2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

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FISHMANPET
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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby FISHMANPET » March 8th, 2016, 4:31 pm

Yes they buy properties. And sometimes they sell them. Sometimes investors sell their assets. And real estate agents don't only sell, they also buy. Nicole Curtis is also a real estate agent. There are a multitude of things they could do if they wanted to, some of them even legal and allowed. Tearing the house down and building an apartment building is one of those things.

Basically I'm failing to see your point, beyond the fact that they are doing something that you don't like and you wish they'd do something you do like instead.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby clf » March 8th, 2016, 4:37 pm

Did I say should? No, I did not. I said could. I did not say they were doing something I don't like. Just pointing out some facts. Sorry if that is a problem.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby FISHMANPET » March 8th, 2016, 4:38 pm

Oh, sorry, you're just asking questions, not stating anything. Carry on.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby clf » March 8th, 2016, 4:43 pm

Oh, sorry, you're just asking questions, not stating anything. Carry on.
Do you know how to read? (That is a question, not a statement.)

"My point was that they were flippers before they had the show. They still flip houses. They just hold on to some and resell others. Levin is still a real estate agent. One of their LLCs is used to buy and sell properties. If they wanted to fix up this house and keep using it as a rental there are ways, which they have demonstrated on their show, to do it affordably." (These are statements, not questions.)

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FISHMANPET
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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby FISHMANPET » March 8th, 2016, 4:51 pm

And again, what's the point of pointing that out? They could buy it, board over the windows, throw away the key, and walk away. But I don't mention it because what's the point. They could paint it pink. But I don't mention it because what's the point. There are all sorts of things they could do but they're not going to so what's the point in mentioning it.

So sure, you're just point out that they could renovate it and rent it out, but you're clearing doing it with the intention of wishing they would. And you repeatedly call them flippers as if that's some kind of derogatory term.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby EOst » March 8th, 2016, 4:53 pm

Also I'd like someone to fully lay out the case as to why preserving the interior provides more value to society than providing housing for at least 17 more people on this location, in a place where they will probably not have a car and generally, by virtue of the location, lead a fairly low carbon footprint lifestyle.
Honestly, to some extent I just hate to see blue squares on this map go red (click for a much bigger version):

Image

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FISHMANPET
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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby FISHMANPET » March 8th, 2016, 4:55 pm

OK, that's you, but what's the value to society. Why should I care that you want those squares to stay blue and not turn red?

Also that's a cool map, where'd you get it? Or if you made it what's the data source? I like Minneapolis parcel data.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby EOst » March 8th, 2016, 5:02 pm

OK, that's you, but what's the value to society. Why should I care that you want those squares to stay blue and not turn red?
Well, for one thing, because plenty of other people feel the same way. There's a reason historic houses in historic neighborhoods are in high demand, and only part of it is location vis-a-vis downtown or transit. The more fragmented that historic fabric becomes, the less valuable the remnants are.
Also that's a cool map, where'd you get it? Or if you made it what's the data source? I like Minneapolis parcel data.
Yeah, I made it (I like maps). Hennepin County has all of its GIS data freely available to download here.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby amiller92 » March 8th, 2016, 5:06 pm

Honestly, to some extent I just hate to see blue squares on this map go red (click for a much bigger version):

There is sooo much blue on that map. To me that's a big part of the case against historical protection for any given house (absent more than age). They just are just not sufficiently rare as to seem to be in danger.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby FISHMANPET » March 8th, 2016, 5:09 pm

Plenty of people want to live in amenity rich neighborhoods close to downtown and transit, and don't care about historic homes. Do they count? For that matter I'd bet plenty of people would love free money, but merely wanting something is not sufficient reason to provide it.

And I'll take a closer look at the Hennepin parcel data, didn't realize it had structure build dates in it.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby amiller92 » March 8th, 2016, 5:10 pm

There's a reason historic houses in historic neighborhoods are in high demand, and only part of it is location vis-a-vis downtown or transit. The more fragmented that historic fabric becomes, the less valuable the remnants are.
I have to be misreading you because this sounds like there's no need for any government intervention because the market already values keeping things the way they are.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby EOst » March 8th, 2016, 5:27 pm

There is sooo much blue on that map. To me that's a big part of the case against historical protection for any given house (absent more than age). They just are just not sufficiently rare as to seem to be in danger.
There is, but it's already heavily fragmented, at least east of Hennepin/north of Lake. I think there's certainly an interest in maintaining contiguous chunks of historic fabric (eg. the six 1892 Stick/Queen Anne houses down the block on the east side) or, obviously, that big area between 24th and 25th that just got protection. I'll admit that the case is less clear for isolated fragments like this one, though. It just seems like a tremendous waste of a beautiful house which already made it 120 years.
Plenty of people want to live in amenity rich neighborhoods close to downtown and transit, and don't care about historic homes. Do they count? For that matter I'd bet plenty of people would love free money, but merely wanting something is not sufficient reason to provide it.
Well, this is something that we have to weigh as a society, and clearly it isn't all-or-nothing. But I don't think anyone here can really argue that historic preservation, as a general principle at least, isn't both widely popular and politically accepted. That to me says that we've made a collective choice to prioritize the preservation of historic resources, even at the expense of other competing interests (up to a point). If we had the same consensus for free money, I'd be all for it.
I have to be misreading you because this sounds like there's no need for any government intervention because the market already values keeping things the way they are.
Maybe in aggregate, but your argument breaks down when you move to specific level. Many of the well-loved historic landmarks and districts around town are protected specifically because the market put them in imminent danger of destruction: Milwaukee Ave, the Golden Valley Rd district, the 9th St S fragments, the Minnesota Armory, most of our historic theaters, etc.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby David Greene » March 8th, 2016, 7:47 pm

