Mall of America - Bloomington

[VAStationDude]

Oh yeah spotlights at night instead of fireworks. And I'm sure as soon as they zoom in, there will be semi-translucent families where kids are holding big bundles of colorful balloons. Gotta love renderings.

But seriously, we can't get the LRT station moved to the middle of the complex?Good luck walking from the Ikea corner to the LRT.

Thanks for sharing your preference on moving the MOA LRT station to Lindau. I do wonder where you stand on running LRT through Uptown.Please clarify. Also the good people at church hill downs kindly ask you to quit stomping on the cremated remains of Barbaro when visiting their fine race track.

[Tcmetro]

Looks like it will be a cool expansion. Probably going to kill Southdale some more tho. Interesting (and probably for the worse) that they are going to take money from the "disparities fund" to give Bloomington a huge advantage over other cities. I just hope the investment will spur the development of all the empty land around the mall.

[gpete]

Southdale will probably take a hit, but to be honest, as the MOA gets bigger and more touristy, it becomes less attractive to locals. Growing up in south Minneapolis, my family would regularly shop at Southdale, but we avoided MOA like the plague.

I can see them coexisting by serving different community needs.

[lordmoke]

If that rendering is accurate (which I don't think it is, given the absence of the proposed office/ hotel tower on the mall's north end), then it appears they are considering building a structure on top of the west ramp?

Regardless of the specifics, it looks like they want to take the exterior of the new structure in a less fortress-like direction, which is good to see.

[MNdible]

I made a comment on the Strib but I'm not sure if it got posted, but basically I have doubts that a metro with 3.5 million people can support so much retail in one location. The other cities in the world with the world's largest malls (like Dubai and mega Chinese cities) are all huge metropolises, and as much as I'd like to consider Minneapolis in that realm, it really isn't yet.

Edmonton has 1/3 of the metro population.

I heard reference today that the expansion might have a performance venue. I thought that we had decided it didn't make sense to publicly fund another venue to compete against the other publicly funded venues.

[gpete]

At one point the Chanhassen Dinner Theater was going to move into the Mall as part of Phase II, but the Legislature passed a law prohibiting it in 2008.

The language they passed prohibits "...inclusion of an auditorium, theater or similar live entertainment venue. This paragraph does not prohibit inclusion of multi-screen movie theaters, nightclubs, restaurants, or museums."

I'm not sure if that is still the law or if it is still applicable to the current expansion plans.

http://www.twincities.com/stage/ci_9339983

[fehler]

Is that a hotel atop the west parking ramp? Was that in the plans before?

And seeing this, the MOA needs two LRT stops. It'll be too huge for just one.

[min-chi-cbus]

I made a comment on the Strib but I'm not sure if it got posted, but basically I have doubts that a metro with 3.5 million people can support so much retail in one location. The other cities in the world with the world's largest malls (like Dubai and mega Chinese cities) are all huge metropolises, and as much as I'd like to consider Minneapolis in that realm, it really isn't yet.

Edmonton has 1/3 of the metro population.

I heard reference today that the expansion might have a performance venue. I thought that we had decided it didn't make sense to publicly fund another venue to compete against the other publicly funded venues.

West Edmonton Mall is not even close to the largest mall in the world. Did you see the link I provided? It's huge, no doubt, but it's not the largest.

[ztr421]

Southdale will probably take a hit, but to be honest, as the MOA gets bigger and more touristy, it becomes less attractive to locals. Growing up in south Minneapolis, my family would regularly shop at Southdale, but we avoided MOA like the plague.

I think you're right - when MOA first opened I was in my early 20s and went all the time. Now I'm in my early 40s and much prefer Southdale. I think it's smaller size and ease of getting to/from it will help maintain some of it's business compared to MOA, and MOA will stay popular with tourists and kids (those darned kids!).

Is that a hotel atop the west parking ramp? Was that in the plans before?

I noticed that ramp addition too... crazy!

The whole plan looks like a concept drawing for a scifi movie to me. Cool if it happens, but it seems pretty pie-in-the-sky.

[twincitizen]

If that is the long-term plan, I don't see how they can possibly justify keeping the transit center in the far southeast corner. In typical Minnesota transportation planning, I'm sure the newly lowered Lindau alignment cannot support LRT in the future. But then again, therein lies the problem...you can't just relocate the LRT station, you have to relocate the entire transit center.

