Hopkins

[grant1simons2]

The amount of development going on along the Green Line corridor is kinda nuts and hard to keep track of.

[Anondson]

Just on the edge outside the 1/4 radius to the Downtown Hopkins station, one block off Mainstreet, is this proposal to replace to houses on 11th Ave S, across from city hall.

36 units of housing, 36 units of parking.

Because it is feet outside the 1/4 radius, it ends up just higher than the density allowed by city zoning. Seems an easy thing to allow.

But it is also closer to the property line along 11th Ave. than zoning allow. I think I read 7.5 feet max in this zone, and the building is 5 feet.

I love this. But this intersection is stupidly designed for driver speed and convenience. Pedestrian bump outs are highly desired here, honestly.

In my fantasy designed intersection, there should just be one lane going southbound at 1st St, not two. And the rightmost northbound lane should be a right turn only with just one lane going through northbound.



I hear complaints about Missing Middle when I attend meetings, and this is straight up on target.

[Anondson]

Really dislike that the Knollwood North proposal does not have an entrance on either Blake nor Lake. Gross.

I hope the city pushes back hard on that.




[edit] Apparently the owner wants to make the Knollwood North “luxury” apartments, whatever that really means. It’ll have nice access to view of the creek and physical access to the trail.

But the owner also said the remaining buildings have reached their useful age (50+ years) and desires to upgrade the affordable apartments in Knollwood East and West.

This sounds like losing existing naturally occurring units near the Blake station area.

In the past year there have been two shootings in these apartments and it has sounded like the owners have been nearly absentee in their responsiveness to existing tenants. They may have been biding their time to upgrade old affordable units as demand kicks in for market rate and higher.

It will be interesting if West Side becomes a point of turning over affordable units for market rate redevelopment in the future.

[Anondson]

The city council heard the concept plan for the 11th Ave proposal, replacing two single family houses with 36 units/36 parking spaces.

I was surprised but the council basically pointed out that the zoning basically allows this. In fact allows up to 10 stories here, 2 stories minimum. They were favorable towards extending the density allowance for proximity to the LRT station.

The applicant said this was his very first development, though the architect has done this a lot. The applicant said that it had been nearly impossible to get builders to return his calls because this size is below what they want to do. He also said financing has been a struggle because banks want much bigger sizes.

But the council made it known they were happy to see a missing middle show up a block from downtown.

Besides this being the first development this applicant has done before, I hope he has good mentoring and I look forward to this coming to pass!

[Korh]

https://www.facebook.com/10006380919227 ... 877053347/
The depot will close down effective April 2nd.

Hopefully they'll find a use for it and leave it abandon or worse, demolished it.

[Anondson]

I can’t imagine demolition. I seemed to recall it is on a historic registry and that was a major factor in the design of the extra long LRT bridge over Excelsior Blvd requiring the bridge to touch down where it does so construction would not impact the historic building.

I admit, I once would walk over twice a week but with the eternal sidewalk closures on Excelsior between where I live and The Depot I have been visiting maybe once a month during winter. Can’t imagine I would have saved them though. Makes me hopeful a coffee place opens at the Trilogy development now.

[Multimodal]

Does Hopkins have any plans to build more streets like the bikeway from Mainstreet to the LRT station?

[Anondson]

Does Hopkins have any plans to build more streets like the bikeway from Mainstreet to the LRT station?

Not exactly that amazing.

At the Blake Road station, there will be a street connector linking Pierce to Blake passing by the station. It is pretty car-focused. The Trilogy development at Blake/Excelsior running from the station between the Hallon buildings is a very narrowed street.

At 325 Blake (the Cold Storage site) a new street linking 2nd to Lake Street will run through the site that was planned to be designed for very slow driving speeds but separated multi use trails will run through the site linking the Cedar Lake Trail along the creek to Cottageville Park. 325 Blake will also have a few pedestrian-only alleys.

At Shady Oak Station, 17th Ave is being built to connect to the new station and K-Tel Dr. This new connection will have a cycle track from Excelsior Blvd to the station. Nothing really exists along this extension because it’s an old warehouse. The comp plan for the Shady Oak Station guides for development that up to the sidewalks and cycle track.

[Korh]

Have they finalized plans for the new bike trail/lane on 17th from excelsior to hw7? Won't be another 8th ave but assuming they didn't choose the painted lanes that might be ambitious.
Still say Hopkins could use a better trail along excelsior blvd (yes I know we have the cedar lake but it's good to have redundancies) since there's only a tiny bit on the north side between 9th and 5th, and the bit on the south between 11th and shady oak has seen better days.

