St. Louis Park - General Topics

[Anondson]

Saint Louis Park wants to spruce up its original main street district, Walker and Lake Street.

http://sailor.mnsun.com/2015/10/28/st-l ... reet-area/

[grant1simons2]

Cool! With proximity to the community center, high school, and football field; I see good potential. I also never knew about this part of SLP because 7 kind of just blows right past all of it.

[Anondson]

Grabbed from the city of Saint Louis Park's next city council study session agenda ... CSM approached Saint Louis Park to propose a six-story, 135 room Marriott (Courtyard?). It is proposed to be in the existing heavily underused parking lot of the existing Marriott. They approached the city because city code would require a massive amount of parking, but since their lot is ridiculously overbuilt for the current need. Code requires 730 spaces, the parking study says 541 is all that's needed, Marriott is asking for a reduction in required parking spaces. City staff agrees.

I mean, it truly is a lot of unused parking. I kind of wish residential could go there but it seems Marriott wants the second hotel to share the existing conference facilities, which makes it a fine fit.

Marriot West by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
Marriot West by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

And the hotel boom goes on ...

[billhelm]

I can see that lot from my office window - it's usually half to 75% empty during the day. Seems like mostly employees park in the back of it.

[Wedgeguy]

Marriott and and other hoteliers seem to be jumping onto this dual property concept of a limited and full service hotel next to each other or even as part of the same tower. Hoping that some of the limited service visitors will come and eat at their restaurant next door. Not sure if they would share all or part of the management team to reduce costs.

[twincitizen]

Saint Louis Park wants to spruce up its original main street district, Walker and Lake Street.

http://sailor.mnsun.com/2015/10/28/st-l ... reet-area/

This could be really interesting. Hope to hear more soon.

[MNdible]

Two words:

Festive.

Banners.

[Anondson]

With the Lake St. to TH 7 access closed I'd like to see Walker developed on the south side on every parcel possible.

Walker was just repaved, the industrial section (from Louisiana to Lake) has on street bike lanes. Kinda nice, but I wish the lanes were between the parking and sidewalk.

I'd like to see the city revisit offering this municipal parking lot. They put up city-owned lots for development a few decades ago and got no interest. Many were turned into parking, as the triangular Lake/Walker lot was done. With SWLRT routing set, I wager that odd lot could get multi-story apartment interest.

The kinds of things these funds would be used for though, yeah... Banners, as is done. Maybe a fresh coat of paint on a few buildings?

[seanrichardryan]

Anyone catch this?

http://www.fox9.com/news/47643756-story

[Anondson]

I had this meeting with the EPA on my schedule to go to but had to skip because family illnesses (flu). The Reilly Tar superfund site is something everyone from SLP or lived there a few years hears about. The city has spent ridiculous amounts of money getting its water supplies cleaned up and issues water reports to everyone in the mail frequently showing how clean it is.

It's even a frequent joke brought up now and then for why SLP produced Al Franken, Tom Friedman, and the Coen Brothers at around the same time, the special ingredient in the water (har, har). I wouldn't be surprised if too many long time SLP residents are at information overload about Reilly Tar.

It was such a colossal historical error to put an industry like that on a swampy skunk hollow, especially one that close to the Minnehaha creek. A recent word I caught about the Reilly underground plume is that it's moving fast towards Edina ...

(I eff-ing hate the Fox 9 mobile website...)

[Sara Bergen]

New "bike and walk the park" FB group for St. Louis Park:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1111837145504714/

[Anondson]

Nice! Just joined. Thanks for sharing this.

[Anondson]

Here's a news story about the Marriott expansion I posted about.

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/n ... nsion.html

[Wedgeguy]

Totally different hotel than I thought we were talking about. I thought we were talking 100 and 394, not 169 and 394.

[twincitizen]

Wayzata & Texas development.
http://stlouispark.patch.com/articles/v ... nd-wayzata


"The parcels are owned by MnDOT and have been identified as "excess property" after a highway project. MnDOT is willing to sell the land to the city for development. Currently, the area is zoned residential, and at a Monday night City Council meeting, members said they'd probably like to keep it that way. So, expect some type of housing to go up."

Here's what a former TOLD executive is proposing for the two sites: http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/b ... -park.html

70 "townhomes" (actually rentals built in a rowhome style) split between the two non-contiguous sites. Not bad for these little fragments of freeway-adjacent MNDOT scraps.

