The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

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Scott Wood
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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby Scott Wood » August 14th, 2013, 12:35 am

Penfield Lunds expected to open next spring. 100 free parking spaces -- I wonder if they actually mean validated parking, as otherwise enforcing that the spaces be used for customers may be difficult.

http://www.twincities.com/business/ci_2 ... te-upscale

John
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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby John » August 15th, 2013, 10:23 am

Updated rendering from article:
Image

Scottie
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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby Scottie » September 22nd, 2013, 12:49 pm

I took a walk on lunch Friday and got a few shots.

Image
Penfield by lync0167, on Flickr

Image
Penfield by lync0167, on Flickr

Image
Penfield by lync0167, on Flickr

Image
Penfield by lync0167, on Flickr

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby seanrichardryan » September 22nd, 2013, 3:48 pm

It's nice to see the scalped facade will at least get historic looking windows.
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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby gcm » September 23rd, 2013, 5:24 am

Right now the areas that have the butterscotch color panels look terrible due to all the metal joints. If you look at the bottom photo, you can see these joints are everywhere. I wonder if there are any plans to cap these joints to make them blend into the panels. I like the rest of the materials used, but those butterscotch sections are terrible.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby MNdible » September 23rd, 2013, 10:02 am

I'd guess the joints in the butterscotch panels are deliberately like that -- it's a look. You either like it or you don't, but I'd be surprised if they paint them.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby Drizzay » September 27th, 2013, 12:28 pm

You say butterscotch, I say Monkey-shit brown.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby twincitizen » October 23rd, 2013, 8:35 am

Well this ain't good: http://finance-commerce.com/2013/10/ten ... d-project/ (paywall)

I have to say I'm really surprised. This is basically the only new construction apartment building happening in downtown St. Paul, correct? I think there might be one or two conversions of older buildings, but this project just seems like such a slam dunk! Virtually no competition from other buildings (unlike downtown, Uptown, or around campus). Adjacent to St. Paul's CBD, the State Capitol & offices, hospitals, LRT, etc. It just seems like there should be plenty of pent-up demand for this product. Lunds will do gangbusters business, no doubt. Despite the current slow-goings, I am hopeful that this will be fully leased around the time the Green Line starts running.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby MNdible » October 23rd, 2013, 9:33 am

I haven't looked, but I wouldn't be surprised if their rents were out of line for downtown St. Paul. Luxury rents that are commonplace in Minneapolis may seem excessive in St. Paul.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby at40man » October 23rd, 2013, 10:33 am

The city needs to divest itself from this and the Farmers Market Lofts - ASAP. It has no business operating, running, or owning an apartment building. Plus, a private entity could undoubtedly do a better job running this place at a tidy profit.

I do wonder about others my age moving into some of these new apartments in Mpls and Uptown, not to mention the ones in college renting these new places popping up in Dinkytown. Some of my colleagues pay more in rent for a "luxury" apartment in Uptown than I do for my 4 bedroom house built in the mid 90s! I am concerned that my fellow millenials have no issue racking up debt in other areas in order to pay for these places. If I were a renter, there is no way I could justify spending over $1000/mth. :o

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby Wedgeguy » October 23rd, 2013, 11:56 am

I was under the impression that the city had sold the Farmer's Market Lofts because investors had seen how fast that it had leased up. Was it 60%+ before it even was ready for occupancy. THe reason the city was the developer was no one thought it would lease up like it did. Why the final push on the Penfield had less resistance. With Lunds as the retail anchor I see the Penfield doing fine. With proximity to the light rail station I see no problem with it leasing up.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby at40man » October 23rd, 2013, 1:08 pm

I very well could be incorrect about who is the current owner of it - my memory is admittedly a bit fuzzy. Back in 2009, I lived next door, and this was just a pit in the ground. My landlord said it had been a parking lot which was purchased in order to build condominiums and an indoor farmers market. Obviously, the housing market crashed and burned and we were left with a pit in the ground for many years. I think there were some more complications too with the developers and contractors.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby twincitizen » October 23rd, 2013, 1:22 pm

Let's not get too off track here...there might even be a separate topic for the Farmers' Market Lofts buried around here somewhere.

So I read the full F&C article at lunch. 46/254 or 18% of the units are pre-leased. I guess I don't fully buy the whole sky-is-falling tone of this article. There are still 5 weeks to go before the place is open to tenants (Nov. 1). As I said earlier, this building has virtually zero competition. The LRT and Lunds will be up and running in April-May. Did they really expect 85% pre-leased like Mill & Main? The rents mentioned in the article, both extreme high for penthouse and extreme low for studio were under $2/sf. So they are trying to get near Uptown/Downtown Minneapolis rents for a sub-par location (by downtown St. Paul standards even) but it doesn't seem like they're asking for the moon here. There's a quote in the article by a realtor criticizing the location, saying St. Paul is "forcing" a non-"A" location and trying to make it work. Another issue mentioned is that many of the building amenities are far from completion, not the least of which is Lunds.

