urbanMSP

so edgy

so snarky n' flippant

If you are waiting for the 2 story apartment buildings to come back into vogue. I think the economics of anything smaller than a 4 story will never come back again.

Can you show me on the doll where the person who can afford rent in new luxury construction touched you?

Guess I touched a nerve. Kind of surprised to get pushback from Nick, because I was sort of going off of his article (https://streets.mn/2015/06/11/minneapoli ... r-transit/) about the "real and tangible step[s] we could take to improve the affordability of housing" vis-à-vis non-luxury developments.

Meanwhile, when I say "smaller-scale", I don't really mean shorter or even less dense. What I mean is, to quote another streets.mn writer, (https://streets.mn/2014/04/11/friday-photo-scale/), "It seems to me that what remains of the initial fine scale of development throughout the city plays a major role in what’s presently attractive about it." I agree with that sentiment, don't you?

It's often not great to pepper your advocacy with insults!

I dunno, I thought beige_box's last post on the previous page was beautifully snarkified. I certainly read it as thick sarcasm far more than insult.

Some interesting points:
1: 50 under market price point units, Beige box you can now get in line for one of those as they will have space at your price point if you qualify!
2: That pesky 3,000 sf of retail raises its head again. but no mention of what it could be.
3: This site is neatly 2 acres, so similar to the MAP site in Elliot Park. Probably the same type of design will be used for both. Building/s surrounding a courtyard. All built over the parking garages like the apartment and condos complexes along the greenway.

so snarky n' flippant

Nick in a nutshell.

I dunno, I thought beige_box's last post on the previous page was beautifully snarkified. I certainly read it as thick sarcasm far more than insult.

Me too.

I dunno, I thought beige_box's last post on the previous page was beautifully snarkified. I certainly read it as thick sarcasm far more than insult.

Me too.

Sarcastic? Ehh... I mean, in our era of post-irony, it can be hard even for me to tell. I was trying to use some humor, for sure, but I also very much do find the sort of person who's drawn by "resort-style" built-in amenities to be... hard to sympathize with, let's say.

Moreover, I absolutely have concerns about what these sorts of projects do for affordability (I suspect they do nothing; I don't buy the argument that luxury apartments do much to offset demand for existing housing stock), as well as their long-term viability. What happens to the pool and the pet grooming station during the next economic downturn? Does the building get retrofitted to be more affordable, or does it just get boarded up and/or razed?

But yes, I do recognize that this particular project will have affordable units, so perhaps this isn't the thread to have that debate.

I recently moved out of an affordable building (built as luxury 40 years ago but much less so now) that had a pool. It doesn't take a ton of money to keep a pool full of whatever and not full of algae or whatever can grow in pools. You don't need to "retrofit" a building to lower rent(or, more likely, increase rent more slowly than other buildings, even in my crappy apartment the rent still crept slowly upward), you just have to not take as good a care of it. It's easy, when the $2000 stainless steel fridge breaks down in 10 years, you get a plain white one. When the floors need to be replaced you use cheaper laminate. Granite countertops get replaced with formica, etc etc. It's quite easy for a building to filter down, especially if it's been around long enough to pay off the initial construction debt.

Housing at this price point fills up because there are people that can and do pay the rent. If you don't build it, those people don't just dissapear, they rent somewhere else. Maybe they pay less rent somewhere else, maybe they jack up the rent in that place, but that filters down to where people can't afford a home. If there isn't enough housing supply, it's not the rich that suffer, it's the poor.

I'm pretty sure most of the apartment buildings in Minneapolis were, at one point or another, pretty "luxury." I was surprised to learn a couple weeks ago that Walter Liggett, editor of a fairly successful newspaper in the 30s, lived with his family (and was gunned down behind) what is now one of the cheaper buildings in Stevens Square.

I'm kinda in a similar situation as pre-move FMP. My apartment complex was built as luxury apartments, and now commands more mid-range rents, but the pool still works just fine. I'd imagine the pet grooming station has even lower maintenance costs, so that'll probably stick around too.

My building also had some kind of communal party room (it had a kitchen and a bathroom and an open area) which is now just a storage area and break room for the few staff in the building. So anything is possible!

I'll concede the point on pools but I think Stevens Square shows exactly what I'm talking about. Those are smaller-scale buildings whose original high-end status derived from how ornate and precise the construction was, not how many amenities were crammed into them or how tackily they evoked a row of smaller buildings, or whatever.

But really we shouldn't want to see new high-end at all! Remember the social forces that turned Stevens Square cheap were the same ones that flattened other neighborhoods just like it with highways: racism, corrupt politicians, corrupt lending institutions, contempt for the poor, etc. The original, larger Stevens Square was designed to be exclusive, and when they couldn't keep it that way, they drove bulldozers through it.

That second paragraph contains a couple of truly astonishing leaps of logic.

They opened a Twitter feed:
@2700University

With how awesome it was it's too bad big SAINT PAUL sign was taken out of the new plan. Maybe if the city smiles real nice and finds a few dollars sitting around it can magically reappear.