St. Louis Park - General Topics

[sdho]

The wide shoulders are for bicycling and, occasionally, stalled cars. It's also substandard width for parking (but they could make it standard width by narrowing the center turn lane by 1' and distributing the 6" to the shoulders). Parking is allowed on Sundays, which Hennepin County was OK with -- mainly to accommodate a church on Nicollet that has almost no off-street parking.

It's a tough balance, as we begin to realize we have more roadway than we need, how we distribute it to cyclists, moving cars, and parked cars. I think City of Minneapolis tends to err a little too hard toward not disturbing on-street parking at all (like the 36th St gap between Bryant and Dupont). Then again, I think some on-street parking would benefit Richfield's major streets.

City staff did indicate that the current situation on Nicollet is not permanent. It's slated for reconstruction in 2018-19, at such time they may explore adding parking. However, on nearby Portland, they chose to instead narrow the roadway and keep the center turn lane. The recipe for on-street parking is better on Nicollet, though -- more alley-served blocks, and not 100% residential.

[mattaudio]

Cue the mattaudio interchange concept, visualized by mister.shoes....

[mister.shoes]

Whatever are you talking about?

[Sara Bergen]

Minnetonka Blvd between 100 and France is a four lane nightmare for pedestrians and bikers. Rather than routing additional traffic I would love to see a 4 to 3 lane conversion and then widen the sidewalks and the biking "shoulder" which now is about two feet wide. The most recent City doc I read for the Dec. 8th council study session said that traffic on mnkt blvd is 14,900 cars per day. I have read (here probably, likely one of Bill Ls articles) that 4 to 3 conversions can work on traffic volumes up to 20,000 cpd. Incidentally, the 12/8 council memo seemed to not favor grade separation at beltline. I did not attend the study session and the minutes are not posted yet: http://www.stlouispark.org/webfiles/fil ... 2_08cs.pdf

I have favored grade separation but after looking at the renderings I am less enthusiastic about it.

[Anondson]

Yeah, that stretch of Minnetonka Blvd is a death road., perfect for a 4-3 conversion. I would wager the city, consultants, and DOT "forecast" something like 20,000 cars in twenty years as reason a road diet here is resisted. I confronted the consultants about Blake Road's coming redesign, currently also in the just-under-15,000 amount about their forecast for 19,000+ cars in twenty years. The response kept coming back, "the models show it", as they waved a a map of the near area.

[Anondson]

Parkdales under contract to be sold. Final price not announced.

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/b ... -sold.html

[RailBaronYarr]

I think I've said this before, but it seems like many streets in Mpls/StP and 1st ring suburbs have a ROW that is just too narrow to really have a "complete street" (or even a multi-way boulevard on some major thoroughfares that are also commercial strips, like Lyndale, Hennepin, etc), but too wide to be a really intimate place that caters more to peds/cyclists than cars (but allows them) while having commercial frontage. Fitting it all in - parking on both sides, quality sidewalk spaces, quality bike infra, driving lanes (even "substandard" widths more like 10' than 10.5-11'), and turn lanes simply cannot fit, and we're not even talking about dedicated transit lanes.

I think there needs to be a compromise in some cases. It'd sure be great to have parking on both sides, but maybe the street would be better with a 2-way cycle track on one side instead (even if I prefer one-ways on each side, particularly at intersections), etc. The 36th StW gap was more because of driveway concerns than parking, but that highlights a failure of design in allowing those access points in the first place.

[twincitizen]

St. Louis Park and Hennepin County really need to figure out what the F they're going to do with CR-25 here. My dream would've been to simply terminate the highway at Hwy. 100, forcing all Hwy 7 traffic to go either north or south on 100, meaning they could use Mtka Blvd or Excelsior to continue eastward. That's probably too extreme/unrealistic, and the actual vision is more like converting CR-25 to a slower, narrower street without all the frontage road wastes of space. Ideally, the "new" CR-25 would just take the southern frontage road and upgrade that to something useable, then tear out the existing CR-25 and northern frontage road, filling in the street grid and developing the empty space. How you merge that new smaller road with Lake St is the big question, and I really don't think they should approve this development until they answer it.

Cue the mattaudio interchange concept, visualized by mister.shoes....

Whatever are you talking about?

Parking restrictions coming to Ottawa Ave due to traffic increase due to Hwy 100 / 7 construction: http://www.stlouispark.org/webfiles/fil ... notice.pdf

One idea of mine would be to make these parking restrictions permanent, putting a roundabout at Cr-25/Ottawa and upgrading Ottawa to a higher-volume street. East of Ottawa, CR-25 would continue in a very downsized form, basically as the present-day southern frontage road. This downscaled CR-25 could have additional roundabouts going eastward, eventually curving north at Joppa or Inglewood, connecting to a roundabout intersection with Mtka Blvd.

Mr. Shoes, I'll take a mock-up of that idea please

[Anondson]

West End sold for $117MM.

http://m.bizjournals.com/twincities/new ... 843&r=full

[bapster2006]

Rumor mill in town says that the American Legion will be moving from 36th St to the Masonic lodge on Walker St about a half mile to the west. The Legion property is very valuable and desirable now as you can imagine.

[Anondson]

The Legion property was shortly considered for the city to build a community center on it. But the value is high even if LRT doesn't happen. I hope the city considers reducing 36th between the TH 100 ramp and Wooddale from 4/5 to 3 lanes. Last year a pedestrian was killed trying to cross right in front of the Legion.

[sdho]

The Legion property was shortly considered for the city to build a community center on it. But the value is high even if LRT doesn't happen. I hope the city considers reducing 36th between the TH 100 ramp and Wooddale from 4/5 to 3 lanes. Last year a pedestrian was killed trying to cross right in front of the Legion.

Seems like that whole network of streets -- Wooddale, 36th, Park Center Blvd, Monterey, and Beltline could all go down to 2/3 lanes from 4/5. Looks like the absolute busiest is between the Target ramp and Park Center Blvd, and even that could probably cope with 3 lanes just fine. Beltline I guess might also need double up near the CSAH 25 intersection for queuing space. But as it is today, these ugly and dangerous stroads really mar an otherwise beautiful, mixed-use neighborhood.

[bapster2006]

Many buildings are going up.

Elliot Park apartments St Louis Park 2-13-15 by bapster2006, on Flickr

[maxbaby]

Isn't it "Eliot"?

[bapster2006]

You are right!

[seanrichardryan]

If a mod fixes it, they'll be room for a 'k'

[Anondson]

Hopkins and SLP might be talking a land swap, adjusting borders, in order to facilitate Japs-Olson expansion.

http://sailor.mnsun.com/2015/02/17/st-l ... expansion/

In a way, this area has some amazingly crazy border zigzagging, I hope it goes through. But a 200,000 sq. ft. expansion is a heck of a build out.

[acs]

^That's an interesting point of comparison to how Minneapolis treats its businesses:

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/m ... trail.html

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/comm ... 95351.html

[twincitizen]

If a land swap is such a simple proposition, why aren't SLP and Golden Valley talking about doing that for the future West End expansion? That proposal includes an apartment building that would literally be on both sides of the city boundary. It made no sense to me why St. Louis Park couldn't just absorb the remaining GV property in that quadrant and trade them something along 394 further west.

Anondson, you should send an inquiry to SLP's planners and/or your councilperson about that!

[Silophant]

[quote=Strib Commentary]When was the last time a major business said that it not only wants to keep its headquarters in a central city, but also expand to its presence?[/quote]

Wells Fargo and Xcel Energy are the two that come most readily to mind with construction starting in the past year, but there's tons of examples.