New Basketball Arena Discussion

[BikesOnFilm]

Option B to my post up thread. Build arena on the Royalston Maintenance/Mary's Place site (~10.5 acres). Arod gets to rebuild a Taj Mahal homeless shelter elsewhere and gets favorable press coverage. Allow for decommissioning of HERC on whatever timeline it needs (2030?), then infill the site with the master-planned entertainment district (and housing) with a great pedestrian plaza linking Target Field Station to the new arena.

This is the best case outcome IMO

[mattaudio]

Option B to my post up thread. Build arena on the Royalston Maintenance/Mary's Place site (~10.5 acres). Arod gets to rebuild a Taj Mahal homeless shelter elsewhere and gets favorable press coverage. Allow for decommissioning of HERC on whatever timeline it needs (2030?), then infill the site with the master-planned entertainment district (and housing) with a great pedestrian plaza linking Target Field Station to the new arena.

Yes, this feels like a winner. Royalston Station still at the front door. Redevelopment opportunity west of Royalston. And, eventually, redevelopment opportunity if HERC is decommissioned to create a strong link between the Farmers Market district and the North Loop.

[blo442]

Option B to my post up thread. Build arena on the Royalston Maintenance/Mary's Place site (~10.5 acres). Arod gets to rebuild a Taj Mahal homeless shelter elsewhere and gets favorable press coverage. Allow for decommissioning of HERC on whatever timeline it needs (2030?), then infill the site with the master-planned entertainment district (and housing) with a great pedestrian plaza linking Target Field Station to the new arena.

Yes, this feels like a winner. Royalston Station still at the front door. Redevelopment opportunity west of Royalston. And, eventually, redevelopment opportunity if HERC is decommissioned to create a strong link between the Farmers Market district and the North Loop.

In my opinion the Royalston Public Works site has the same problem as HERC, how (and where) are you going to replace it? Roof Depot saga has dragged on how many years now, and it's ultimately ending with the public works yard proposal being relocated to the far fringes of Northeast. I bet that will make public works much more protective of their remaining centrally located facilities. Of course, pro sports money tends to grease the wheels, but then the protest talking points write themselves: "we're spending millions to shove a polluting industrial facility into the Northside/Southside/wherever, so that ARod can build a yuppie playground downtown." I can think of several council members who would be very receptive to that argument.

(For the record, I've been hoping for HERC for a while and think the argument for the benefits of this site is also solid, but I'm getting increasingly skeptical that our local governments are competent enough to work out the logistics and make a compelling case for these sites.)

[Emerson Uptowner]

Yuppie playground? I am not a yuppie and I am all for this arena. The more development downtown the better.

[BikesOnFilm]

In my opinion the Royalston Public Works site has the same problem as HERC, how (and where) are you going to replace it? Roof Depot saga has dragged on how many years now, and it's ultimately ending with the public works yard proposal being relocated to the far fringes of Northeast. I bet that will make public works much more protective of their remaining centrally located facilities.

Some thoughts on this:

Public works reports to the mayor who will see this project as a redemption arc for the city and his reputation.

There's a lot of industrial to the north of North Loop that is still relatively central, where a public works facility would be a step up from whatever it's replacing, and is represented by a councilperson who would focus on the jobs being brought to her district versus any environmental impact.

I'm not saying that last part is a good thing, but it's where I see the pieces on the board as they presently stand.

[BigIdeasGuy]

I've been thinking about this idea a bunch and I've come to really like it, there are going to be tricky to making sure the street frontage is great considering how it need to exist on multiple levels considering the infrastructure in the area. I also think the skyway, any arena will absolutely be skyway connected, back to DT is going to be a challenge to make inviting and energetic but that should also be achievable, probably with some renovation of the A Ramp and integrating the connection into what ever replaces the Target Center.

To me the harder political lift is going to be the relocating of Mary's Place & Caring and Sharing Hands, even if ARod & Lore do everything they possibly can to do right by the shelter and take care of the organization the ads write themselves and added facts & context aren't going to matter.

