Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby Anondson » March 5th, 2016, 6:08 pm

I dunno. Maybe slide this over to the Southdale area thread?

Anyway, it's up to 4 floors today.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby sdho » March 5th, 2016, 11:23 pm

Nice to see things chugging along. After the hubbub over shadows, Richfielders have been annoyed to see this is as a big pile of untouched dirt for so long.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby Anondson » April 6th, 2016, 8:16 am

Is this six or seven stories starting today?
https://flic.kr/p/F7jUuZ

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby Archiapolis » April 6th, 2016, 8:28 am

That unit is probably a double-height space. This building type is limited by code to six stories (double-height units are allowed with limitations)...

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby mister.shoes » April 12th, 2016, 9:52 pm

Terribly inappropriate taken-while-driving-home-from-work photos from this evening (click to embiggen).

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby Anondson » April 12th, 2016, 9:56 pm

I had an impression this was going to be closer to the street on the Xerxes side, it's set back further than I imagined.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby sdho » April 12th, 2016, 10:46 pm

I had an impression this was going to be closer to the street on the Xerxes side, it's set back further than I imagined.
Well, it *was*. It was moved back to address concerns from Richfield residents. I thought the facade was supposed to be set back about 30' from ROW (equivalent to SFH setback) on Xerxes side. Does it look farther than that?

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby sdho » May 10th, 2016, 1:39 pm

I took some pictures today. From the Xerxes side, the setback is indeed huge. From the plans online, it looks like it will be about a 60' setback (!). At the moment, it's even farther, because only the parking structure is built out on the Xerxes side -- the wood-frame townhome frontage that will go beyond that has yet to be built. The Xerxes frontage will still look great (http://www.cbre.us/o/minneapolis/AssetL ... Plan10.pdf), but my preference would have been a setback that more closely matches the SFHs across the street -- 30' -- with front walks serving each unit individually.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby sdho » May 10th, 2016, 1:44 pm

Although I hate the big parking lot on York, they also deserve serious props for the level of pedestrian connectivity through the site. The Cub and Yorkdale Mall to the south have zero connections from the York sidewalk into the developoment -- pedestrians have to make their own path through congested and dangerous driveways. There's a single connection to Xerxes, at kind of a random, out-of-the-way location.

This development has five connection points to the York sidewalk! Two are paths that run on the north and south property lines all the way between Xerxes and York. Very impressive. I'll be curious what the parking policy is on Xerxes. Currently, parking is disallowed on the west side of Xerxes during business hours, but unrestricted on the east side. I would think the homeowners on the east side would be annoyed if townhome residents were basically forced to park in front of their neighbor's house to use on-street parking.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby twincitizen » May 10th, 2016, 2:03 pm

That's Yorkdale Shoppes, friend.

And yes, the lack of pedestrian connection to Cub and the city-owned liquor store is really unfortunate: https://gis.hennepin.us/property/map/de ... 2824310026

I'd love to see a mockup of a woonerf-y 68th Street through here, running directly in front of the Cub. Elevation issues might keep it from connecting to Xexes though (to say nothing of opposition from Richfield residents). The parking lot is about 4 feet higher than Xerxes here.

Back to Onyx and that big parking lot out front, in retrospect, it is too bad they didn't propose connecting 67th Street through. It could have included parallel parking on one or both sides, allowing for a smaller parking lot along York. This could've pushed the building a further west towards York, making Richfield a little happier too (though they would've probably fought the road connection too)

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby sdho » May 10th, 2016, 2:23 pm

I really don't see the point of pushing the building any farther away. It's already *double* the setback of single-family homes. I'd rather be across the street from attractive, two-story townhomes than an empty, ill-used greenspace.

Connecting 67th seems like it would be nice -- but to what end? The neighborhood to the east won't want additional cut-through motorized traffic. And bike/ped traffic is easily accommodated by the paths that are planned -- although I wish they had a more direct access into the parking lot for bicyclists. And Edina/Hennepin probably wouldn't want another public street connecting so close to Southdale Circle.

Creating a better extension of 68th, however, makes a lot of sense to me. I think there might still be resistance to creating motorized access through, but I do like the idea of better continuity. The trouble with the approaches to retail near residential in this era is that the goal seems to have been to remove as close to 100% of the impacts as possible -- regardless of whether the impacts are good or bad. The net result seems to be removing ~95% of the positive impacts, and ~60% of the negative impacts. Having a grocery store, coffee shop, a couple restaurants, etc nearby are all things people *like to have*, all else equal. I can sympathize you don't want car headlights shining in your window. But that's not a reason not to have paths and connectivity to get to the front door.

