Suburbs - General Topics

Twin Cities Suburbs
mattaudio
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby mattaudio » July 26th, 2016, 7:46 am

In Jordan, an old-country feel contrasts a desire to grow
City's growing population is prompting it to balance its history with its future.
http://www.startribune.com/in-jordan-an ... 388208162/

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sdho
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby sdho » July 26th, 2016, 10:48 am

The incredible shrinking American yard: https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/20 ... story.html

CC: sdho
Oops, missed this from a while ago. I am glad to see a city/neighborhood taking action and calling a spade a spade. A driveway should be for providing access to your property from the street. It should not be for car storage -- particularly not in the front yard. One of my frustrations in my own city, Richfield, is that the city permits driveways (or fails to enforce unpermitted DIY-type driveways) that place cars within the right-of-way, or in front of the house, and routinely violate city code about storing excessive vehicles outside. For all the concerns I hear about boulevard trees when sidewalks get proposed, I hear very little concern about the loss of suitable areas for boulevard trees due to excessively large driveways.

As for on-street parking on Portland/Lyndale/Nicollet in Richfield -- I disagree with twincitizen and Lyndale and Nicollet have the same situation. Portland is the most "driveway-oriented", since it has only a single half of one side of one block that has an alley. Nicollet and Lyndale are more of an even mix, and Lyndale has Woodlake on the west side for three blocks. In addition, Portland carries more traffic and is more regional in nature (interchanges at both Crosstown and 494, and to remain a CSAH for the long term). I am hopeful more flexibility in design will be used on Lyndale and Nicollet to accommodate parking and bikes alike.

Mdcastle
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby Mdcastle » July 29th, 2016, 8:49 am

Given that many households are going to have 2, or even 3 or more cars for the foreseeable future and many homes have single car garages, what's the best outcome?
A) Allowing wide driveways, parking pads
B) Allowing massive garages in back
C) Just making the people deal with the potential damage and winter hassles of street parking.

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sdho
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby sdho » July 29th, 2016, 9:24 am

I'm fine with (B) or (C). If it's to the back of the front face of the house, the impacts can be mitigated pretty easily -- neighbors can put up privacy fences, it's not visible (or barely visible) from the street, etc.

But the reality is that even a typical narrow driveway can fit quite a lot. A house across the street from me had eight cars on their property, even with a one-car garage and single-width driveway. They just stacked them up. (That reached a point where it was impactful to others -- but had they even had four cars total, it wouldn't have been bad.)

On the other hand, a house that has simply paved over their entire front yard pushes all the impacts to other. It necessitates wider curb cuts, reduced on-street parking, and less-safe, less-accessible sidewalks.

matthew5080
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby matthew5080 » August 14th, 2016, 9:32 pm


Anondson
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby Anondson » August 14th, 2016, 10:42 pm

Heh. Yup.

twincitizen
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby twincitizen » August 16th, 2016, 8:24 am

(some) First-ring suburbs driving real estate gains: http://www.startribune.com/buried-insid ... 390245421/

Some well-located innerburbs are seeing record home prices, surpassing the '07 peak. Richfield, Falcon Heights/Roseville, etc. all doing very well. St. Louis Park doing so well it doesn't even garner a mention in the story ;) One would think that (besides Edina), St. Louis Park would offer some of the largest value gains over 10 years ago. It could be my own perception/bias, but it really does seem that St. Louis Park is heading towards "2nd Edina" status. For various reasons (esp. wide swaths of very small postwar homes) SLP will never fully achieve Edina, but in terms of $/sf it has to be getting close in many areas.

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Sacrelicio
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby Sacrelicio » August 16th, 2016, 8:48 am

(some) First-ring suburbs driving real estate gains: http://www.startribune.com/buried-insid ... 390245421/

Some well-located innerburbs are seeing record home prices, surpassing the '07 peak. Richfield, Falcon Heights/Roseville, etc. all doing very well. St. Louis Park doing so well it doesn't even garner a mention in the story ;) One would think that (besides Edina), St. Louis Park would offer some of the largest value gains over 10 years ago. It could be my own perception/bias, but it really does seem that St. Louis Park is heading towards "2nd Edina" status. For various reasons (esp. wide swaths of very small postwar homes) SLP will never fully achieve Edina, but in terms of $/sf it has to be getting close in many areas.
And Arden Hills could benefit from some inner ring spillover, but.....

http://www.startribune.com/vision-for-a ... 390256001/

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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby Anondson » August 16th, 2016, 9:53 am

I think from the bottom of the recession to the current prices, I thought I saw some real estate data that in the western suburbs Hopkins had the greatest rise in values.

Could be because SLP also has a pretty shallow dip relatively. Hopkins home prices were up something like 70% in five or seven years...

mattaudio
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Re: Southdale Area Development - Edina

Postby mattaudio » September 8th, 2016, 9:46 pm

Yay, Farmington is basically giving Hy-Vee $2 million.
http://www.farmingtonindependent.com/le ... ic-hearing

seanrichardryan
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Re: Southdale Area Development - Edina

Postby seanrichardryan » September 8th, 2016, 10:09 pm

wait, waht? That terrible.
Q. What, what? A. In da butt.