In my head the Public Works Yard feels like a natural fit for the area around the city impound lot

[minntransplant]

In my head the Public Works Yard feels like a natural fit for the area around the city impound lot

Why would we want to relocate public works stuff to the area by the impound lot when the city also would like that entire area to be redeveloped? That neighborhood is already starting to pop and will be extremely attractive for more housing once the LRT extension opens.

[twincitizen]

I recall reading that the area has poor soils that would require very deep foundations, adding an extra impediment to development. That was reportedly one factor in why the Ryan Cos. / Wells Fargo project never got off the ground there (and later ended up on the old Strib land). It could be true that the city-owned impound lot and Linden Yards properties are best suited for public works uses in perpetuity rather than vertical development (probably should've figured that out before locking in an LRT station with <100 riders a day).

This could also be why we've never heard an arena proposal on that land either, despite checking some of the boxes: LRT station, direct freeway access at 394/Van White, adjacent property badly needing a spark for redevelopment, etc. Not to get too O/T, but I thought when the city rebuilt the impound lot a couple years ago, it was supposed to shrink to only use the lot east of Van White, with the larger lot west of Van White freed up for development. Now that I think about it, it is pretty surprising no one has mentioned the west impound lot as a potential arena site, considering all the different darts we're throwing at the map.

[BikesOnFilm]

I mean if we could Sim City our way into whatever we wanted and didn't care about sunk costs, combining the east impound lot and the MPS school bus lot would create a lot of land, some of which seems like it would be more developable than others, and would even have Bassett Creek as a water feature. And the sky would be the limit for the parking lots and vacant land in the wedge of land between Glenwood and Second.

ARod buys MPS a bunch of electric school buses and the new diesel free facility moves into the Roof Depot site. Certainly wouldn't be an easy lift politically, but you'd get a lot of use out of the Bassett Creek LRT station in this scenario.

[Silophant]

The soil in the old creek bed is awful. I did some scoping for a project at the substation a few years back, and those structures are all on 90-100' deep pilings. Not impossible to build on, you can do pretty much anything with enough money, but spendy.

[Didier]

Did someone earlier suggest taking the juvie block and somehow tying into the Armory, a la Xcel and Roy Wilkins? No idea if any of that is feasible, but it could check a lot of boxes.

Otherwise, if they could figure out a way squeeze out more space at Target Center, that location seems so much better than the ones buried behind Target Field or the A ramp. The teams also have that pretty new practice facility at Block E.

I can get why it wouldn’t be ideal to have to play in a temporary stadium, but if there was ever a place to do it. Maybe that could grease the wheels on the Xcel renovations and even get the Wolves some kind of IOU down the road.

[Drizzay]

Can they just replace Target Field with it? It's not like the Twins are properly using that land.

[Didier]

https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/ ... eline.html

Timberwolves CEO: Downtown Minneapolis 'primary focus' for Target Center replacement
The Timberwolves and Lynx are eyeing a new home in downtown Minneapolis, with leadership outlining when construction could begin and what challenges stand in the way of making it happen.

[BikesOnFilm]

Surprising nobody except for the handful of suburbanites who really thought anyone would build an NBA stadium in Eagan.

[Wezle]

What a relief. I was expecting them to stay close to downtown, but reassurances are still nice at this stage. Kept having nightmares of them moving it out to Blaine or something. Too many professional sports arenas are still being built in a sea of surface parking and/or without transit access.

[Mdcastle]

Since modern pro sports venues seem to have a functional life of 30 years, maybe we should be thinking about where we want the new Twins stadium in 10 years and the new Vikings stadium in 20 years as well, start to think about what kind of what makes sense for all sports for the metro as a whole as opposed to try to deal with one thing at a time as the issue comes up.

[MNdible]

I'm probably being naive, or maybe you're being sarcastic, but I'd hope that the TWolves arena will be the last one that needs a new site for a long time. I know things change, but at this point they're the only ones playing in a truly deficient situation that can't be fixed with some money and some upgrades. The Wild seem content to get some modest (knowing that nothing is cheap to build these days) improvements, and the Twins were willing to sign a long term lease extension in exchange for a commitment to public support of ongoing updates. Maybe the Vikings are the unknown, but at least we've got some time before we have to worry about that again.