"18th Ave" through Cedar Point provides a good example of what a future private 68th St might look like -- limited auto access, but sidewalks, decent frontage, etc.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby sdho » January 22nd, 2017, 9:40 pm

A pic from tonight of the backside of Onyx on Xerxes:

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I really wish they'd pushed out the townhome units closer to Xerxes (while leaving the upper floors where they are). The intent was to create a more residential feel on Xerxes with these walk-up townhomes, but it just sort of looks like one big fortress, with the bottom two floors maybe a different material. The setback is also huge and doesn't match the houses across the street -- I think about 60'.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby Anondson » January 22nd, 2017, 11:11 pm

Agreed.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby twincitizen » January 23rd, 2017, 9:50 am

Agreed. 6 stories straight up looks bad.

The houses across the street have a 30' setback, as did the houses on the west side of Xerxes that this development replaced. There's no good reason why those "townhome" units couldn't extend out another 10-20 feet to help break up the wall effect. I'd also have stepped back the entire 6th story in either case - something done in more dense urban settings all the time. Four stories straight up (no upper floor stepbacks) on a 30' setback would be fine, but I think with 6 stories they should have done a lot more to break up the massing and improve the sidewalk frontage.

This one should serve as a learning experience for Edina, Richfield, and Lennar. Edina seemingly didn't care a whole lot, Richfield residents/electeds failed to organize their opposition cohesively enough to extract anything other than to push the whole building away, and this was Lennar's 1st or 2nd multi-family project in MN (IndiGO in Bloomington beat this one to the finish line).

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby sdho » January 23rd, 2017, 1:40 pm

IIRC, people just wanted the building "farther away", and didn't distinguish between the tower portion and the much more SFH-scale townhomes.

I agree with twinicitizen's assessment. I appreciate the concerns from neighbors, but it ended up on this very linear line, where "closer is worse, farther away is better". I remember one resident writing a letter to the editor saying he wished the parking lot — complete with 24 hour overhead lights and car headlights shining in windows — could be moved to the Xerxes side.

There needs to be more of a charette process, or something that could allow people to play out different scenarios — rather than just wanting to see setback number as big as possible.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby sdho » January 23rd, 2017, 1:42 pm

I'd much rather have this across the street (perhaps with a bit more setback): https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9519328 ... 56!6m1!1e1. That's a great example, with 2.5 stories on 28th, but 6 stories farther south.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby RailBaronYarr » January 23rd, 2017, 1:57 pm

Meanwhile, for lowly schelps who don't live in a detached house with windows on all four sides of their detached dwelling already, it's totally cool under conventional planning principles for the building across the street to be 5-6 stories tall right at the sidewalk: https://goo.gl/maps/M4ec7m9rtFz

I'm not sure a charette process where people see more options/scenarios would help. The 3118 West Lake building outcome is a pretty clear example of that. While I understand that Americans who like cities are trying to make development as politically acceptable as possible, I don't understand the argument that the step-back design is necessarily better than the alternative. And those two discussions (political viability vs technocratic design comparisons) rarely have much overlap.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby sdho » January 23rd, 2017, 8:52 pm

Meanwhile, for lowly schelps who don't live in a detached house with windows on all four sides of their detached dwelling already, it's totally cool under conventional planning principles for the building across the street to be 5-6 stories tall right at the sidewalk: https://goo.gl/maps/M4ec7m9rtFz
Your argument seems to suggest that high-density/zero-lot-line development is inherently bad, and so we should all have suffer equally. I don't think you really think that -- and I certainly don't. Is it that wrong to think about compatibility with the surrounding land use? I think people find the Kmart on Lake St a little bit more objectionable than seeing a similar big box in Blaine -- not just because it's inherently bad, but because it doesn't match or build on surrounding development in any productive way.

So I don't think zero lot line is inherently bad, but I can see the argument that six stories zero lot line when everyone else is 1-2 stories with a 30' setback is disruptive to neighborhood character. At the same time, I think it is equally damaging to neighborhood character when you do something double the setback as everyone else.

I'm not sure a charette process where people see more options/scenarios would help. The 3118 West Lake building outcome is a pretty clear example of that. While I understand that Americans who like cities are trying to make development as politically acceptable as possible, I don't understand the argument that the step-back design is necessarily better than the alternative. And those two discussions (political viability vs technocratic design comparisons) rarely have much overlap.
I think what struck me here is that the outcome seems like the worst of both worlds: the developer got to use less of their expensive piece of property. The past residents get something that matches their neighborhood character poorly. The new residents living in those units are less connected and more segregated from the rest of the neighborhood. On this linear "farther away is good" scale, there has to be a third way. For me, that would be townhome units that have a similar relationship to the street as the SFHs. The neighbors in that immediate vicinity probably have other ideas, too.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby RailBaronYarr » January 24th, 2017, 9:02 am

I don't think the Kmart site is bad because it doesn't match the surrounding character. It's bad because its location made transit operations slower, cut off the walking grid, is hostile and unpleasant to walk along the parking lot. Thanks to those things, it creates trips by car that would have otherwise been by foot/bike/bus in an area fairly well-served by those modes. Big-box stores in suburbs with massive, mostly under-utilized parking lots aren't any less bad simply because they do in fact fit in with whatever character surrounds them.