Update: http://sailor.mnsun.com/2015/11/18/arli ... ouis-park/
It appears that only the western half of this development has been approved. 34 apartments, dubbed "Western Row" will be built at Wayzata & Texas. The article does not mention what the cause for delay on the eastern parcel is.

While details were still being worked through on the property near Pennsylvania Avenue, the council during an Oct. 19 meeting approved two three-story apartment buildings for the site at Texas Avenue.

[Anondson]

I think it is just being done in two parts rather than both simultaneously. I have heard the East site is being concepted right now.

[Anondson]

Arlington Row received a Met Council grant of $581,000 for geothermal, photovoltaic cells, and stormwater improvements.

http://metrocouncil.org/News-Events/Com ... ng-to.aspx

[Anondson]

The city of St. Louis Park want the former McGarvey Coffee property developed. Because the McGarvey Coffee plant is directly across from the future Wooddale SWLRT station the city believes the best development is TOD.

The Wooddale site has a few problems in a compact area. Anyone who has passed through is familiar. There is significant cut through traffic avoiding the stop lights at TH 7/TH 100, from eastbound TH7 to southbound Wooddale to get to TH 100 and northbound TH100 takes W. 36th to get to westbound TH7. The TH7/TH100 intersection reconstruction will eliminate most of the desire for this cut through and the thousands of cars taking the cut through will quickly learn that the highways will be faster.

There is also a regional bike trail crossing and a freight rail crossing. The trail users and drivers are frequently at odds negotiating passing through. The regional trail will be getting a grade separation under Wooddale. The freight rail passes through in a minutes-long, slow moving, shutdown of Wooddale. Traffic backs up onto TH7, and W. 36 backs up to the TH 100 bridge.

Wooddale is going to receive a whisper quiet conversion meaning trains won't need to blow the horns as they cross. By regulations for these quiet zone crossings barriers must be put up on the road preventing fed-up drivers from weaving past the crossing guards. These quiet zone barriers will cut the TH7 frontage road, the frontage road will no longer cross Wooddale.

Into this, the city of Saint Louis Park initial felt it would be feasible to extend Xenwood under the rail line to achieve a few goals. Increase access to the TH7 frontage road that the quiet zone barriers will partly cut off. Make development of the McGarvey site more possible/successful. Make access to/from the Wooddale station much easier from the north of TH 7. Initial engineering for the Xenwood underpass, by my recollection, came at around $10 Million. The city pursued further study. More extension engineering followed and the price rose to $18 Million+, some of the reasons are the depth would require significant reconstruction of the TH7 frontage road to meet the depth of the underpass, and excavation would have to start as far south as W. 36th itself, it would go deep enough to cut off Camerata Way and the apartment's driveway.

So I propose this fantasy instead of the Xenwood underpass. Instead of extending Xenwood under the rail to the frontage road. Extend W. 36th over the rail and reroute the frontage road to connect.

W. 36th Street Extension by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

A major advantage to a W. 36th extension happens when rail comes through and and closes Wooddale. The heavy traffic on W. 36th heading to TH7 can stay on W. 36th and reroute themselves over to Louisiana and get on the highway there. It opens up a nice potential TOD parcel. A traffic light at the Wooddale bridge over TH 7 can time its signal to let drivers on the ramp carry forward back on to TH 7. I foresee a roundabout-like loop on the north end of the bridge to easy the horrific sight-lines to easy the terrifying flow.

Just a thought experiment.

[mattaudio]

I like it. SO, are you proposing a 3/4 intersection at the McGarvey Frontage Road? That seems like it would work: It would probably be compatible with FRA barriers in the median, it would eliminate the need for a controlled intersection there, and the fourth movement (McGarvey to 36th/South Wooddale) can be accomplished via a U-turn in the loop you propose at the north side of the TH-7 bridge. If left turn from Wooddale/TH-7 to the McGarvey Frontage Road doesn't exist, it's creating a significant access barrier to the site - especially when trains + RIRO would effectively eliminate access to that entire area for minutes at a time.

The bridge/extension of 36th is a great idea.

[Anondson]

The McGarvey would be 3/4. The quiet zone median barrier will make the McGarvey side a RIRO, the PLACE team has said their proposal doesn't hinge on the Xenwood access, in fact the Xenwood access significantly interferes with the robotic car ramp. PLACE said their proposal will go forward without Xenwood.

Accessing the McGarvey frontage could be done with a turn off the Wooddale to eastbound TH 7 ramp much cheaper than the Xenwood extension.