urbanMSP

Hennepin County is putting out an RFP for redevelopment of the Upper Post.

Historic Officer Quarters buildings could be reused for a number of things, but it won't be easy or cheap.

Read the full story here: http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_ ... t-historic

It's about time. I remember visiting a few of the buildings back in my urban exploration days (nearly a decade ago). Most of the buildings we explored back in 2004 were in very poor condition. A few had very bad roofing issues and some even had collapsed floors on the inside due to extensive water damage. I can only imagine how much worse things have gotten since then.

On the outside, the buildings are beautiful, but I don't think there's much that can be done to save the interiors. I'll have to dig through some old files to see if I still have pictures of the insides of the buildings.

The State did extensive stabilization work a few years ago which was at least supposed to keep them dry.

Related: Minneapolis should annex this chunk of land, along with the airport. I believe it's the only remaining unincorporated territory in Hennepin County.

To what end? Most of it is untaxable, government owned. I reject having my taxes increased to pay for services to an area of no financial benefit to the city.

I was mostly thinking for sales taxes at the airport. For the airport itself, yeah we wouldn't collect additional property tax revenue but the vast majority of services (fire, police, etc) are already covered anyway. Or am I missing something?

I was mostly thinking for sales taxes at the airport. For the airport itself, yeah we wouldn't collect additional property tax revenue but the vast majority of services (fire, police, etc) are already covered anyway. Or am I missing something?

I think we need to find an expert on property taxes to post here. I'm not sure why everybody assumes that the redevelopment of the Fort Snelling land wouldn't generate any property taxes.

While annexing the Fort Snelling land seems doable, I'm afraid that annexing MSP would not be doable.

I know there had been an effort to incorporate Fort Snelling within the past year or so.

Doesn't the state collect and/or get a chunk of property tax revenue anyway?

I was mostly thinking for sales taxes at the airport. For the airport itself, yeah we wouldn't collect additional property tax revenue but the vast majority of services (fire, police, etc) are already covered anyway. Or am I missing something?

I think we need to find an expert on property taxes to post here. I'm not sure why everybody assumes that the redevelopment of the Fort Snelling land wouldn't generate any property taxes.

While annexing the Fort Snelling land seems doable, I'm afraid that annexing MSP would not be doable.

To be clear, I meant that the airport wouldn't pay property taxes. The Upper Post, if redeveloped privately, would pay them.

Why couldn't we annex the airport? Chicago did it with O'Hare and that looks way sillier on a map than this would.

That initial bit wasn't directed at you, Nick, but I'm serious that we need to get somebody on here that can actually explain property taxes, because I sure can't, and they're a major impact on the area's development pattern.

Remember that Chicago annexed O'Hare in 1956 -- things were a lot different back then. I assume that Minneapolis wouldn't be allowed to annex MSP because MSP wouldn't want to be annexed by them. MSP is effectively its own little city right now, with (as you note) its own fire department, police department, building code officials, etc.

The state would need to approve this, and given recent history at the legislature, I'm not convinced that even a DFL controlled legislature would approve this. To say nothing of the thorny issues regarding airplane noise, Delta, etc.

I'm no expert in property tax but low income housing owned by chartiable groups do pay property taxes. For example, the Common Bond Communities Linden Place Co-Op at 2730 Portland Avenue pays over $21,000 in property tax. Similarly, Volunteers of America's Nicollet Towers at 1350 Nicollet Avenue paid almost $227,000 in tax last year. Now, I don't know if the property tax class rate on low income housing is versus SFH or market rate apartments. Of course, government owned housing (federal housing and Minneapolis Housing Authority property) do not pay tax. Likewise, care facilities like nursing homes are exempt.

Anexing Fort Snelling may or may not be a good idea. The kind of services required by the exempt and federal property, amount of private development, land values, intensity of land use and what type of private development would determine if anexation makes sense for Minneapolis. If private developers can soak up massive amount of federal and state low income housing and historic structure credits and get the vacant properties on the tax rolls, I think it would likely be a good thing for Minneapolis but I can't say for certain.

