New Basketball Arena Discussion

[mullen]

the mayor's plan is not feasible and nicollet mall is not the place. tearing down one of the tallest buildings in the city? uhuh sure.. where is this ever even done? i'm sure it is i just don't recall. adding millions more to the cost just to prepare the site. surely can find a more suitable site. and those city center parcels needs to retrofitted for residential use. the hotel is fine as is. frey is positioning himself for higher office which i think he has no chance of succeeding.

[Zkools20]

It’ll most likely never happen at city center site, just due to cost of all the demolition. The only way it’ll happen if the city/county help cover a majority of the demolition cost. But to say a big skyscraper has never been torn down for another building is wrong. There’s examples all over the world that a perfectly in text high rise has been dismantled and something new built in its place. But we aren’t NYC or a large Asian city

[MNdible]

I just saw that Gethsemane Church downtown is for sale, which got me to thinking that you could acquire the Normandy hotel and make a superblock bounded by 4th and 5th Avenues and 8th and 10th Streets. It's still probably undersized, but there's more adjacent land available for redevelopment there than around City Center. The big pro for that site is that it's quite close to the Convention Center, so you could take advantage of some synergies there for really big events. Also, if you're going to make a superblock, 9th Street seems like a pretty painless connection to lose. Cons: not a lot of parking and relatively poor access to transit (for a downtown site).

[mullen]

i never said a skyscraper hasn't been torn down before. i just said I couldn't recall.

[Didier]

What if we knocked down the juvenile detention center and some adjacent stuff, moved them into City Center, and build it on the Commons? Besides the current Target Center location, the Commons is the best fit for a new major event venue.

[mattaudio]

Agreed.

I also think the area just south of The Commons between The Armory and US Bank Stadium could work.

I was in Sacramento for a conference a few weeks ago and walked past Golden 1 Arena (less than a decade old) every day. Sacramento is a similar grid with ~400 ft blocks center-to-center. The arena footprint is about 550 x 500 ft and is sort of on a 2x2 superblock development, but weighted onto one oversized block. On one side, a pedestrianized K Street curves around the arena. One street is cut off through the superblock, and another tunnels underneath a pedestrianized plaza/K Street. The remaining superblock is sort of an outdoor mall/entertainment district including some hotels.

How could this be done in Minneapolis? Weight the bulk of the arena north of 6th St up against The Commnons. Ideally orient the bowl east-west and extend onto the old Medical Examiner's parcel and the barren concrete plaza where the Vikings put up their seasonal party building. This would require closure of Park Ave, probably fine.

Another idea is the arena shifting slightly west and bump up against The Armory. This would give it 100 ft between the Portland Ave ROW and the Armory side yard, and give a reason to close Portland through The Commons. But I wonder if there are historic preservation issues with the facade of the Armory (but hey, St. Paul has Roy Wilkins backing right into RiverCenter).

Being an important corridor between the core and I-94, a few lanes of 6th St could tunnel below grade from west of Portland to east of Chicago. The HCMC ramp and surface lot could make an ideal area for backend services for the arena, topped with redevelopment pads for the developers.

[quagga]

I just saw that Gethsemane Church downtown is for sale, which got me to thinking that you could acquire the Normandy hotel and make a superblock bounded by 4th and 5th Avenues and 8th and 10th Streets. It's still probably undersized, but there's more adjacent land available for redevelopment there than around City Center. The big pro for that site is that it's quite close to the Convention Center, so you could take advantage of some synergies there for really big events. Also, if you're going to make a superblock, 9th Street seems like a pretty painless connection to lose. Cons: not a lot of parking and relatively poor access to transit (for a downtown site).

The church building is locally and nationally designated historic, so demolishing it would be a chore.

[Tom H.]

I've never been to, and know nothing about, the Normandy hotel, but just by the look of it, I imagine there would be some rabid "Save the Normandy" types to pop out of the woodwork as well.

[fehler]

The HCMC site may be available.

[mnmike]

It would be so wasteful to tear down the city center complex...the site that seems perfect I am surprised hasn't been mentioned...if we are talking about spending that kind of demo/acquisition money...is that stupid parking lot on Hennepin next to the Orpheum. It seems like that block plus the block across from Salvation Army with the two newer small hotels would be perfect. Still wasteful to demo such new buildings, but...

Would probably just have to get rid of the small piece of 11th that runs next to 394...and 1st could go under the site.

[MNdible]

Another option would be the Mary's Place / MPLS Royalston block (and then the land on the other side of Royalston can be A-Lore's private development). That's kind of a terrible location for Mary's Place to be anyway, so relocate them to some of the undeveloped in Heritage Park. Move the Public Works facility [waves hands] somewhere else.

