The Rail - (815 14th Avenue Southeast)

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Nick
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The Rail - (815 14th Avenue Southeast)

Postby Nick » March 23rd, 2013, 7:52 pm

Here's something new from the agenda of next week's CPC CoW meeting.

http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups ... 105761.pdf

A five-story, 36 unit wedged in between the lodges on 8th Street and the railroad tracks. Looks like there's currently a surface lot and a light industrial building.
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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby gahwi003 » March 23rd, 2013, 11:06 pm

I bet the "Keep Dinkytown Dinky" supporters are rolling their eyes at this one! Another "high-rise"!!??

On a side note, I live a block away from here. I have to say, what a crappy place to put an apartment complex. The alleyway is a disaster during winter and spring. The location is sub-par. They will charge premium prices for nothing special. It wont be close to a convenience store. Sounds silly to me.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby RailBaronYarr » March 24th, 2013, 6:48 am

^^ Won't there be a convenience store at the current UTEC site, merely 2.5 blocks from the west side of this building? Isn't there House of Hanson just on the other side of 5th? And a CVS at 15th and 4th, 6.5 blocks away? I mean, at worst, even if this were opening today, the longest distance to a reasonable convenience/grocery store is a 6.5 block walk - 10-11 minutes. I don't know how much better you can get.

As for the alley, I used to walk through this all the time from the apartment behind Marcy Park Apts to get to the RR crossing to Van Cleve to play hockey, never found it to be that bad. I would imaging the project will come with some alley improvements. Not too concerned on that front since the entrances to the building are on either side of the alley anyway

The only downer from my perspective as a resident would be the RR noise, but having lived just about as close to the same railway and the freeway to boot, I can say it's really not that bad. From an urban design perspective, I will stop beating this drum when we start seeing more, but that is one long wall facing an alleyway without any 'interaction.' I'll give it a free pass as it's in the alleyway, but it could just as easily be Bierman Place sitting on an entire block without good street frontage.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby min-chi-cbus » March 24th, 2013, 9:52 am

I love it! I love when developers take excess space wedged in like this one is and make it into something useful! I don't know much about the surrounding area though, so I can't say for certain whether this is a good location or not.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby gahwi003 » March 24th, 2013, 10:28 am

^^ Won't there be a convenience store at the current UTEC site, merely 2.5 blocks from the west side of this building? Isn't there House of Hanson just on the other side of 5th? And a CVS at 15th and 4th, 6.5 blocks away? I mean, at worst, even if this were opening today, the longest distance to a reasonable convenience/grocery store is a 6.5 block walk - 10-11 minutes. I don't know how much better you can get.
The convenience of this building will be extremely lower than that of dinkytdome, sydney, 412, UTEC, House of Hanson Site, and above purple onion. That was my point.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby FISHMANPET » March 24th, 2013, 11:53 am

House of Hanson just on the other side of 5th?
You're not paying much attention here, House of Hanson is selling their land for a new building and closing the business. Other shops in the area could move into the new retail space, but the House of Hanson owner has given every indication that she's done.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby gobezlij » March 24th, 2013, 1:23 pm

I'm with min-chi-cbus on the good use of the lot. As for its location, it couldn't be closer to Van Cleve Park, just across the railroad tracks over the pedestrian bridge on 14th. It is just a several block walk to Dinkytown, and even closer than that is the little commercial corner at Como and 15th.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby min-chi-cbus » March 24th, 2013, 5:46 pm

Who operates the tracks along side this site -- a freight company or is this part of the Central Corridor? If it's the former, is it a busy line? If the latter, how far away is the nearest stop?

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby Silophant » March 24th, 2013, 6:23 pm

This is a freight track. I don't live in this area, but I don't know that I've ever seen a train go through here, so I don't think there's more than a couple trains a day. I agree with you above, this a really good use of an underused space.
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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby RailBaronYarr » March 24th, 2013, 6:31 pm

The convenience of this building will be extremely lower than that of dinkytdome, sydney, 412, UTEC, House of Hanson Site, and above purple onion. That was my point.
Again, if we're talking about a 2.5 block walk to UTEC vs. the sites you mention for convenience, I guess I'm not sure the state of America. Not every building can or will have convenience stores and restaurants in their ground level (at least not for a long time in this area) and a 2.5 to 5 block walk is not what I would ever call "inconvenient." In fact, I would bet that some people would be willing to pay the same or more for the lack of street traffic out their windows and Fri/Sat night drunken yelling in exchange for a 5 minute longer walk.
You're not paying much attention here, House of Hanson is selling their land for a new building and closing the business. Other shops in the area could move into the new retail space, but the House of Hanson owner has given every indication that she's done.
Yes, I do. I brought up HoH as a point of reference to distance in to DT. UTEC was my first example, which has already stated they'll have convenience store space (one of the reasons HoH may be motivated to sell due to future competition), and I also cited the existing CVS. The HoH was for reference for someone complaining about the current location's inconvenient distance to current amenities.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby gahwi003 » March 24th, 2013, 6:49 pm