*I moved this over to suburbs, as it's not in Minneapolis--yet?

Airport: Yeah, that's a good point. And a good example of the competing conservative ideologies "we need to make government more efficient" and "but wouldn't Hitler want to consolidate local governments" clashing. I just mostly wanted the extra sales tax from the eight dollar beers at the mini-Ike's they have

Upper Post: Also a good point. If whoever plans the place has a Heritage Park-type plan where basically the whole development is quasi-parkland, unnecessarily windy roads, and subsidized housing, I wouldn't want it. But who knows what the next couple decades holds, and we could do something a little more productive than surface parking around the Fort Snelling LRT station.

Actually, I think it's state law that MAC airports are technically not part of the city they're in. It's definitely true of MSP...I'm not sure of the others that are typically within municipalities.

For example, the portion of Richfield east of 77 that was annexed for the N-S runway is no longer part of the city of Richfield...it is now MSP/unincorporated.

Legal issues aside, I agree with the intent of Nick's statements-- it would be fantastic if Minneapolis could levy its various local option sales taxes at the airport. That could potentially go a long way to helping with the Vikings/Target Center/Convention Center mathematical clusterwhat we've gotten ourselves into.

On that note, does anyone know what the sales tax rate at MSP is? Perhaps they even have their own local option tax already for airport stuff?

Looks like the Minneapolis VA is moving forward on a $15 million plan to rehab 5 buildings of the Upper Post and convert them into 58 apartment units for homeless veterans. CommonBond of Saint Paul will manage the site, though the buildings won't be sold. Looks like one additional building will be mothballed and another will be demolished since it is beyond repair.

The photo galleries on the Strib article really make me wish they'd fix their image scaling so that pictures don't have jaggies all over...

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/198633951.html

Here's a PDF of the plans

http://www.minneapolis.va.gov/docs/fort ... tation.pdf

Article and video of current developments going on at the UP.

http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy ... reative-ef

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... 1HTrHFzxA/

Ground broken:
http://mn.gov/governor/newsroom/pressre ... 102-131166

Current updates on the upper post:

CommonBond is moving apace with their rehab and expect to be substantially done this fall with the balance done in the spring. No word yet on what will happen with the wood chipping operation that's in front of the stables. It would be nice to move it elsewhere as it tends to fling chips and even whole branches onto nearby roofs.

Tuck pointing is just about done on the headquarters building--they're just waiting on a new shipment of stone to come in. The supplier has sent over two shipments already, but sent poor quality stone both times. They probably figured "hey, it's a government project, so maybe the site manager won't notice or care." Unfortunately for them, the head mason did notice and does care.

The DNR tried to get $4 million in bonding money to redo Taylor Avenue, one of the main roads on the upper post. Unfortunately all they got was $500,000 to put in bike lanes. Bike lanes can't go in until the road is redone as it's basically a cratered gravel road at this point. And there's no point in redoing the road if you don't also do the utilities under the road. And you can't do any substantive redevelopment in the area unless there are utilities. Some are in decent shape, some are undersized, and some are non-existent. We'll have to make another run at it in the next bonding session.

For pictures of the CommonBond/VA project in process as well as historical photos, visit our Facebook pages at Friends of Fort Snelling and Fort Snelling in Photographs. Warning: much time will be wasted if you're a historical or preservation geek.

-Todd
President, Friends of Fort Snelling

Thank you for the update.

Much Thanks!

Perhaps I've missed the thread, and if so please merge this into it, but I'll post here for now. Dominium has been selected to restore the historic Upper Post of Fort Snelling into affordable workforce housing, in what I my opinion is a surprising collaborative agreement between the National Parks Service, the state, and the DNR. This seems like a pretty exciting project!
http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-la ... 318217451/