OK, that's you, but what's the value to society. Why should I care that you want those squares to stay blue and not turn red?
Because history matters. Not everything should boil down to utilitarian goals. Some things are beautiful and should be kept.

What's the value of preserving a museum instead of building a supertall full of apartments? After all, a museum is a pretty huge waste of space and some of them are pretty ugly on the outside.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby David Greene » March 8th, 2016, 7:51 pm

Honestly, to some extent I just hate to see blue squares on this map go red (click for a much bigger version):

There is sooo much blue on that map.
That's true but in addition to the fragmentation EOst mentioned, there is a variety of styles in those blue squares. You've got collections of Tudors in one place, Prairie style in another and so on. Drive down Portland sometime. If a bunch of those Tudors were replaced with modern structures it wouldn't be the same place. Sure, some Tudors would remain but it would not be the unique place it is currently.

I'm hardly arguing for preserving every house built before some arbitrary year. I'm simply saying there are reasons for preservation beyond the letter of the law. Pedantic lawyers make terrible societal architects.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby RailBaronYarr » March 8th, 2016, 8:10 pm

My personal belief is that we conflate the historic nature of buildings and the actual urban design way too often. We simply aren't building houses, commercial buildings, streets, etc the way they used to be built, and if we replaced W Broadway or Milwaukee Ave with something denser but of equal quality urban design, the effects would be far less negative. Nicollet Mall has almost none of the buildings it had 80 years ago, but it's still a very successful street. Is Milwaukee Ave's success because of the preservation or the wonderful car-free street out front? The Greenway is lined with a bunch of new buildings around Uptown, and I feel like it's just as successful and valuable as areas with a similar built-density but 100 years older (thinking areas of Loring Park, etc).

I also think preservation arguments vastly overstate the extent that a historic structure, block, or district is the contributing factor to property value. There are so many other inputs and outputs that make areas of our city have varying property values. As I continue slowly looking into academic research on these things, I'm finding more and more that conventional beliefs don't usually hold up. People are often irrational and have difficulty expressing their own thoughts and beliefs in a coherent manner. It's not hard to imagine most people who feel strongly about preservation aren't mixing those emotions with other beliefs they hold, like a preference for single family homes, distaste for renters, distaste for larger buildings, etc.

I know it's the hyper-rationality in me saying this, but the fact that it's so hard to articulate what preserving these places does bothers me. If we leveled every old house and commercial building **for a good cause** (not some parking lots or ramps or freeways) how would society be worse off? Like, finish the sentence "Thank God we saved the Milwaukee Ave homes OR ELSE...?"

Obviously my condition there in requiring a good cause is subjective. Does the thing replacing it just have to have okay design and more people? Does it need to match the architectural wonder of what it replaced? If so, who decides what's good or bad? I realize there's subjectivity in everything. But in my mind it's pretty clear that most preservation ends up just making these old houses a place for very wealthy, often older people to live in and watch their investment grow, all the while heating and cooling some monstrous building that was meant for larger families and their servants 100 years ago while thousands of people are trying to live in Uptown but can't (or, end up outbidding existing residents). If we paired preservation with other societal goals like affordable housing more often (or something else), I could really get behind it. Or, if the conversation around zoning and development and transportation weren't shifted so far to the side of "stopping almost everything almost everywhere and build everything for cars" in this country, maybe I wouldn't be so reactionary. Anyway.

I'll say something bad about this project: for such a skinny front, the materials should be nicer on the street-face. It wouldn't kill them to go with real brick or similar.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby min-chi-cbus » March 8th, 2016, 8:38 pm

Here are some general "facts"/talking points:

*We all like new development, especially smaller-scale residential developments like this one (for the most part)
*We all like historic homes/architecture and want to preserve as much of it as we possibly can (for the most part)
*There are laws and regulations that dictate what we can/can't do to a property
*We live in a capitalistic democracy, where making money is emphasized more than quality/quality improvement
*The property owner has the right to do what they want to their own property (within reason)


It just sounds like this project touches on a lot of the above facts/points, and some of them conflict with one-another. Personally I like this project as a stand-alone project, but if we were to see dozens or hundreds of these projects pop up I can see the need for some intervention and preservation. In and of itself, however, I'm not terribly concerned about any precedent this project is setting.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby David Greene » March 8th, 2016, 8:45 pm

I know it's the hyper-rationality in me saying this, but the fact that it's so hard to articulate what preserving these places does bothers me. If we leveled every old house and commercial building **for a good cause** (not some parking lots or ramps or freeways) how would society be worse off? Like, finish the sentence "Thank God we saved the Milwaukee Ave homes OR ELSE...?"
We wouldn't understand how factory workers lived in "company towns" in the same way we do with it.