Unlike any of the grid-restricted sites, it's dimensionally large enough for a modern arena. It's easier to connect to the skyway system and the Hawthorne Ramp and closer to the downtown core and the Warehouse District than the true Farmer's Market site. The site is already below the grade of the surrounding roadways so less excavation would be required for the arena bowl. You can provide easy, grade separated loading dock access using the HERC delivery roadway.

[COLSLAW5]

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... sp=sharing

I made this map a while back with Green being easy to develop, yellow needing work and red most likely off the table.

Personally I think they should figure something out with capping 394 and the City owned ramps. That way they can "use public money" but to build out the infrastructure to connect the farmers market to downtown better.

[rhettcarlson]

Great minds, MNdible.

I think HERC might be a difficult option if the decommissioning process takes awhile.

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.

[twincitizen]

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... sp=sharing

I made this map a while back with Green being easy to develop, yellow needing work and red most likely off the table.

Personally I think they should figure something out with capping 394 and the City owned ramps. That way they can "use public money" but to build out the infrastructure to connect the farmers market to downtown better.

Nice work! I've also been focused on the green area in the center of your map. I recently developed this concept that involves partially demolishing Ramp A and realigning the surrounding streets to create an almost 12 acre site.

Map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... sp=sharing

Big moves:
-"realign" 10th Street to run parallel to 7th instead of splitting around Ramp A, in effect making 7th Street two-way and removing 10th Street north of Glenwood.
-"realign" Twins Way by making Glenwood Ave two-way and removing Twins Way
-partially demolish A Ramp

Features:
-nearly 12 acre site
-large enough for arena to be set back from 7th & Glenwood, with large ped plaza to keep entry queues off streets.
-front door would be closer to downtown & current Target Center site than any other option.
-skyway connections to Target Center block, Ramp B, C, existing practice facility at Mayo Clinic Square.
-walkable from Warehouse District Station, doesn't rely on Royalston Station alone as farmers market site would
-redevelop Target Center block into ancillary development and public park, badly needed in this part of downtown

Downsides:
-7th Street is such a critical transportation artery you can't shut it down for ped safety, even during events. Would be a big busy road between Target Field and new arena
-somewhat breaks the existing traffic flow from eastbound 7th St >10th St >35W south. 8th Street is already busy, adding more traffic could cripple it.
-requires engineering magic to build arena on stilts above 394

[MNdible]

I've also been focused on the green area in the center of your map. I recently developed this concept that involves partially demolishing Ramp A and realigning the surrounding streets to create an almost 12 acre site... requires engineering magic to build arena on stilts above 394.

Yeah, it's an interesting idea, but suggesting that a site above 394 (or to a lesser extent any active street) is somehow more "developable" than many of the sites that are shown as red on the map is massively discounting the structural, logistical, and security implications of a move like that.

[mattaudio]

https://streets.mn/2014/06/12/reconnect ... royalston/

[twincitizen]

I've also been focused on the green area in the center of your map. I recently developed this concept that involves partially demolishing Ramp A and realigning the surrounding streets to create an almost 12 acre site... requires engineering magic to build arena on stilts above 394.

Yeah, it's an interesting idea, but suggesting that a site above 394 (or to a lesser extent any active street) is somehow more "developable" than many of the sites that are shown as red on the map is massively discounting the structural, logistical, and security implications of a move like that.

You're absolutely right, we'll have to remove 394 east of 12th Street to make this work

[MNdible]

I know we like to crap on freeways, and cars are bad. But the 394 stub into downtown, serving the ABC ramps, is a pretty painless way of getting people in and out of downtown. If we're going to continue to have a 20,000 seat arena attracting lots of visitors from the western suburbs (and hopefully Target Field will again someday attract massive crowds...), I'd think we would want to take advantage of that existing infrastructure (even if we'd never build it again today).

[twincitizen]

I agree that the below-grade 394 stub here is mostly harmless to the urban environment around it, and we couldn't have multiple pro sports arenas here without it. In the area we're currently discussing, the massive 3-block long wall that is the A Ramp is honestly more of a barrier to infill development than 394 is. The section of 394 between Linden/Hawthorne Ave and Glenwood Ave would seem to be relatively easy to cap with plazas, if there was ever money to do it.

That said, I feel pretty strongly that we should remove the last 394 exit that goes to Washington Ave. It seems like extraordinarily low-hanging fruit to close the exit and slightly adjust the entrance ramp geometry, creating a viable 0.4 acre infill site at the corner of Washington & 3rd Ave N: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... sp=sharing