urbanMSP

Out of the ground

Millenium West End - St Louis Park 8-21-14 by bapster2006, on Flickr

https://imgur.com/Fe3P0ic
https://imgur.com/bP4q1wj

Pics too wide and I'm too lazy.

Yea, that first floor took a few months to complete.

Millenium apartments St Louis Park 11-2-14 by bapster2006, on Flickr

I'm surprised how close the building is to the frontage road (and 394). It's very... "urban."

http://www.startribune.com/blogs/283209901.html

DLC Residential is proposing five new buildings at West End right up against Highway 100. It is a massive project that would add 706,000 sq ft of offices, 363 apartment units, 150 room hotel, and a 2600 stall parking ramp.



I have mixed views, I like that the ramp is in the back, close to the highway. They have plans to build a park park between the offices and the residential units, which I think is nice. It seems very suburban but it is somewhat more "urban." So it's good overall, it adds the overall work, live, play concept. The hotel is a nice addition too.

The "St. Louis Park General" thread had this concept show up a few months ago. Looks like little has changed since then. Glad it is moving forward. Would be nice if the ground leave of the apartments and offices facing the open space could be converted to retail if demand comes.

Planning Commission agenda: http://www.stlouispark.org/webfiles/fil ... packet.pdf
The public hearing is tonight if you care enough to attend or submit comment.

I've been wondering how they would handle the issue of the city boundary with Golden Valley (marked by a dashed line through the larger residential building).

It appears they are proposing a joint-powers agreement, in which one city would be responsible for the permitting, maintenance of public infrastructure, etc. Would it really be that difficult for St. Louis Park to just annex the land from Golden Valley? It's the common sense thing to do. Golden Valley could get some kind of phase-out property tax benefit for a number of years or something to ease the financial hit.

I wonder how many phases this would be done in?

If SLP annexed the plot Golden Valley would lose leverage to stop linking 16th to the frontage road underpass.

I wonder how realistic this is, considering Duke had this land for what, 15+ years, and had similar or greater ambitions and recently gave up on the idea. The market still isn't ready for spec office, although I believe downtown and the West submarkets both have the lowest overall vacancy rates -- somewhere between 10% and 12% perhaps.

If you read through that Planning Commission document, it seems to suggest that they aren't proposing to build the offices and parking ramp at this time, so I suppose it could all change. From what I can tell, the larger apartment building is for sure "Phase 1", and maybe the hotel too. The second apartment building would follow, assuming successful leasing of the first building (and DLC's Millennium across the street). In the plat of the properties, the parking ramp and offices are being designated as an "outlot" and it states they would have to return to the city and replat those lots when a specific development plan comes forward.

So you could be right...DLC could sit on the office plan for a number of years if the market isn't ready. Or they could scale it back considerably and get rid of the huge parking ramp if they want to do something sooner.

Ugh..the 16th Street thing is pretty frustrating. As long as the connection through the "park" is sufficiently wide, providing a direct connection for peds and bikes, I can live with it. Setting up the normal street grid and getting rid of the frontage road along 394 would just be so much better...

It looks like the code encourages open space provision for PUDs (at least of this density) through conditions listed on pp 9-10. Also note on page 13 that SLP code would require over 1,000 trees to be planted based on the proposed density, and they're ostensibly providing open space in lieu of all them damn trees. It would be cool if instead of the proposed helix paths the city recommended providing straight paths along the 16th St corridor to facilitate bike/ped transportation. I'm not holding my breath for this out of SLP staff, since their "Active Living" plan completely missed this obvious connection to the proposed facility along the south frontage road of 394.

Also, there's no way in hell Utica justifies 4 lanes. The new segment should be 2 lanes and built in a way to accommodate a road diet for the existing segment.

It looks like the code encourages open space provision for PUDs (at least of this density) through conditions listed on pp 9-10. Also note on page 13 that SLP code would require over 1,000 trees to be planted based on the proposed density, and they're ostensibly providing open space in lieu of all them damn trees. It would be cool if instead of the proposed helix paths the city recommended providing straight paths along the 16th St corridor to facilitate bike/ped transportation. I'm not holding my breath for this out of SLP staff, since their "Active Living" plan completely missed this obvious connection to the proposed facility along the south frontage road of 394.

Also, there's no way in hell Utica justifies 4 lanes. The new segment should be 2 lanes and built in a way to accommodate a road diet for the existing segment.

Someone should go to the meetings and push for a fully connected 16th. If that can't happen, then maybe push for useful bike/ped paths.

Seems like some developer with deep pockets and the long view should start buying up the single family homes in the SE quadrant of 100/394, extending east to the Target/Prudential campus, for a future redevelopment.

If that can't happen, then maybe push for useful bike/ped paths.

That's a good point, while a bit of a hike, there is a cluster of apartments along Cedar Lake Road east of TH100 that would benefit from a better connection. Currently the route is a rather hostile Cedar Lake Road under TH 100.

Seems like some developer with deep pockets and the long view should start buying up the single family homes in the SE quadrant of 100/394, extending east to the Target/Prudential campus, for a future redevelopment.

Tyrol Hills? Ha. Cedarhusrt, maybe.

I've been looking at old pics lately and came across old West End in 1971 when we already had buildings on this property:

Yup. If I remember correctly... Back in 2005, when I started at my old job in the Moneygram Tower (1550 Utica Ave S) there were still buildings along part of that space. They were torn down shortly before the West End retail was built.

Anyone have facts to backup my memory?

Construction progress at West End. Looks about half done.

https://imgur.com/rGg3qzE

Sun Sailor covered this in depth. Aerial sketch looks pretty nice, showing some heavy fill-in for this area. Bit of discussion over the apartment stretching across two school districts, and how this single proposal will steeply affect city water supply.

http://sailor.mnsun.com/2014/12/22/cent ... en-valley/