urbanMSP

It would be interesting to do an origin / destination study to find out where the traffic is coming from. My bet is a lot of it is traffic from outside of the area that's heading to point southeast that's cutting through on surface streets because they Lowry Tunnel and I-394 are such disasters at rush hour.

I do like the one-ways, when I drive to go to Lake Calhoun I tend to drive through Uptown one direction and 100 the other direction just for variety, but if they were two-ways I'd probably just stay out.

From an engineering standpoint, another factor is you'd probably have to have some kind of signal where Lake and Lagoon meet, which would tend to negate any advantage from dispersing the right turns.

I think you could just have one westbound lane from Lake, and two westbound lanes from Lagoon, that merge at Calhoun Pkwy. No need for Lagoon to have eastbound traffic, so it would actually not require an additional signal.

Quite a lot of steel has risen on the site. I', starting to wonder how they're going to get that boom crane out of the basement at this rate.

Wow, this has grown significantly since the last time I went by it. I'm excited about this project. The large, sweeping clear glass facade at the street level is going to contribute wonderfully to the pedestrian experience of Uptown.

yes i agree...vincent james architects do great work. this is going to really class up that corner.

Any word on when the sidewalk and turn lane will be re-opened?

Any word on when the sidewalk and turn lane will be re-opened?

I'd say late summer or fall once all the steel is up and the windows are in. Where they don't have to have machinery running along side the building.

I was told by Meg Tuthill's office that the lane and sidewalk will be closed all through the winter. Bummer.

From the Uptown Cafeteria rooftop.

IMG_3623 by UrbanMSP, on Flickr

I like the low, horizontal profile of this building in relationship to The Uptown Theater. It helps maintain the theater as a very visible landmark of the neighborhood. This is going to be an awesome building.

Haven't seen any new pictures of this one, so when I was in Uptown last weekend I took one

The new library may be nice, but it's actually a shame that they tore down the old one. A Ralph Rapson oddity (originally designed as a bank by the way) whose loss will be lamented twenty years from now. In a landscape full of sameness, we should be doing more to preserve uniqueness wherever it exists, especially when it belongs to our only renowned modernist practitioner.

You're thinking of the SE Library, which was the a State Capital Credit Union designed by Rapson.

The old library had to go. In addition to the numerous mechanical and moisture issues discussed _ad_nauseum_, the old building had really poor street presence. In spite of the big L-I-B-R-A-R-Y letters, when walking by one would not realize it was a library. The letters were up on the raised roof/plaza and were placed such that one wouldn't even know they spelled a word, much less what the word was.

I really wish we could construct a tunnel from the new building to the old Walker library and use the old building as study/social space. It would have a great atmosphere. I used to love studying in old libraries.

Although it doesn't yet have any finishings on the exterior, it appears that almost all of the mass is in place. It felt good to walk past, and I think that the finished structure is going to do a fantastic job of engaging with the street.

Have any actual plans been announced for the Top of the Mall yet? It's being used as staging for construction and is in pretty bad shape now. I thought I heard there were plans to re-do it, but I haven't heard anything other than that.

There are plans to redo it but I believe the Walker project just will reseed the lot to bring it back to preconstruction conditions

The new library makes a fantastic two way connection between the library itself and the surrounding community. The clear glass walled street level along Hennepin reinforces this neighborhood's pedestrian friendly character and reputation. A great addition to Uptown.

Windows are going in today.