I'm not saying zero-lot-line (or, close to it) development isn't out of scale or character with 1-2 story houses next door or across the street. I'm saying it's not damaging. Here are some examples from around the world. It works. People aren't dying, in fact they likely lead healthier lives owing, in part, to the allowed mix of uses and scale that makes transit and bike infrastructure more viable in more places. But beside that, my snarky point in the other post was that I don't believe most people think that a mismatch in scale or character is what's actually bad about putting a 6-story building at the lot line next to a detached house. They believe that shadows, potential wind tunnel effects, on-street parking crunches, the possibility of a certain type of people living in the denser housing, etc are what's damaging (I think these things are overstated if not false). And if any of those things are true, they're true if the 6-story building goes next to another 6-story building. The person living on the ground floor unit of the neighboring building is equally shadowed (moreso, since they have fewer windows), has equal chance of less parking availability, and on. But we say it's okay for them to bear those burdens.

Mostly, I'm just sick of letting people who own detached single family homes (who, even in this neighborhood in Richfield, swing whiter, richer, and more comfortable than the average resident) dictate what the right design is for new construction. As I articulated, meeting their desires is good politics, but let's not actually convince ourselves that what they want (scale, character, context, etc) is necessarily the best interest of the public, or even the people living in the new development (who often outnumber incumbents by a large factor). In fact, there was a timely piece yesterday about how our very urban geometry shapes how people conceive of what their neighborhood character is, which is often not representative of the neighborhood's population based on how they actually live (the Wedge battleground is a great example, where renters in structures with 5+ units make up 57% of the population and residents in 2-4 unit structures add another 25%, but you'd never know that based on the way people describe the character). Anyway, this isn't really the spot, but I'm really trying to push advocates, planners, etc to define why matching scale and character is good. Like, what does it provide the neighbors? The new residents? People visiting the area? Does it actually keep property values higher? Have a better shot at getting people out of their cars? Reduce crime? What are we trying to accomplish?

In the case of Onyx, I certainly agree that the human brain prefers a more enclosed built-form when walking along the sidewalk. Having the townhome windows closer to the street would have made for a better (more interesting, seeing the details of the housing stock and even seeing through windows into the units) and safer (windows closer to the sidewalk) walking environment. It's also true that having all 5-6 stories straight up at the sidewalk provides a clearer line of sight from more windows for public safety. This site isn't particularly constrained, so requiring the type of third-floor setbacks might not have been as complex and costly as it can be to other projects. But as I pointed out with the 3118 W Lake development, asking neighbors to pick an option in hopes that we'd get a "better" design might backfire because they're weighing all sorts of things that we might not expect them to be.

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Re: Onyx Apartments - 6725 York Ave - Edina

Postby sdho » January 24th, 2017, 11:47 am

I'm trying to consider your question and think through why, really, it feels like things that looks similar should go together. I think the main thing is addressing people's ability to anticipate what they can expect in their neighborhood, and their potential resale options for people who may be similarly minded.

One issue particular to Richfield is that a vocal minority of older homeowners who actually moved to those houses when Richfield when these were a standard suburban home product. By modern standards, of course, a grid of 50' lots on alleys is probably not going to have a lot of appeal to a new homebuyer looking for a standard suburban home product. Nevertheless, people feel that projects like Onyx change the character of their neighborhood in a way that would make someone looking for a quiet SFH less likely to buy. While that's not an attitude I share, I don't think it's baseless; it seems that parents in particular worry about higher traffic, and in general being in a quiet street in a safe neighborhood is still an asset in the single-family home market.

But I'm reminded of that phrase that the right to swing your fist ends where someone else's face begins. Lennar bought the property, the City Council agreed that it made sense to amend the Edina comp plan to allow high-density on the east side of York here. Should they be deprived of the full use of their property because of the hazy impacts it has on surrounding homes? Maybe. I mean, we don't allow a coal-fire power plant in these situations, but I agree with you that occasional shadows aren't remotely comparable to those original externalities zoning was intended to avoid. But it's subject to discussion and dispute.

In regard to income level -- that's also an interesting factor here. There have been a number of projects hugging the Richfield border, and the community assumption is often that working-class Richfield homeowners are fighting against wealthy developers and wealthy renters who will live in these luxury apartments. Although you're right, a white SFH homeowner is almost always above average in terms of income and wealth, they're also probably right, too: the future renter at Onyx probably is higher income (maybe not higher-wealth) than owners of these modest homes.


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