Motiv Apartments - 2320 Colfax Avenue S

[mattaudio]

Downtown Minneapolis used to have many many single family homes, even up to the early 20th century. Should those have stayed?

[EOst]

Downtown Minneapolis used to have many many single family homes, even up to the early 20th century. Should those have stayed?

There are a handful I'm sad to know are gone, actually. Like some downtown churches, City Hall, etc. there are some whose real architectural and civic value would have been a nice contrast to the glass towers around them.

[mattaudio]

True, although many were torn down to become parking lots rather than incrementally higher density land uses. But a share of the structures were also moved. This used to be a big part of what developers did as cities and towns incrementally grew... it wasn't financially sustainable to do anything but salvage or move a structure. It also helps that we built structures to last a century or more rather than a decade or three (as many new homes are built).

[EOst]

All true.

I like the Wedge's current bucolic-but-urban atmosphere, and I'd be sad to see it go. I don't think there'll be enough development pressure in the area to really threaten it for a long time anyway, but when there is I hope it's still economical to move the old houses there. We certainly have enough empty lots around town that could use them.

[David Greene]

The value of the homes is aesthetic and preserving a sense of history and place. That's subjective of course but I prefer subjective over the cold, hard numbers of Robert Moses.

You lost me. You're comparing lot by lot re-development by a variety of market-based developers (where what we've been seeing interacts with the sidewalk in a highly urban fashion and at least maintains, if not improves, sense of place) to the vast destruction of neighborhoods by a single, centralized entity who had the power of eminent domain and public financing at his disposal? Come on.

I think you misunderstood my message. I'm not comparing the two directly. What I'm saying is that tearing down homes because "we want urban" is really not a good way to create places, in the same way that "we want autos" is not a good planning directive. Yes, we want urban, but not at the expense of all SFHs or even most of them. Again, I'm fine with redevelopment in the Wedge. What I don't want to see is half a block of homes get turned into apartments without regard for what the homes bring to the neighborhood. It's not as simple as "SFHs are less dense, so get rid of 'em!"

I still don't see why developing the inner Wedge is such a Thing right now. Again, there are *plenty* of empty and underutilized lots in the area. Id' imagine quite a few are less expensive than buying a few houses and tearing them down.

[mattaudio]

No, it's just an issue of market economics. If, someday decades down the line, the Wedge gets fully built out and people replace the last SFHs with denser development, is it really a big deal?

As much as we wish an empty lot was fungible, and we could direct new investments to precisely the lots where we prefer, that's not the case. There may be plenty of empty and underutilized lots right now, but those may not be the lots the developers own or have purchase rights for.

What exactly do the homes bring to the neighborhood? I still don't understand.

[VAStationDude]

rich white people?

[FISHMANPET]

Yeah, I'm still not seeing the virtue of protecting the SFH over any other particular type of housing.

[LakeCharles]

I think where you are running into opposition here David is that you have stated that SFH's are a good feature but have not explained why they are a good feature. So to people who like apartment buildings just as much as houses, your reasoning looks like "Because I like 'em" which doesn't convince anyone. I'm sure you have reasons in mind but they aren't obvious.

For me, it doesn't seem like much of a loss because there will still be so many SFH's in Minneapolis. Lowry Hill, East Isles, Bryn Mawr, Near North, Marcy Holmes, Seward are all filled with SFHs and close to downtown. And even if all of those neighborhoods were densified we'd have more further out.

[EOst]

For the same reason we have any of various Historic Districts in town; because certain historical areas and modes of building are valuable to preserve for their own sake.

[LakeCharles]

But this is the mode of building that covers 95% of Minneapolis is my point.

[EOst]

Just because they're single-family homes doesn't make them the same as all single-family homes, just as something being a three-story walkup doesn't tell you the whole story.

[seanrichardryan]

MInneapolis is full of veryy ugly ugly houses. The wedge has the exception to that.

[David Greene]

Some of the houses in the Wedge are ugly, no doubt. I have no problem losing them. Most of the houses in the Wedge are quite nice and lots are absolutely outstanding. I think the quality of SFHs in the Wedge is much higher than average. The same is true for East Isles, Lowry Hill and much of Whittier (and Old Highland in North, BTW). Houses in the Wedge have had major restoration done on them. That's real value put into the neighborhood by residents.

Would anyone here object to filling Lowry Hill with apartment buildings? My objection would be for the same reasons as in the Wedge.

Beyond the particular quality of the SFHs in the Wedge, SFHs in and of themselves are good and many people of color own them, contrary to VAStationDude's statement. It's good to have variety in the housing stock. It's not good to have a particular mode of housing only available "further out." Variety in housing stock means variety in residents. I want variety in my neighborhood! Specific qualities of SFHs I find appealing:

- The owner/resident can improve them at will
- You're not sharing walls/floors/ceilings
- They hold large families comfortably
- They're good for kids to run around in
- The land can be tailored to uses the family needs

These qualities tend to be interwoven. SFHs are great for families because you're not sharing walls and the kids screaming in the hallway isn't bothering anyone outside the family.

It's a stereotype that duplex/triplex non-resident owners let their properties decay and that is not true for most owners, but it is true that owners of duplexes/triplexes tend not to invest heavily in historic renovation and preservation. Almost all of the structures that have seen historic renovation in the Wedge are single family homes. And historic preservation matters to me, beyond simply saving a home that some famous person lived in. The Wedge is the Wedge because of the single family homes. If they were all replaced by apartments it wouldn't be the Wedge anymore.

Again, I am *not* opposed to more apartments in the Wedge. I'm opposed to more apartments without consideration for maintaining our housing variety.

[FISHMANPET]

Those all sound like selfish reasons why you want your SFH. I don't see the need to preserve SFH in some hypothetical situation where the market could support replacing them all with higher intensity uses. I'm not saying that they should all be torn down and replaced with parking lots, but that there's no reason to bend market forces to keep your preferred housing type in your preferred neighborhood.

[David Greene]

There are those Robert Moses numbers again. We're just cogs in a machine.

I am not, in general, a market guy.

[David Greene]

I could just as easily say your wanting apartments is selfish.

People asked for reasons and I gave them. Maybe you disagree but dismissing them as "selfish" doesn't make them any less real to me or others. At least acknowledge that not everyone shares your opinion.

[seanrichardryan]

'The market' is only the answer when it best suits your prerogative. And if 'the market' demanded a parking lot?

[ECtransplant]

Because the demand for parking is definitely not at all influenced by the many ways governments subsidize driving

[David Greene]

Because the demand for parking is definitely not at all influenced by the many ways governments subsidize driving

And development is completely free of subsidies.