Must be a slow news day or something...I'd be shocked if this isn't well over 50% leased by April 1, and 100% leased (and sold off) by this time next year. That's probably closer to normal (non-crazy boom) lease rates anyways.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby Wedgeguy » October 23rd, 2013, 1:34 pm

Considering the size of the development, 46 units is not too bad for an incomplete building that's does not yet have the real ability to show off it's amenities. I'd be curious as to how that related to the month before track29, Elan, had opened with.

The F Market Lofts was a much smaller building so if they had 30+ units leased you would be at over 60% before opening. Also with the smaller building g it did not take long for them to lease up as people wanted to get in before they were all filled.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby MNdible » October 23rd, 2013, 1:44 pm

My suspicion, again, is that the Farmer's Market rents being asked were much more in line with the St. Paul market.

Who's renting the big-buck places in Uptown and Downtown? I'd guess there are a lot of young Target employees and their like with a fat paycheck burning a hole in their pocket. They're working and playing hard, so spending a lot of money for a luxury apartment in a location that's convenient for them and that offers amenities that makes their lives easier.

Downtown St. Paul just doesn't strike me as having that many young employees who fall into that market share. It's probably a very nice place to live, and the Lund's and the Green Line will make it even nicer, but just because it's a good place to live doesn't mean you can get $2/sf.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby at40man » October 23rd, 2013, 2:04 pm

I actually just started a new thread about this. I've been helping out in the recruiting and hiring process at the IT consulting agency I work for while I am waiting to start on my next client. We have lured many of those "young Target employees" away, and I know for fact that they are spending over half their post-tax monthly Target salaries to rent these places. And their paychecks are for a lot less than you imagine.

I am concerned when I see luxury complexes such as the Penfield (or anything in Uptown for that matter) popping up like cupcakes and charging as much as they do for frivolities. Just like we overbuilt McMansions, then overbuilt condos, I am concerned we are now overbuilding luxury apartment complexes. But I digress..

I don't think the Penfield will have trouble attracting tenants, but it is in a part of downtown St Paul that doesn't have much to offer, unlike Lowertown so it may be difficult for some people to justify moving there. I think Lund's will help change that dynamic.

Remember that the Penfield was supposed to be a luxury condominium tower until the market tanked :!:

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby Wedgeguy » October 23rd, 2013, 3:19 pm

Just to get a perspective, The Penfield will be at most 6 blocks from Mears Pear. So when you say it is out of the way it really is not. It just had not been redeveloped out that far in that direction. Wacota commons was the last real redevelopment to the north of lowertown. I see the Penfield as a catalyst to just start some more redevelopment east of Cedar and over to Jackson but north of 5th Street. IT will be easy walking distance for lowertown residence to go to Lunds and for the Penfield tenants to visit lowertown establishmenst.

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby garfield » October 24th, 2013, 9:33 am

The Penfield is also directly across the freeway from the State Capital, and a short walk to Regions hospital. I could see this place filling up with higher-paid government workers, lawyers, nurses, and doctors. I think it is definitely going to be different than the 20-something corporate-types that fill up the luxury rentals in Uptown and Downtown Minneapolis, but St. Paul has always had a different blend of residents than Minneapolis.

As far as rents go, we rent my wife's loft in the Produce Exchange building (a block away) for $900 per month, and it is about 600 square feet. So the rents at the Penfield don't seem too out of line...

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby LRV Op Dude » October 24th, 2013, 11:22 am

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Re: The Penfield - (101 10th Street East)

Postby at40man » October 24th, 2013, 12:46 pm

Just to get a perspective, The Penfield will be at most 6 blocks from Mears Pear. So when you say it is out of the way it really is not. It just had not been redeveloped out that far in that direction. Wacota commons was the last real redevelopment to the north of lowertown. I see the Penfield as a catalyst to just start some more redevelopment east of Cedar and over to Jackson but north of 5th Street. IT will be easy walking distance for lowertown residence to go to Lunds and for the Penfield tenants to visit lowertown establishmenst.
Oh, I didn't mean it was out-of-the-way in terms of walking distance, though that particular walk isn't very pretty - that particular stretch of Jackson St that you would inevitably walk down really could use some improvements. It looks like a car sewer. I hope that the Penfield can kick up demand in this quadrant of downtown!

If I were paying those kind of rates, I'd rather be directly in Lowertown rather than next to the freeway. Just my own personal preference.


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