urbanMSP

I have co workers who drive from Brooklyn park and Plymouth and such certain days of the week to go to the Wedge...

Not quite uptown but the building where El Meson was is now being worked on. Another restaurant?

Everyday People and Design Collective have both closed:
http://www.vita.mn/crawl/215712011.html

Social House has expanded into the vacant storefront behind them on Lagoon:
http://www.southwestjournal.com/notes/b ... se-expands

This is great.

"Uptown was getting so congested," said Everyday People co-owner Kitty Van Hofwegen.

Reminds me of Yogi Berra's famous line:

Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.

They already did, a few months ago. It is all blue versus their all red scheme elsewhere in the restaurant.

Not quite uptown but the building where El Meson was is now being worked on. Another restaurant?

Vo's Vietnamese: http://blogs.citypages.com/food/2013/07 ... _space.php

Everyday People was alright. Buffalo Exchange is more or less the same thing, but bigger/better.

Yes! Vo's is/ was the best. I used to eat there weekly. It was in the old Dunkin' Donuts on Broadway in Logan Park, now Cami's Vietnamese or something.

Birdhouse has closed:
http://blogs.citypages.com/food/2013/06 ... oodman.php

Perhaps someday this row of identity crises will be redeveloped into something a bit more logical for their use (I say this without having ever visited one of the building, however.) Have any of you dined in these spaces? I'm curious to know whether the old homes work well as restaurants or not.

I was the head chef of duplex for four years. Old houses make terrible restaurant spaces from both a profit and loss and execution standpoint. In the case of duplex/Birdhouse the kitchen is too small and poorly laid out to accommodate the restaurant when it is full. It was also very hard to execute quality in that kitchen because of limited cooking surfaces and a small amount of holding area for ingredients, also because you had to move at very high speed to compensate for the size of the kichen. At the same time the overhead was higher than normal because the layout wasn't designed to be a restaurant which meant that utilities and cleaning costs were very high given the number of seats. The rent was also very high for the amount of sales you could generate. The result was that in order to make it work financially you had to either be really busy all the time or serve high end food in a kitchen that was not suited for either. This put us in a very tight tactical box, we almost made it work but the financial collapse and subsequent chill in small business lending created too much of a debt overhang for us to get out of. You could fix the space by gutting the entire interior and doing a well conceived build out, but I am not sure why you would do that when there are other, better spaces still available. I loved the patio though, and duplex was a fun job despite how hard it was to make the place go.

I think it is very likely that this building and the one next to it will be redeveloped at some point, probably with retail on the first floor and residential above. Namaste may be a different story because they own their building, it would depend on money and how much they wanted to move.

I disagree. Buffalo Exchange is just a couple racks of plaid and izod. Might as well go to Savers. Everyday People had actual vintage. It's about the buyers, and Everyday People managed to be much better than the national chain. I've been shopping there since they had a spot in Dinkytown, although now that I know their owner prefers parking to neighborhoods I'll stop.

Can't we get an Eddie Bauer for Fri-Sun and Brooks Brothers for Mon-Thurs apparel? COME ON! GET IT TOGETHER UPTOWN!

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Good luck tearing those old houses down. You can't even get and old rundown not architecturally significant house torn down on Colfax. How are you going to get these babies down with ut the neighborhood getting their undies all bunched up.

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Good luck tearing those old houses down. You can't even get and old rundown not architecturally significant house torn down on Colfax. How are you going to get these babies down with ut the neighborhood getting their undies all bunched up.

This is in a very different context than the Colfax project. I think most people agree that density along Hennepin is a good idea. These houses aren't particularly special. There are lots of 'em all over Uptown.

Namaste works quite well as a restaurant for whatever reason. We love eating there.

You say apples to oranges. I see apple to apple. Both are old building that can no longer be economically used. They have out lives their usefulness. The Hennepin houses can't really ever be residential again. The rooming house is no longer a business model. So I don't see any difference other than somebody not wanting someone else to be able to see into their yard!

Apples to apples according to zoning code, which allowed the Colfax plan.

Given it is a hometown retailer I would love to see a CityTarget somewhere along Lake Street in a mixed-use development.

Given it is a hometown retailer I would love to see a CityTarget somewhere along Lake Street in a mixed-use development.

A City Target would work well with Trader Joe's as anchors of a new mixed use project at Nicollet and Lake Street.

That sounds fantastic, but Sears/Kmart will almost certainly be part of the re-imagined Nicollet-Lake.

City Target would be a great fit on the vacant parcel next to Calhoun Square and could be directly connected to the parking ramp there.

P.S. This is post #30,000 on UrbanMSP. Celebrate!!!

That sounds fantastic, but Sears/Kmart will almost certainly be part of the re-imagined Nicollet-Lake.

City Target would be a great fit on the vacant parcel next to Calhoun Square and could be directly connected to the parking ramp there.

P.S. This is post #30,000 on UrbanMSP. Celebrate!!!

I miss the message boards of yore where you could easily make row after row of dancing bananas and the like to celebrate such momentous occasions. Our smilie collection is just so... limited.

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On topic, now, but do people really think the parking garage attached to Calhoun Square has enough parking capacity to satisfy what Target thinks it would need?