Allianz Field and Snelling-Midway Development

[commissioner]

Not surprised considering the theft from there

[commissioner]

Drove by the Midway Cub today, and it looks open still. I thought they were closing on the 2nd. What's the story?

[MN Fats]

closure was moved back to 8/30

https://www.startribune.com/a-note-from ... /601446507

[BigIdeasGuy]

Finally got around to reading this and while I agree with Cole premise and the the entire area between Snelling and Lex would benefit from redevelopment, I would be hugely supportive it. He completely ignores the reason it isn't happening or at least beyond limited success around Allianz being the numbers just don't work for developers right now to do something that would transform the land use in the area

https://streets.mn/2025/09/18/why-the-m ... al-future/

[twincitizen]

"designed for suburban book browsers with cars and time"
"retail designed for people who live nearby and use transit, not for suburban shoppers making weekly car trips"
"businesses remain designed for suburban customers rather than urban neighbors"

No disagreement with the overall premise of the article, but the author's repeated insistence that back when it was a thriving retail center the customers were mostly suburbanites is so needlessly annoying and wrong. I mean come on, the majority of customers arriving by car were undoubtedly city residents. The suburbs have their own big box stores - in particular, Roseville has all of them just a few miles up Snelling. I really doubt suburbanites were ever driving into the city to shop at Herbergers or Borders in 2004 or whenever this area was last seen as thriving.

Big box stores got built in the city because everyone was already shopping in the suburbs. City leaders used to care about "retail leakage" aka inner city residents' dollars flowing out to suburban shopping centers. The policy response to that concern was to attract big box development to places like Midway and The Quarry, to help capture city residents' shopping dollars within city limits. Midway was pretty successful at that for a long time until it wasn't, and The Quarry still is.

[Nick]

Or at a more basic level, are "developers and property owners" at fault for the area looking the way it does in 2025? The train has been running for over a decade. Even setting aside the rent control issue, it might be that the "TOD" tail-wagging-the-dog thing was always kind of bunk and there turned out to be a lot less demand to pay new construction prices to live at Snelling and University than some people anticipated.

[Anondson]

That may be. But hasn’t multifamily development all over the metro ground to nearly halted?

It’s seemed practically crickets over in the Hopkins/Minnetonka/SLP side since higher rates were cranked up.

Is there a part of the metro getting lots of housing outside St. Paul and Minneapolis?

[Nick]

It clearly has in the city the past few years, but it also never took off along University in the first place. How many non-subsidized units have been built along the Green Line in St. Paul since 2014? It's not zero, but it's not very many.

[Didier]

Off the top of my head, the Raymond and Fairview stations have both seen notable development, and Westgate too if that counts. There were also a handful of new apartments east of Snelling early on.

That said, it'd be cool if Costco came to Midway.

[quagga]

The Fairview complex was subsidized. The only market rate project east of Raymond has been "the Nine at Lexington Station," and the fight that generated definitely dimmed any developer enthusiasm for more.

[HuskyGrad]

Plans for St. Paul’s Allianz Field: A bakery, pizzeria, garden, ice rink

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pla ... 00182.html