Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

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Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Anondson » January 29th, 2016, 10:13 am

The city is getting out and seeking a developer for the Beltline Station complex.

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/p ... ml?ana=twt

The article is paywalled, but we can see an artist rendering showing the proposed offices and apartments brought right up to County Rd. 25 with the current frontage road gone.

Sara Bergen

Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Sara Bergen » January 29th, 2016, 10:35 pm

Artist forgot the stoplights but kept the pedestrian kill triangle. I am sure those nicely striped crosswalks will be as effective there as they are on Mnkt Blvd.

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Anondson » January 29th, 2016, 10:58 pm

Also forgot a flock of birds... ;)

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Anondson » April 8th, 2016, 8:10 pm

Here are a few screenshots from a SLP council study session packet about SWLRT updates. Noted are these images of the Cedar Lake Regional Trail Bridge over Beltline.
ImageSelected screenshots of Beltline trail bridge by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
Above, aerial image of the entire bridge in the current context. You can barely see the stairs on the other side coming down to the street level.

ImageSelected screenshots of Beltline trail bridge by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
Above, looking up and to the south along Beltline.

ImageSelected screenshots of Beltline trail bridge by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
Above, a view from the future development north of the Beltline Station. Showing a panorama in the distance of Excelsior and Grand on the left over to the waterpower on the right. Park36 stands out too.

ImageSelected screenshots of Beltline trail bridge by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
Above: The view going up the bridge from the west.

ImageSelected screenshots of Beltline trail bridge by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
Compare the current proposal at night (chain link fence, no lights), above.
Below, with the view at night of the debated "improve" bridge. The city will be discussing adding improvements like evening lights and replacing the chainlink fencing with sturdier and more attractive fencing.ImageSelected screenshots of Beltline trail bridge by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

I dunno, is it too late to *not* do the rail tunnels through Kenilworth and do a trail bridge like this instead? Save a hundred million? This bridge is about a quarter mile long. *shrug*

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Anondson » April 21st, 2016, 3:46 pm

The SWLRT ramp north of the station getting $6.4 Million from Met Council.

http://finance-commerce.com/2016/04/ram ... gets-6-4m/

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Anondson » January 17th, 2017, 6:51 pm

From the Jan. 9th city council study session, a few more detailed images of the hoped for development.

ImageBeltline Station Area by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
View from the bike bridge over CSAH 25 to the west.

ImageBeltline Station Area by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
Site plan, Parcel A and B are the two east residential buildings. Parcel C is the office at the corner of Beltline and CSAH 25. Parcel D is the Park and Ride ramp with spaces for 280 office parking and 268 P&R parking.

ImageBeltline Station Area by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

ImageBeltline Station Area by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

ImageBeltline Station Area by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Anondson » January 17th, 2017, 7:54 pm

Doing some browsing of the Study Session agenda ...

City staff say they are finalizing the RFP document, once complete "it will be distributed to area development firms and publicized through local business media..." Hope is it will be completed by end of March and a developer selected during the summer.

Proposals will need a minimum of 10% units reserved for households at 60% AMI or 8% reserved for 50% AMI, affordability period of 25 years.
8,000 sq. ft. minimum ground floor commercial space.
Substantial funding for the parking structure on Parcel D provided by a federal CMAQ grant, Met Council, and city.
All proposals "are expected to provide strong pedestrian connections, an amenity-rich pedestrian environment and attractive, creative architecture."

Staff will review all proposals and invite up to four responders to present in 2nd quarter 2017 with preferred developer announced at the end of that quarter. Hope is the developer obtains preliminary project approvals by early 2018 and all approvals obtained by that summer. Construction could then begin a couple months after.

Note: Screenshots in previous post were of documents created by LHB.

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby FISHMANPET » January 17th, 2017, 11:00 pm

Oh sure, we can build an elevated bike trial here, but in Kenilworth...

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Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Anondson » January 17th, 2017, 11:18 pm

Right?!

I have this thought, we have the popular bike trail going up over the freight rail and death road on this long flyover, I kinda want to see the residential and every future development close enough to the bridge have a direct connection to the trail like the office parking ramp has.

