Bloomington Central Station & South Loop Development

Twin Cities Suburbs
twincitizen
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Bloomington Central Station & South Loop Development

Postby twincitizen » March 1st, 2013, 9:47 am

I've been meaning to start a thread to talk about BCS and Bloomington's "South Loop" master plan for a while.

Might as well put this here: http://www.ci.bloomington.mn.us/south_l ... h_loop.htm

Bloomington has long held visions for developing this area, which is mostly surface parking lots. I believe some of the land is owned by MAC and there are height restrictions in much of the area due to runway proximity.

Does anyone think that the newer North-South runway kind of killed development prospects here? The area they hope to develop has incredible amounts of airport noise. Back when I was working for Metro Transit, during the State Fair I often manned the Bloomington park & ride lot (between the MOA and 28th Avenue). After 10-12 days of that, I felt like I had permanent hearing damage. I can't imagine that is compatible with too many uses (other than car storage). A hotel would need some amazing sound proofing to be viable directly under the flight path of that runway.

There's also a Youtube video of the fully developed fantasy (circa 2006): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEqRP7HxQZI

EDIT: Never mind about the height restrictions...don't think that will be an issue: http://www.ci.bloomington.mn.us/cityhal ... rports.pdf

min-chi-cbus
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Re: Bloomington Central Station

Postby min-chi-cbus » March 1st, 2013, 12:14 pm

I don't think that N/S runway did anything to this area, primarily because that runway was planned and even U/C before this area was being master planned.

I noticed in the renderings provided in the article in BusinessJournals.com that this hotel is only 1 of several new developments planned by the developer (surrounded by offices in the pic). Does that mean the developer already has conceptual rendering of these other buildings in Central Station? Does that make them more imminent?

twincitizen
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Re: Bloomington Central Station

Postby twincitizen » March 2nd, 2013, 9:11 pm

Here's the link to the Biz Journal story: http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/p ... el-in.html

Image

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Re: Bloomington Central Station

Postby twincitizen » April 9th, 2013, 10:23 am

Bloomington's South Loop streetscaping master plan is complete and available for viewing: http://www.ci.bloomington.mn.us/cityhal ... 012803.htm

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woofner
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Re: Bloomington Central Station

Postby woofner » April 9th, 2013, 10:47 am

I guess they deserve credit for being honest enough to codify their commitment to auto-dominated streetscapes that exclude non-motorized traffic. I wonder if the final plan has more details about their strategy of luring cyclists with one quarter-mile segment of bike lane, then pulverizing them when they attempt to use any of the other speedway-style surface streets? Also I'd like to know more about how they blackmailed the Met Council into spending millions of dollars in transit infrastructure on a district designed to forever be dependent on cars.
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min-chi-cbus
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Re: Bloomington Central Station

Postby min-chi-cbus » April 9th, 2013, 10:51 am

Is anyone who spent time clicking through and reading each and every PDF able to translate what the general plan is? Especially in terms of impacts on Lindau/82nd/American, and/or any potential impacts for Phase II expansion?

Thanks!!!

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woofner
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Re: Bloomington Central Station

Postby woofner » April 9th, 2013, 11:19 am

The plan is to restrict all non-vehicular activity to the half-mile corridor comprised of the proposed Lindau extension and the walkway along the existing LRT tracks. The Lindau extension will have a bike lane in the short term, but will eventually just have sharrows in the outside lanes of a four-lane divided highway. The Lindau extension will be anchored by two "plazas", one of which is expressly "primarily vehicular oriented" and the other merely implicitly. Also there will be banners.

This is classic suburban greenwashing bullshit. It will be just as hostile to pedestrians as the rest of Bloomington currently is.
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beykite
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Re: Bloomington Central Station

Postby beykite » April 9th, 2013, 2:45 pm

Damn those are some nice lookin' banners.

