Northside - News & General Topics

[Wezle]

https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/download ... ilding.pdf

60 units proposed for Lowry and Washburn on the site of an empty church for next week's Planning Commission meeting. Less than a block from the future Lowry Ave Blue Line Extension station. Hopefully the first of many developments along the route.

[MNdible]

Not to be that guy (I'm definitely that guy), but this project is in North, not Northeast, Minneapolis.

Also, it's called The Warren, which seems a bit on the nose for a dense apartment building.

[Wezle]

Oh dang, I glanced at the thread name when posting and assumed it was the same as the larger forum. Should belong in "Northside - News & General Topics". My bad.

[Silophant]

The GAF roofing plant between Upper Harbor Terminal and the Lowry Bridge will close April 4th. Bad for the people being laid off, but good for Northside/Northeast air quality. If I remember correctly, the riverfront warehouse on the south side of the bridge was acquired by MPRB ten years or so ago to prepare for a parkway connection underneath the bridge once GAF moved out.

[blo442]

The GAF roofing plant between Upper Harbor Terminal and the Lowry Bridge will close April 4th. Bad for the people being laid off, but good for Northside/Northeast air quality. If I remember correctly, the riverfront warehouse on the south side of the bridge was acquired by MPRB ten years or so ago to prepare for a parkway connection underneath the bridge once GAF moved out.

Development on this parcel plus a parkway connection under the bridge would be huge for making Upper Harbor feel less like an island. What would be really transformative (and thus will never happen) is a North Loop Green type development that creates an active streetscape on the Lowry Ave viaduct and adds vertical circulation between the viaduct & parkway levels. That would go a long way towards stitching North and Northeast together in a spot where the long viaduct plus I-94 bridge currently create a massive barrier to walkability.

[DanPatchToget]

Doing some digging on Google Maps, it looks like the railroad spur that goes through the Upper Harbor Terminal area will be down to four customers shipping by rail. Two of them are north of Dowling Avenue, one is just south of Lowry Avenue, and one is just north of Plymouth Avenue. I wonder if eventually there will be a rail-trail, though the tracks go by lots of industrial buildings and it's not right next to the river, so maybe not that appealing even if the railroad abandons it.

[BikesOnFilm]

If you converted that rail to trail, at 42nd it would not just connect to the Grand Rounds, but it would also connect to a trail that follows W River Road all the way past the Coon Rapids Dam.

I think it would be worth doing for the trail connections alone, but the other benefit of rail-to-trail (at least when you're absolutely sure you won't want passenger rail in the corridor ever again) is that eventually you're going to starve out industrial demand for that area and the city will be more comfortable rezoning it for residential and mixed use.

[mattaudio]

Doing some digging on Google Maps, it looks like the railroad spur that goes through the Upper Harbor Terminal area will be down to four customers shipping by rail.

While I'm enthusiastic about recreation on the riverfront and redevelopment of this post-industrial space, I am hesitant to see elimination of a railroad corridor. Why? It would be highly convenient if we ever have serious intercity passenger rail connections from Minneapolis. This corridor including the NP river bridge north of Broadway to the Strib plant could be coupled with the I-94 offramp ROW through the North Loop (with only a short 3 block gap to fill in) to provide a continuous rail connection to Target Field Station. In a world with more passenger rail, this would allow intercity trains originating on the BNSF Staples Sub or CPKC Paynesville Sub to through-route a Minneapolis station rather than having to back in. It would also reduce potential rail congestion at BNSF Minneapolis Jct which has already been cited as a barrier to rail development.

[BikesOnFilm]

If the tracks that terminate at the Star Tribune facility already connected to Target Field Station, I'd be inclined to agree.

Because you'd first have to figure out how the tracks are getting to TFS through the area of the North Loop riddled with condos and townhomes, that 3 block gap might as well be 300 miles.

Are we digging a tunnel under Second? Is there enough room for a turn that stays at grade with the existing track but doesn't encounter any of the foundations of the buildings it would be built under? Is there still enough room if we assume the train that will use this route is operating double decker Superliner cars? Would the planners of that route rule out TFS the second they saw initial costs for this tunnel when freight rail track improvements that allow operation out of SPUD are in the tens of millions instead of hundreds?

Take that with a grain of salt. I'm pretty bearish on TFS in general, considering once you connected to it you'd still have to find space to build a waiting area and ticketing office before you could realistically operate intercity service there, something that even NLX plans acknowledge but sort of hand waive away as someone else's problem to solve.

But considering how calcified national funding for passenger rail development is and that MNDOT has yet to start taking an active role in funding and developing things like this, I'd hate for us to ignore the possibilities we can do ourselves, with local and state funding, because we want to leave space for something that is at best 30 years away, at worst a line on a fantasy map that will never exist in reality.

[Silophant]

I liked the idea of having the Blue Line Extension continue down 10th Ave to the railroad ROW instead of turning on Washington, and taking advantage of the existing grade separations over Plymouth and Broadway, but that's presumably a non-starter unless there's another significant delay, which would probably be just as likely to kill the project entirely.

[HuskyGrad]

Any idea who owns these parcels? They don’t show the records correctly on the Hennepin County GIS site.

[COLSLAW5]

https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/download ... eport2.pdf

https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/ ... -site.html

Looks like Kemps leased the north 2/3 for 15 years to be a distribution hub and the South 1/3 looks like its being listed by CBRE for warehouse/outdoor storage Sale/lease.

[SurlyLHT]

The GAF facility between UHT and Lowry is closing. Some employees were saying the city wanted them out for UHT parking lot. But, I don't see this parcel as part of the plan. I'm guessing it will be sold for housing or etc?

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-bu ... s-expected