'm sure there are fans of St. Olaf's midcentury building that would be sad to see it go, the best outcome for the city/taxpayers is total redevelopment of the northern half of this block (excluding the 1/4 block occupied by the existing affordable housing and small corner park). The ideal scenario would be St. Olaf finding an existing church building to inhabit or building a new sanctuary in a more marginal corner of downtown (there seem to be like a dozen+ old church buildings downtown - surely not all of them are being utilized to their full extent). That said, even if St. Olaf's current building stays, you could do A LOT more with this 1/4-block parking lot than the 70 units they're planning to put here. For reference, the parking lot area alone is slightly larger than the 4Marq site (30 stories, 262 units). While I don't expect that they would build the 4Marq of affordable housing, this skyway-connected site is the perfect place for a parking-less housing development, with a 'BYO contract parking if you need it' model.

Since it's not going to get going until 2021, the 2040 plan rezoning should be in effect by the time this come up for approval, which includes a 10-story minimum height for the Core 50 downtown district.

Not that I really expect the PC or the Council to not grant a variance to affordable housing that supports a church, but if there's a place that should work for affordable housing to get past the six-story barrier, it's here.

I like the existing pocket park..

Do you use it?

Do you use it?

Seeing as I was relocated to Columbus OH as my profile is displaying at you - obviously the answer is no.

But an 1/8th of a block can be trees. Softens a downtown.

While I'm sure there are fans of St. Olaf's midcentury building that would be sad to see it go,

::raises hand::

We already have one former midcentury church on the edge of downtown that's about to be replaced by a residential tower so I'm cool with the only remaining one altogether in the CBD sticking around.

Not to mention that it's a Roy Thorshov building, and we've been getting rid of those with abandon recently.

While I'm sure there are fans of St. Olaf's midcentury building that would be sad to see it go,

::raises hand::

We already have one former midcentury church on the edge of downtown that's about to be replaced by a residential tower so I'm cool with the only remaining one altogether in the CBD sticking around.

I agree, there's something about an old church amongst the tall downtown buildings. Montreal has some amazing examples of this, like Promenades Cathedrale, with a multi-level shopping mall and a subway station beneath it.

This project is on the DMNA LUC agenda for next week. Apparently Westminster Church is now involved, and the new affordable building will be age-restricted to 55+. I'm hoping that implies that they're going to go bigger than 70 units on that quarter-block, but we'll see.

Update: it did in fact get bigger.

The current proposal is for a 6-story new building on the green space next to the existing building, with a 1-story breezeway connecting the new and old buildings which will include a 24-hour staffed desk. There will be a courtyard for the residents between the buildings, and a small pocket park retained on the corner of 2nd and 9th. The existing building has 96 SRO units (read: shared bathrooms, no kitchens), and it will be remodeled such that the new and old portions combined will have approximately 120 ~400sf studio units with bathrooms and kitchens.

Massing for the southwest building - the part with horizontal bands is the new construction, the flat green portion is the existing building.


Over on the other corner of the block, the plan is to build a 12-story residential building, with a potential 13th floor amenity area/rooftop deck, which is now intended to include ~120 1BR units restricted to age 55+ and affordable at 50% of AMI. There will be 55ish underground parking stalls reserved for the church (sigh), but it sounds like they're not going to provide more than a few stalls for the residents (yay). The building would be massed right up against the sidewalk on 3rd Ave, allowing a drop-off area in front of the Church's existing side parking lot door.

Massing for the northeast building

Existing parking lot has 53 spaces by my count, so it's basically parking neutral.

Ambitious proposal that would do a lot of good.

I'm glad they are keeping some of the green space on the corner - really helps to soften the downtown

I don't think I've ever gone by that corner and not seen a couple people (presumably Exodus residents?) sitting in that little park. Not heavily used, necessarily, but it may be the most consistently used green space in downtown.

I don't think I've ever gone by that corner and not seen a couple people (presumably Exodus residents?) sitting in that little park. Not heavily used, necessarily, but it may be the most consistently used green space in downtown.

I always got the impression that the little park area on the corner was not for public use.

Looks great in concept and help fills the massive hole of affordable housing.

Also should kill that awful billboard currently on the St. Olaf surface lot.

Apparently plans are still iterating, and they're now looking at a 20ish story building with up to 500 affordable units, according to the Star Tribune.

Pretty impressive, and if it keeps doubling in height every year, we'll be looking at a supertall by the time it finally gets built.