Louisiana Station Area

[Anondson]

While digging around MCWD board meeting agendas I saw that back in a late April board meeting ...

http://minnehahacreek.org/sites/minneha ... Hayman.pdf

... there was mention that the owner of an industrial property, Oxford Industrial Partners, approached the MCWD saying they were looking at redeveloping their 5.79 acres of Minnehaha Greenway adjacent property, that is also a half-block from the future Louisiana Station, “with a focus on future corridor transformation and success.”

It’s one of the few remaining industrial properties that runs directly up to the Creek banks with no buffer besides portions of the railroad wye. It reads like the property owner would like to work with the MCWD in a partnership like was done with Japs Olson so that the development enhances the Greenway but fits in the new.

[IMG]//uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201806 ... c74060.png[/IMG]

[Anondson]

Kind of a big deal, on May 28th's work study session the city council will look at three scenarios for a Sam's Club redevelopment. There is nothing saying that a rezoning of the site to TOD will happen, these are (currently zoned Commercial, and the city 2040 proposed zoning keeps it zoned Commercial).

Back in 2018 the city issued a moratorium on redevelopment of the Sam's Club site. Over months, city staff and a team from Hoisington Koegler Group, Inc conducted analysis of market trends, environmental constraints, and compatible land use around it. You can check it out in the agenda document. https://www.stlouispark.org/home/showdocument?id=13702

IMG_0144 by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
IMG_0141 by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
IMG_0142 by Eric Anondson, on Flickr
IMG_0143 by Eric Anondson, on Flickr

[alexschief]

Is the objective of the climate action plan to destroy the earth? Otherwise, I'm not seeing how the least intense, most driving oriented option gets the highest score on that measure. Let's hope for B or C.

[Anondson]

I believe the higher-than-expected rating for climate was:
* that it had gradual adaptive re-use of what is on the site.
* Louisiana was always planned to be a jobs-centric LRT station with other stations picking up the role of housing.
* this site has a very high water table (formerly a swamp), it has been capped as part of superfund site remediation because of a contamination plume under it slowly drifting south towards Edina. Deep disruption is not possible and this has minimal disruption of the contamination.

Maybe a good conversation could be had around whether there are good planning reasons to deliberately concentrate single uses around transit stations (this is the housing neighborhood station and that is the jobs station) or have each station be as mixed use as possible. I believe that between the Opus/Golden Triangle stations and Downtown that Louisiana was a station that was expected to be far more one got off at for jobs around it than housing.

[alexschief]

I say this as someone who has an advanced degree in planning, and whose financial interests are better served if there is a lot of planning work: sometimes we plan too much.

It seems very silly to me to assign specific uses to each station.

[Anondson]

It felt like there was a hint of an older generation of planning behind it, the style that wanted to segregate land uses because of assumed incompatibility. And Oxford is still basically old industrial. Only a few years ago the city finally chased away an operation (Flame Metals) that had multiple complaints about smoke emissions causing breathing irritation for the residents living next door.

The Beltline industrial area is having turnover of many of the old industrial warehouses being filled with fitness and brew pubs, this Oxford industrial corridor recently had a distillery and a fitness operation open up. Methodist Hospital has been swallowing up properties in the area too.

There may be some worry that these older smaller industry sites are slowly being encroached on.

[Multimodal]

Yeah I think the mixed use option makes the most sense.

It seems that cities are worried about losing jobs and the tax base that goes with them. But the demand for housing is so high. St. Louis Park has done a good job of adding density in useful places. I think they just want to keep or expand the number of jobs they have today, as their population increases.

But this could be a reflection of societal changes: are we at max jobs today?

[Anondson]

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

[MNdible]

The article notes that the site has a high water table and contaminated soils that were capped underneath the Sam's Club, both of which will limit options for whatever is redeveloped on the site.

[Anondson]

Yup. Superfund issues all around this area.

[rmc]

Update on the former Sam's Club site from the city council:
"On Sept. 16, council will give final approvals to rezone the site from Commercial to a combination of High-Density Multiple Family Residential and Business Park, enabling the potential for at least 500 new housing units and 100 jobs on the site. The property, including the 150,000-square-foot former store, was recently listed at $12.5M; soil contamination and the site’s high water table will limit what can be built there."
More info: https://www.stlouispark.org/government/ ... ment-study

[Anondson]

https://twitter.com/BusinessMN/status/1 ... 0384217089

[Anondson]

Sams Club to become future HQ of Loffler Co. 400 employees and warehouse.