To me, Milwaukee Ave. is *a lot* more than old houses and ped-only streets. It's about seeing a collection of meager homes constructed for relatively low-income factory workers, the kind of people who built unions. It wouldn't be the same if only one house were saved. The collection is what makes it work as an experience.

To me, Milwaukee Ave. provides an incredible historic experience, where I can viscerally understand a bit better what life was like at the turn of the 20th century. You can walk that street and contrast the small, utilitarian houses with the big mansions of Mount Curve and the lakes (yes, I know the mansions date from a later period). You get a sense of the wealth disparity of that time.

The same is true of the recently-approved Wedge historic district. There's an experience to be had there that can't be had anywhere else in the city.

It's the same reason I am grateful we preserved a bunch of warehouses in the North Loop.

It's the same reason we rue the destruction of the Gateway.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby David Greene » March 8th, 2016, 9:00 pm

David, what legal mechanism do you propose we use to force them to salvage the interior materials?
I never said, "force."

This could take any number of forms. Direct subsidies from the city, tradeoffs for variances, CUPs, etc. I'm just saying there are a lot of things we could (and in my mind should) do to preserve as much as we can. Preservation is a spectrum. Keep a house as-is, move it, salvage it, etc. Eacr h could have different carrots for owners and developers. Say what you will about fairness (and I have said quite a lot about it), but the historic preservation grants in the Wedge and other neighborhoods have encouraged people to save or restore their homes rather than taking the cheap and easy and ugly vinyl route.

EDIT: My bad, I did say, "force." But I didn't mean to. :)

In this particular case, since carrots aren't in place we're left with sticks. It's probably likely there is no legal recourse to guarantee the interior pieces are saved. That's a real pity.

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby LakeCharles » March 9th, 2016, 8:19 am

What if this were happening in reverse? If some wealthy family was tearing down a market-rate apartment building in this location housing 19+ people to build an exact replica of a house from 1870 (they found a hidden cache of old-growth timber, and etc. etc.) that stood on that lot before. Would that be a worthy goal of the city to help finance that endeavor? Would the difference be just that it's an exact replica rather than the original?

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Re: 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments

Postby Archiapolis » March 9th, 2016, 8:23 am

My personal belief is that we conflate the historic nature of buildings and the actual urban design way too often. We simply aren't building houses, commercial buildings, streets, etc the way they used to be built, and if we replaced W Broadway or Milwaukee Ave with something denser but of equal quality urban design, the effects would be far less negative. Nicollet Mall has almost none of the buildings it had 80 years ago, but it's still a very successful street. Is Milwaukee Ave's success because of the preservation or the wonderful car-free street out front? The Greenway is lined with a bunch of new buildings around Uptown, and I feel like it's just as successful and valuable as areas with a similar built-density but 100 years older (thinking areas of Loring Park, etc).

I also think preservation arguments vastly overstate the extent that a historic structure, block, or district is the contributing factor to property value. There are so many other inputs and outputs that make areas of our city have varying property values. As I continue slowly looking into academic research on these things, I'm finding more and more that conventional beliefs don't usually hold up. People are often irrational and have difficulty expressing their own thoughts and beliefs in a coherent manner. It's not hard to imagine most people who feel strongly about preservation aren't mixing those emotions with other beliefs they hold, like a preference for single family homes, distaste for renters, distaste for larger buildings, etc.

I know it's the hyper-rationality in me saying this, but the fact that it's so hard to articulate what preserving these places does bothers me. If we leveled every old house and commercial building **for a good cause** (not some parking lots or ramps or freeways) how would society be worse off? Like, finish the sentence "Thank God we saved the Milwaukee Ave homes OR ELSE...?"

Obviously my condition there in requiring a good cause is subjective. Does the thing replacing it just have to have okay design and more people? Does it need to match the architectural wonder of what it replaced? If so, who decides what's good or bad? I realize there's subjectivity in everything. But in my mind it's pretty clear that most preservation ends up just making these old houses a place for very wealthy, often older people to live in and watch their investment grow, all the while heating and cooling some monstrous building that was meant for larger families and their servants 100 years ago while thousands of people are trying to live in Uptown but can't (or, end up outbidding existing residents). If we paired preservation with other societal goals like affordable housing more often (or something else), I could really get behind it. Or, if the conversation around zoning and development and transportation weren't shifted so far to the side of "stopping almost everything almost everywhere and build everything for cars" in this country, maybe I wouldn't be so reactionary. Anyway.

I'll say something bad about this project: for such a skinny front, the materials should be nicer on the street-face. It wouldn't kill them to go with real brick or similar.
This is one of the best posts that I've ever read on this forum. Thank you for this.


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