[Anondson]

Have they finalized plans for the new bike trail/lane on 17th from excelsior to hw7? Won't be another 8th ave but assuming they didn't choose the painted lanes that might be ambitious.
Still say Hopkins could use a better trail along excelsior blvd (yes I know we have the cedar lake but it's good to have redundancies) since there's only a tiny bit on the north side between 9th and 5th, and the bit on the south between 11th and shady oak has seen better days.

The plans for 17th through, last I heard from staff, was the painted bike lanes option was ruled out. Too many voices were heard that the painted lanes option had too many unsafe points. (I confess to dropping about 40 pins on the interactive map about each point the bike lanes were unsafe or just worse)

The choice between multi use trail on both sides, vs two-way cycle track on one plus sidewalks on both, has not been decided.

I could like either.

[Anondson]

I noticed MNDOT’s project for Excelsior and 169 says it will eliminate free right turns. I wonder if this will be all four or just some.

As long as the right turn from southbound 169 to westbound Excelsior is eliminated, it will be a great change. Drivers coming off 169 going west are so often still hitting freeway speeds when they enter Excelsior.

Without seeing any detailed plans, I’m skeptical about the right turn from westbound Excelsior to northbound 169 going away because that has worked as a decent bus stop location.

I couldn’t locate any detailed plans for confirming the geometries of the free right hand eliminations. But it’s not like a MNDOT engineer would ever listen to a local person’s nitpick experiences.

https://dot.state.mn.us/metro/projects/ ... index.html

The sidewalk passing under 169 is an inhuman experience but has sometimes been the only pedestrian route when the trail was closed for construction. I hope it comes out improved.

[Korh]

Yeah the southbound 169 to westbound Excelsior is annoying since half the drivers keep going at highway speeds on to excelsior, and the other half will come to a complete stop and almost case a few fender benders cause that right hand turn can seem a bit sharp. If I'm coming home and don't have someone on my ass I've gotten pretty good at timing when I can cut the ignition and fully coast at the right speed limit down the ramp (with my car I can fully let off the gas just about before crossing over 2nd st.)

Dream is still to have a tunnel under excelsior at the northbound entrance/exit but that's probably unlikely, not sure which side of excelsior would bet better to see sidewalk improvements, since south side on the side where the trail is wouldn't have any crossings unless three rivers keeps the depot parking lot as a trail parking area, northside would have potential conflicts points but could fill a small but annoying gab between downtown Hopkins and the cedarlake trails because currently you have to cross excelsior twice, or hike down to washington.

[Mdcastle]

I saw the actual construction plans when they were still advertised for bids and FWIW my recollection is that all the free right turns were removed.

There was a similar project at Fairview and 36 last year. On that one they kept one of the free rights, EB to NB, due to concerns during peak holiday shopping times traffic heading to the mall area would otherwise back up onto the mainline. They installed a "no turn on red" blankout sign if there's an active ped call.

[Anondson]

Monte, do you recall the fate of the bus stop on the northeast corner?

[Mdcastle]

No. My only recollections are all the free right turns will be removed on the west side and I don't have any recollection of any remaining on the east side.

[Anondson]

Two of the three buildings at Excelsior Crossing are being foreclosed on because the lender says the landlord has missed payments back in January. Even suburban offices have struggles. Not just the CBD. In this case though US Bank’s home mortgage units were being consolidated in this office, too!

May just be the landlord having their own problems, not these buildings.

The other Excelsior Crossing building is owned by a different landlord and therefore not part of the suit.

I’d include the bizjournals link but for some reason when I post links now the forum garbles it.

[Silophant]

Here's the link!

Works for me if I manually do the tags. Interesting.

[Anondson]

Hopkins city council considers (again) requests for proposals for a batch of tiny downtown lots.

https://finance-commerce.com/2024/09/ho ... own-sites/

[Korh]

At this point, I'd be fine turning one of those tiny lots between 5th and 6th into a greenspace/park for the apartment residents since that's what there being used for occasionally.
As for the old metro transit park and ride, never gonna happen but it be cool if they tried something like pitman grove
For those who don't know, it's a small little suburb in NJ that is an interesting area little area of small single family homes that was built with lots of around 1000 sqft connected to each other via sidewalks instead of normal streets so something like the empty park and ride lot could fit a dozen or more houses

[twincitizen]

Here's the RPF packet for the city-owned properties: https://www.hopkinsmn.com/DocumentCente ... PDF?bidId=