The convenience of this building will be extremely lower than that of dinkytdome, sydney, 412, UTEC, House of Hanson Site, and above purple onion. That was my point.
Again, if we're talking about a 2.5 block walk to UTEC vs. the sites you mention for convenience, I guess I'm not sure the state of America. Not every building can or will have convenience stores and restaurants in their ground level (at least not for a long time in this area) and a 2.5 to 5 block walk is not what I would ever call "inconvenient." In fact, I would bet that some people would be willing to pay the same or more for the lack of street traffic out their windows and Fri/Sat night drunken yelling in exchange for a 5 minute longer walk.
You're not paying much attention here, House of Hanson is selling their land for a new building and closing the business. Other shops in the area could move into the new retail space, but the House of Hanson owner has given every indication that she's done.
Yes, I do. I brought up HoH as a point of reference to distance in to DT. UTEC was my first example, which has already stated they'll have convenience store space (one of the reasons HoH may be motivated to sell due to future competition), and I also cited the existing CVS. The HoH was for reference for someone complaining about the current location's inconvenient distance to current amenities.
Im not disagreeing that a 3 block walk is convenient, Im stating that this location is more inconvenient than that of UTEC, HoH, Dinkydome, 412, ect. Sorry for confusion, I think we are one the same page.

Behind the lodges is a top party spot for dinkytown residents. There will be plenty of drunken yelling.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby MNdible » March 24th, 2013, 9:14 pm

By my observation, these rail lines are pretty busy, including a fair amount of jockeying in and out of the switching yard. In addition, it's not uncommon to have train engines idling along this stretch, belching out diesel fumes. Don't count on leaving your windows open for a breath of fresh air if you're living here.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby rcrades » March 25th, 2013, 6:51 am

This is spot on. The train traffic is primarily freight plus the daily amtrak. As stated above switching occurs and on occasion engines will idle overnight. I live in the lodges and will occasionally be awoken to some very strange noises coming from the tracks.

That said, I don't see any reason why this wont work as there is an apartment building just across 13th Ave, and Northstar is just as close to the tracks 2 blocks in the other direction. The building looks really nice and though there isn't a whole lot of space back there I don't see 36 units injecting too many people into the area... At least 15 people live in each lodge.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby 612transplant » March 25th, 2013, 11:22 am

Initially, I was going to object to the idea that there is "nothing useful" here already, since I thought the site in question was across the street-- and we were looking at displacing an auto-body shop and wilderness inquiry to build it. As an aside, 14th Ave seems like an odd address for this thing, but I guess that alley is unnamed. Is it possible, perhaps, that there might be some improvement (widening) to the alley, and it may be renamed as part of the project?

I guess I lean both ways on this one. It seems like a very efficient use of space, but are we ready to venture this far away from main arterial routes in the residential development that's going on around the U? And, isn't there still plenty of available space closer to the action for developers?

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby min-chi-cbus » March 25th, 2013, 11:39 am

There may be closer/better lots, but I bet that a big part of why this one is getting developed is because the developer got the land for barbain-basement prices, as opposed to the other "better" parcels that are probably becoming more and more cost-prohibitive to turn a profit. Also remember that this is only a 36 unit project, so the overhead that'll go into this project that remains largely fixed needs to be considerably less than the revenue it can generate, and getting cheap land changes the landscape, so to speak.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby 612transplant » March 25th, 2013, 2:22 pm

^^^That's kind of what I was thinking, cbus. This can't be a top dollar site. I noticed an architect on the document attached in this thread, but do we know much about the developer behind this? Perhaps it is a smaller company than we are used to (that's good, right? Means that the market is "trickling down" and diversifying a bit?)

I guess there's already plenty of pretty dense (student) apartment projects around here, particularly across the tracks. So, maybe this one won't be too obstructive to the neighborhood. But I guess we'll see...

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby RailBaronYarr » March 25th, 2013, 3:40 pm

Also, this thing butts right up against the pedestrian bridge over the tracks.. any way they can consider upgrading/replacing it while they're at it? While I like the wood and think it's kinda unique, it lends the "1940s near a railroad hellhole" to the area. Would this project make a connection of 14th Ave and Rollins impossible (I swear I've seen this proposed somewhere...)

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby MNdible » March 25th, 2013, 4:21 pm

Of course, the existing ped bridge is illegal because it's so not ADA compliant. I'm sure it's days are numbered.

I've always thought that 13th Avenue would have made more sense for a pedestrian overpass. That is until the UTEC project disrupts 13th Avenue as a pedestrian route.

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby 612transplant » March 25th, 2013, 7:05 pm

I'm guessing (and this is only a guess...) that UTEC predates the pedestrian bridge, by some non-negligeable margin...

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Re: 815 14th Ave SE

Postby MNdible » March 25th, 2013, 8:11 pm

I'm guessing (and this is only a guess...) that UTEC predates the pedestrian bridge, by some non-negligeable margin...
I mean the UTEC project that they're starting to build right now. When Marshall High School had that stretch of 13th vacated, it remained a viable pedestrian route.


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