Tcmetro
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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby Tcmetro » April 23rd, 2013, 2:46 pm

Here is a link to some rendrings:

http://d.pr/i/f1OG

Which are from the packet from the 4.25.13 meeting of Bloomington's Planning Commission:

http://www.ci.bloomington.mn.us/calenda ... 2013&t=8,4

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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby lordmoke » July 23rd, 2013, 12:46 pm

Bloomington considering $3.3M loan for hotel: (locked)
http://finance-commerce.com/2013/07/blo ... -near-lrt/

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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby Tcmetro » October 24th, 2013, 8:46 am

Noticed this in a Bloomington Planning Commission agenda for next month:
City of Bloomington Port Authority (owner)
Lennar Multi-Family Investors, LLC (applicant)
8001 and 8051 33rd Avenue South

1) Major Revision to Preliminary Development Plan and Final Development Plan for a 415-unit, six-story apartment building (Cases 2830FG-13); and
2) Preliminary and Final Plat of Bloomington Central Station 4th Addition to create one lot and two outlots (Cases 2830HI-13)
http://www.ci.bloomington.mn.us/calenda ... prelim.pdf

min-chi-cbus
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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby min-chi-cbus » October 24th, 2013, 1:26 pm

Blech! 416 units in only 6 floors?! That's more massive than the 222 Whole Foods project downtown, by almost 50%!

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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby Tom H. » October 24th, 2013, 1:57 pm

Well, it's still 6 stories in close proximity to an LRT stop. I can't complain too hard about density in Bloomington.

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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby Tcmetro » October 27th, 2013, 9:53 pm

Also it's nice to see some movement on this project. These lands have been idle for nearly 10 years now.

Wonder if the office portions are ever going to happen?

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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby min-chi-cbus » October 28th, 2013, 7:38 am

Probably if the market conditions favor it. When this concept was originally proposed/dreamed the office market was heating up again, especially in the suburbs. It's funny.....in 1999 when several large office towers were proposed and built downtown nobody ever asked about apartments or condominiums, partly because the market conditions weren't ripe for those at that time, but also partly because they're generally not as exciting. I think any large-scale redevelopment like this one or the West End will build out mostly to what the market desires, even if conceptually they were supposed to have a different mix of uses. Originally the West End was supposed to have like 2 million SF of office space, and now I think they lowered that to 1 million SF, but more apartments. In 5 years it may change back to more office if the space still hasn't been built out. Same with this project, I think.

min-chi-cbus
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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby min-chi-cbus » October 28th, 2013, 7:40 am

Well, it's still 6 stories in close proximity to an LRT stop. I can't complain too hard about density in Bloomington.
It's just the epitome of the "Super Block" concept that so many here at urbanmsp.com loathe, including myself. I'd rather they broke up the development into at least 2 or 3 buildings, but preferably 4-6. However, since I'm not the one making the investment it's hard to tell somebody else how they should be spending their money, but assuming all things were equal (BIG assumption) this could look a LOT better.

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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby Tom H. » October 28th, 2013, 8:15 am

Absolutely it could be better. But it couldn't be worse than an empty lot next to an LRT station.

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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby Archiapolis » October 29th, 2013, 7:53 am

@min-chi-cbus: Glad that you guys are able to recognize the financial implications of these projects because they are often THE determining factor in whether or not they get built. We have to face the fact that we probably aren't going to see "point towers" anywhere but on very attractive urban sites (See Nic on Fifth, LPM etc.) This design appears to be a variation on the "liner" concept (parking ramp in the middle with housing lining the exterior) while packing the density for the developer. Stick framing is just so cheap that it is driving the size and form of most projects...

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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby Wedgeguy » October 29th, 2013, 8:08 am

Also you will not see to many tall towers due to the proximity of the airport and it's runways.

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Re: Bloomington Central Station - Bloomington

Postby HiawathaGuy » November 13th, 2013, 3:30 pm

I think this will look really great and add tremendously to the area!
http://bizj.us/tp2nr/i/1


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