IMO the entire Bloomington segment of the Blue Line was poorly planned. 28th Avenue Station (which should be called 82nd Street, for continuity with Mpls Stations) could have been positioned a little closer to the mall and contained the transit center on the bottom level like many ramps in DT MPLS. A properly positioned ramp and transit center could have then been connected to MOA via skyway over 24th Ave. As it stands, the existing ramp probably does not have the ceiling heights on the ground level to ever be retrofitted for buses. We are really bad at transportation infrastructure planning, despite the existence of the Met Council which is supposed to prevent "do-overs"
*cough* Target Field tail tracks ripped out after just 2.5 years *cough*

[FISHMANPET]

Blame MOA for the placement of the transit station. MOA wanted nothing to do with the light rail, so the plan was to build a ramp and transit station in that big empty field north of the mall and connect it to the mall via skyway. Then when it was too late in the game to drastically alter the routing, they changed their minds and threw in some money to have the transit center in the parking lot, which is part of the reason the stretch between those last two stations is so convoluted.

[MNdible]

West Edmonton Mall is not even close to the largest mall in the world. Did you see the link I provided? It's huge, no doubt, but it's not the largest.

Whether or not it's the largest in the world isn't important. West Edmonton is the largest in North America, serving a metro area population just over 1 million inhabitants. It's clear that smaller cities can support very large malls -- that's the point I was making.

[Andrew_F]

Is that not the same old rendering they've been using for 5-6 years now? Ever since the announcement of Bass Pro, the waterpark, the skating rink, ect, ect, ect.

Even now that they've finally won the breaks they've been chasing for the better part of the decade, I would be really surprised if they actually went for the full-scale expansion. I imagine we will see the new hotel and some moderate retail expansion and nothing more-- the "1C" plan.

I would however like to see the full phase 2 built, however unlikely it is. I don't think that in this era it is a downtown or uptown retail killer by any means. It would just continue to bring more money into the region from around the midwest and further away.

[Chauncey87]

So once built will this become the largest mall in NA? Plus make it into the top 5 largest in the world by total area? I hope I did my numbers right
I just can not even fathom having a new world class football stadium, top stadiums for each of our other pro sports (if they don't cheap out with target center). Very highly rated museums/theater. My word the Minneapolis metro is really pushing for global kudos! Now if only we can build our transit to be world class I would wager that a world cup or even Olympics might not seems like such a stretch.

[mnmike]

The Mall hasn't released any new info at all...this is all the media using old info/drawings from when they originally pushed for the money. As far as I know, the mall doesn't have any solid plans at all beyond the hotel/office/150k of retail space planned on the north side of the building. I would disregard these old drawings/info being brought back from the dead by the local media. It is like they think time has been frozen since the mall originally pitched to the state.

[min-chi-cbus]

West Edmonton Mall is not even close to the largest mall in the world. Did you see the link I provided? It's huge, no doubt, but it's not the largest.

Whether or not it's the largest in the world isn't important. West Edmonton is the largest in North America, serving a metro area population just over 1 million inhabitants. It's clear that smaller cities can support very large malls -- that's the point I was making.

The point I was making was that it's impressive (and possibly unrealistic) that this occurs, and I worry a bit about adding such a large addition of retail space to the market this size all at once.

[fehler]

So, MOA expansion money won't be available, unless Bloomington gets on the program and connects the Old Cedar Ave bridge. Nice. http://www.startribune.com/local/west/208595711.html

[Didier]

Wasn't the mall supposed to announce new tenants for the Bloomingdales location by now? I believe only Forever 21 has moved into that space.

[Andrew_F]

As our power outage neared the 4-day mark I took my sister to MOA, and was reminded of how awkward malls are.

Anyways, they really are digging at the Lindau Lane project.

[min-chi-cbus]

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/n ... ed-by.html

There are more updates to the 2nd luxury hotel planned for MOA: a JW Marriott, the first in the Twin Cities. Still no sign of any renderings but it is sounding more and more imminent.

Additionally, there was reference to the $250 million epansion effort going on at the MOA, but how does this relate to the other (much larger) expansion that Bloomington recently received the funds for? Are they separate expansions? Are they an "either/or" expansion? I'm not clear on why there are two different numbers and two completely different scopes out there!