RailBaronYarr
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby RailBaronYarr » November 29th, 2016, 4:17 pm

This is locked, so I couldn't get the full story: http://finance-commerce.com/2016/11/jud ... s-illegal/

But this is somewhat interesting. Where does one draw the line on impact fees (defined broadly)? While I don't generally agree with it, new developments are often asked to build new parks or pay for improvements to existing ones, same for schools, etc. To say nothing of area-specific assessments for transportation improvements using value-capture (I realize this is generally done by identifying a project first then charging property owners for the benefit, rather than charging new development for the impact).

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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby Anondson » November 29th, 2016, 7:02 pm

Huh.

If a city cannot require a developer to pay to help alleviate the impact a development will cause to preexisting infrastructure, what are the choices left? A city will have to spread the costs out to every established resident, seems this means existing residents will reasonably see new residents as an obvious cause of an increased tax burden...

Or a city can change zoning strategies of widespread masses of single uses, especially single family homes, spread out small pockets of commercial, pockets of retail, pockets of light industry throughout the residential so that people won't have to travel extreme distances for basic needs... infrastructure then has less need to be expensively up-sized to handle huge flows. Could Woodbury change zoning for these properties so that a corner has a small plot of retail?

What else?

Qhaberl
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby Qhaberl » November 29th, 2016, 7:27 pm

With all these new suburban developments; are they starting to look less suburban? I mean with a connected Street grid and stuff? Or are we still building Those curvy crappy culs-du-sac's?


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MNdible
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby MNdible » November 30th, 2016, 10:27 am

Without having access to the unlocked article, it seems likely that there's something specific about the way the Woodbury fee is being implemented that's objectionable, not the broad idea of an impact fee. Right?

mamundsen
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby mamundsen » November 30th, 2016, 12:30 pm

Can anyone else find info about 3210 white bear ave in WBL? There has been an old gas station for lease for a long time. A few weeks ago the disconnected the utilities and today they were tearing down the canopy (and maybe the buildings too). I can't find a proposal for what could be replacing it. Maybe they are just clearing the site to make it more appealing.

RailBaronYarr
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby RailBaronYarr » December 3rd, 2016, 8:03 am

A bit more information on that impact fee ruling: http://www.twincities.com/2016/12/02/ju ... s-illegal/

Doesn't really seem like the developer took issue with a model that's much different than what I have typically seen. For example, Minneapolis park impact fees have been sitting unspent since inception and in many cases will be used to fund things unrelated to additional users (ex ADA access at a beach) http://www.southwestjournal.com/news/pa ... ment-fees/

Again, I generally come down on anti-impact fees on development. In my opinion, it follows the position that current residents are the baseline, that their taxes pay for their current services, and if any new people want to move in, not only do they need to pay into the general pot, they must pay their own way for [roads, parks, schools, affordable housing, etc]. I don't think it's fair to add those costs to housing. We should all be in those things together by just raising everyone's taxes a little bit.


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RailBaronYarr
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby RailBaronYarr » January 17th, 2017, 1:11 pm

146-unit development proposed in a current corn field just east of the small park n ride lot along Cedar Ave (which may or may not become a Red Line station in the future): http://finance-commerce.com/2017/01/mis ... lakeville/ Over 300 parking spaces provided for 206 total bedrooms.

The article links to it, but there's a massive development going on mostly across Cedar Ave - building 1,080 units. Most of those are single family homes, but they range in lot widths (as low as 55' wide and up to 75' wide) plus a few smaller sections of row townhouses and some duplex townhomes. This development also jumps across Cedar and has more row homes and small-lot SFHs just to the south of that P&R and the proposed apartment.

It's nice to see a 4th-ring suburb thinking about/allowing stuff other than 0.35 acre and up single fam homes, and placing what little is built next to express buses is about all we can ask. But it's super telling that planning commissioners think corn fields is where a 3-story apartment building should go, and even more telling that despite Lakeville's popularity (schools, parks, etc) this would be the first apartment built in many years.

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sdho
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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby sdho » January 17th, 2017, 2:25 pm

This P&R is the future southern terminus of the Red Line, I believe. (They spent transit dollars to upgrade the road for the Red Line all the way to this station, then after improving the road, they decided there was no point in running the bus this far.)

The whole Dodd & Cedar area has a lot of ingredients of a car-minimal lifestyle in fairly close proximity — a lot of what you'd need in that mall to the north, plus the nice transit station. But I'm skeptical the final result will be that compelling. Maybe a handful of people walking to the express bus stop who go to work downtown.

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Re: Suburbs - General Topics

Postby RailBaronYarr » January 17th, 2017, 2:41 pm

This P&R is not the proposed terminus, it would go all the way down to 215th St (the eastern edge of the Airlake industrial park): https://www.co.dakota.mn.us/Transportat ... ummary.pdf I have argued in other thread(s?) that the Red Line would do better to end in downtown Lakeville even if this stop is retained.

The Dodd/Cedar shopping area is technically close, but realistically no one is going to walk the 3,000 ft from their front door to the Cub. Maybe a few will bike, but highly unlikely. As someone who used to go for runs from a girlfriend's house that included the 1.5 mile stretch along the west side of Cedar from 190th to Dodd, it sucks. Housing developments that turn their back to Cedar with berms and holding ponds won't make it any better.


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