urbanMSP

I don't think we have a thread for this, but the country has moved forward on the site that South of lake st apartments next to the blue line

http://finance-commerce.com/2014/10/hen ... n-lh-site/

New site plan shared by Greco: http://finance-commerce.com/files/2014/ ... Plan-1.jpg

Previous site plan from a Strib story last year: http://stmedia.startribune.com/images/lhfull.jpg

Obviously both are very general plans, but they look about the same, so I think it's fair to assume the same amount of housing units, retail, etc. The new plan calls out retail frontage on Lake for the Hennepin County office building, so that's good.

The county is preparing to purchase a 6.3-acre site at 2225 E. Lake St., adjacent to a station at the southwest quadrant of Lake and Hiawatha Avenue, from the Minneapolis School Board for $8 million, according to county documents. The county will also transfer $46.4 million to the Housing and Redevelopment Authority to pay for its new service center and parking facility.

The 100,000-square-foot county office building is part of a first phase of the L&H Station project, which also includes structured parking, 125 units of market-rate housing and about 8,000 square feet of street-level retail.

Sam Newberg/Joe Urban wrote some thoughts about making this place better: https://streets.mn/2014/10/22/making-tra ... -hiawatha/

Omg! Underground parking!

Full plans from CPC CoW:
http://minneapolismn.gov/www/groups/pub ... 134438.pdf

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/b ... watha.html

It's nothing to love. And the canopies in the market area are trying too hard.

another BKV clone.

Oof. That color scheme is pretty hideous.

Looks like solar panels on top of the office building.

Apparently the CoW meeting tonight ran 2 hours, which is extremely long for a meeting with just 2 items on the agenda (this and the N.Loop storage facility).

I'm guessing the vast majority of the time was spent on this project. That's a good thing, because what I'm hearing from design and placemaking professionals is that there are some serious concerns with the entire layout of this proposal.

I'm not sure exactly what the Planning Commission discussed tonight, but I'm guessing some of it was probably covered in Sam Newberg's post on streets.mn a few weeks ago: https://streets.mn/2014/10/22/making-tra ... -hiawatha/

I guess I wasn't that impressed with Sam's write-up. It seemed to be a lot of him showing off his expertness and over-inflating some concerns about some fairly subjective things. Also, he doesn't seem to recognize the requirement that the project be phased so that the County building can be built while the School building remains in place and functional.

I definitely share some of your criticisms of his post. I was mostly putting it there as a conversation starter/booster as to what the concerns might be with the proposal (besides mediocre architecture - no shortage of people around here on that issue). Instead I probably should have included the staff report, detailing CPED's concerns

I would like to add to the discourse about Sam’s article. Every building needs some back of house function – he selected a picture of a path through meters and a parking garage and then compares it to street front examples and adorned interior courtyards. Further he uses images from European medieval districts and areas where there is a variety of ownership. At least compare apples to apples. Side note - Looking at the current plan I don’t see any small pass throughs discussed in the article? (I’m seeing tree lined streets.) As for the L + H station design, I am excited/hopeful that something will finally move forward on this site. They need to do a good job on the market plaza design and spend some money there otherwise this is not going to be a success on the neighborhood level. The buildings fit into the mold of what we have been seeing. I was hopeful that there would be some variety in building heights, not just the same 5 or 6 stories we are seeing everywhere. (It’s obviously a successful model for developers, hopefully some new models can start to flourish – like Genesee, One Southdale, WaHU)

I'm curious what others think about Sam's insistence that the public plaza be oriented along Lake, rather than pushed to the side along the LRT viaduct. I'll agree there are concerns with the overall site plan and how pedestrians will actually navigate through the space, but I'm not sure I agree with him about the location of the plaza / Farmers' Market space. Yes, there are serious constraints due to the phasing of building the county's office building while the MPS building remains operational, but something just feels off about the site plan - like they might be rushing this to the point that CPTED best practices aren't being used.

I actually think only having a small part of the plaza facing Lake is fine. Most of the time that plaza is going to be empty; better to have some active retail there instead.

Any idea how the other 3 phases of this would happen? My best guess would be one of them is taking down the MPS building and creating the plaza, another is the building in the SW of the site, and the third is the building in the SE of the site.

So fun fact, and the reason I asked the earlier question.
I now live on this block. As in, one of the two houses left on the MPS block. But don't worry, I'm just renting, and my house is reaching the end of it's useful life, so I won't be fighting future phases

Actually, owning the house wouldn't be a bad deal, I bet it's worth a pretty penny when it comes time to buy it out. My landlord is sitting on a gold mine and doesn't even know it.

There's a comment and community meeting planned for this project this Thurs. Feb 5. Here's a link with info: http://corcoranneighborhood.org/community-meeting-2225/

Meeting time is 6p at 2225 East Lake St. The details are in the link.

There's also an online comment section, open now, to gather comments ahead of time or for those who can't attend. The link to that is:
http://corcoranneighborhood.org/comment2225/

The link to that comment section is also in the first link for the meeting.

So this meeting is tonight. I'll be there, will anyone else be coming? Great tacos across the Street at Pineda Tacos.

I can try to get there! I have the meeting about Nye's until 6:30 I think, but I could be over before that