Because to my thinking the regional trail is as much the draw to this site as the future LRT station, the buildings built ought to have as convenient a link to the regional trail as they can. If they are near enough to connect to the flyover and are willing to pay for the bridge linking ... let's let them. High Line like.

But then I also want activity on the ground... that death road though.

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Silophant » January 17th, 2017, 11:58 pm

Well, remember that the Kenilworth tunnel has nothing to do with not wanting to change up the bike trail, and everything to do with "concern for bikers" being better optics than "rich people don't want to look at trains".
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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby FISHMANPET » January 18th, 2017, 12:11 am

Yeah, but kinda ridiculous that bikers didn't come and be like "nah this is fine, you're all just a bunch of rich shitheads." Kenilworth is about "concern for bikers" because nobody challenged that narrative (or at least not successfully)

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby mattaudio » January 18th, 2017, 9:04 am

Wait, does this mean the Park & Ride isn't happening on this corner?
https://streets.mn/2014/07/28/swlrtbeltline/

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby EOst » January 18th, 2017, 9:11 am

Yeah, but kinda ridiculous that bikers didn't come and be like "nah this is fine, you're all just a bunch of rich shitheads." Kenilworth is about "concern for bikers" because nobody challenged that narrative (or at least not successfully)
Just because it was mostly rich snobs pushing the "concern for bikers" narrative doesn't mean bikers weren't concerned. The Minneapolis Bike Coalition's first choice was freight relocation, and their second was the shallow tunnel. They became convenient for the rich snob narrative because of that fact, but it was still their position.

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Anondson » January 18th, 2017, 9:13 am

The park and ride is planned in the structure, shared with the now-planned office, development is planned for 3/4 of the space in your streets.mn article.

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby mattaudio » January 18th, 2017, 9:34 am

Looking at this a little closer... Sure, it's better than a surface park & ride. But it's not like this is fine-grained urbanism. Couldn't there be some sort of New Urbanism here?

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby FISHMANPET » January 18th, 2017, 10:55 am

Yeah, but kinda ridiculous that bikers didn't come and be like "nah this is fine, you're all just a bunch of rich shitheads." Kenilworth is about "concern for bikers" because nobody challenged that narrative (or at least not successfully)
Just because it was mostly rich snobs pushing the "concern for bikers" narrative doesn't mean bikers weren't concerned. The Minneapolis Bike Coalition's first choice was freight relocation, and their second was the shallow tunnel. They became convenient for the rich snob narrative because of that fact, but it was still their position.
Nice to know all of our institutions are garbage.

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby EOst » January 18th, 2017, 11:08 am

Nice to know all of our institutions are garbage.
I don't think that's fair. They were quick to push back against the total rejectionism of the Kenilworth crowd. But if they hadn't pushed for the best outcome for bikes, they wouldn't have been doing their job.

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby FISHMANPET » January 18th, 2017, 11:16 am

This is way off topic, and I know everybody loves rehashing these arguments, but that really only works if the final decision making body acts rationally. Everybody can lobby for their respective best outcomes and whoever makes the final decision can weigh all that and make a rational decision. But I don't think that happened in this case.

And also, if you're lobbying for whatever's best for you with no notion of how much it will actually cost then you're not doing a good job of lobbying.

And if you allow your lobbying to be co-opted by a disingenuous group then you're not doing a good job lobbying.

But anyway, I'm just amused that here an elevated trail is acceptable but in Kenilworth even with costs escalating for the tunnel or the freight re-route nobody said "maybe that elevated trail thing isn't so bad."

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Anondson » January 18th, 2017, 11:53 am

Kinda how New York's new subway costs rose for politically acceptable subway stations. But it makes getting more done harder because of the sticker shock.

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Re: Beltline Station Area – St. Louis Park

Postby Anondson » January 18th, 2017, 8:50 pm

Looking at this a little closer... Sure, it's better than a surface park & ride. But it's not like this is fine-grained urbanism. Couldn't there be some sort of New Urbanism here?
It may be that in the proposals from the developers we get something with finer grain urbanism. These are just preliminary massing suggestions.


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