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

[DanPatchToget]

I noticed they're starting to renovate it. Are there still plans to redevelop around the former Sam's Club? Would be a shame if that location with great pedestrian, bike, and light rail access remains giant surface lots.

[twincitizen]

A couple items for this area:
Oxford & Louisiana Infrastructure Investment planning - roundabout, adding .75 mi of new sidewalks, etc. 2028 construction.

Loffler companies is working with a developer on a housing development on the southern portion of their site abutting the tracks. There doesn't appear to be a city webpage yet, but there's an open house tonight. Here's the text of the city's Facebook/LinkedIn post:

You are invited to share your thoughts about a proprosed redevelopment project on the site located at 3745 Louisiana Ave S in St. Louis Park. Loffler is proposing to build a multi-family housing development with amenities on their property called Louisiana Crossings, and you can give your input at 2 in-person sessions.

Session 1: Overview of concept plan on Tuesday, June 2 from 6 - 7:30 p.m.

Session 2: Brainstorm ideas for public amenities on Tuesday, June 23 from 6 - 7:30 p.m.

Both sessions will be held at Loffler, 3745 Louisiana Ave S. To RSVP or for more information contact Gretchen Nicholls at 612.327.2149 or [email protected].

I'm curious about the adjacent privately-owned building at 3725 Monitor St, which blocks views and mobility from the LRT station's bike-ped underpass that goes below the freight RR tracks here. Ideally, the property owner would be planning to activate that building with an all-day cafe that would attract traffic from the trail and the LRT. But if that's not in the cards, it should be removed to open up the views and bike-ped access between the LRT platform and points north. Illustration by me:

[Anondson]

Both very welcome advancements for the area. I was bothered the Oxford and Louisiana intersection was left out of the Louisiana reconstruction a few years back. Glad it had not been left out for extended years like the stretch of Excelsior between Louisiana and Blake.

And it always felt like the massive expanse of the Sam’s Club parking lot was ripe for development. The big question is how much parking the developers will go for despite being dozens of feet from the future LRT. The site will not permit underground, due to the high water table and underground superfund plume, that’s for sure.

[BikesOnFilm]

A couple items for this area:
I'm curious about the adjacent privately-owned building at 3725 Monitor St, which blocks views and mobility from the LRT station's bike-ped underpass that goes below the freight RR tracks here. Ideally, the property owner would be planning to activate that building with an all-day cafe that would attract traffic from the trail and the LRT. But if that's not in the cards, it should be removed to open up the views and bike-ped access between the LRT platform and points north.

For what it's worth, the new Arrive + Thrive vision for the Louisiana Station Area has a future bikeway dotted line through that property on their map.

[MNdible]

And it always felt like the massive expanse of the Sam’s Club parking lot was ripe for development. The big question is how much parking the developers will go for despite being dozens of feet from the future LRT. The site will not permit underground, due to the high water table and underground superfund plume, that’s for sure.

Yeah, the planning study showing the elimination of almost all of the parking supporting the Loffler HQ (and also Game Face, which is a regional physical therapy center) seems like an unlikely outcome.

[Mdcastle]

A bit of sleuthing failed to turn up what exactly happens at 3725 Monitor Street. Comes back to to "180 Ventures LTD" that their web page has a lot of unintelligable corporate jargon and the local headquarters are a Golden Valley PO Box, but seems they might buy and flip random struggling businesses. I'm sure they'd sell the building if someone made a "make us move" offer, but changing their business plan from "warehousing widgets or whatever they do" to "running a cafe that's cute enough to meet the approval of discrminating urbanists" is not something I forsee. Even if your business is running cafes consideing the lack of much on-site parking and zero visibility from any major road I'm not sure limiting your customer base to whoever happens to be getting on or off the light rail station is enough.

[DanPatchToget]

Kind of interesting (for me anyway) that despite all the changes in that area, the shape of that little building and the curve in the parking lot shows where once upon a time there was a spur track to the creosote plant (now Louisiana Oaks Park).

Maybe after some time and new development in the area there could be a cafe, but I'm not sure it could survive mostly/solely off of people using the trail and train. It would be nice to have cafes or little convenience stores at some of these stations like I've seen in other cities, but I'm not very hopeful the interest is there and ensuring it's done right (as in not a Subway with odd hours at a parking ramp).