urbanMSP

For reference, I think these 23 blocks cover about 100 acres in downtown Minneapolis:

Less extreme but maybe more tellingly, that same area would encompass the area from Dunlap to Chatsworth and Summit to Osceola in St. Paul. That's easily dozens of shops, cafes, restaurants, banks and medical offices along a wonderful stretch of Grand Avenue, a school, a gas station, apartments and well over a hundred very nice single family homes (including plenty with lots of space and nice yards, for instance pretty much everything on Lincoln). And almost nothing beyond 2 floors.

I'm not sure why I bother commenting on this site sometimes... It always turns into the same thing. If it's not uber dense (ie the examples above. downtown mpls or the very best parts cherry picked of st paul) then it is crap. Oh yeah, and it should always be taller. At least 60 floors.

To be fair, if this was adjacent to one of the LRT extension routes, then I would agree that it needs to be a more dense development. It's not so... I'll just say again that I am glad this is being redeveloped and used. Maybe down the road they can add more small retail to the park lots or something else that we can't even imagine right now.

Southdale has had acres of parking. If the picking of a corner of a distant lot for apartments is a sign of a future trend in the Southdale district (as the Southdale-area Byerly's reconstruction sort of did), then the expanses of parking in this certainly has something to emulate. Possibly consider the parking lots here a sort of land bank set aside for a less-then-urban use presently (getting it back on the taxpaying rolls) but can be repurposed for density when the demand arises Southdale-like.

To be fair, if this was adjacent to one of the LRT extension routes, then I would agree that it needs to be a more dense development.

That's the thing, it really should have been. The gateway corridor was practically gifting woodbury a chance to do something better with this site. But no, the city kicked the alignment across the freeway and wanted a parking lot instead. No wonder these people elected Michele Bachmann.

I'm not sure why I bother commenting on this site sometimes... It always turns into the same thing. If it's not uber dense (ie the examples above. downtown mpls or the very best parts cherry picked of st paul) then it is crap. Oh yeah, and it should always be taller. At least 60 floors.

You haven't learned yet? This isn't the place to discuss the actual proposals or track the current construction of projects. Its more to just bitch and complain about how wrong they're doing everything.

As far as this development goes I guess it could be worse. What I really would liked to have seen is if they chose 3C on SWLRT then built a Midtown LRT and continued it through St Paul, tunneling under downtown to connect to a LRT down the Gateway out to this site where they could have used the money we wasted on the Vikings stadium to instead build a dense complex of 20-30 story mixed use apartments with 500,000 sq ft of retail and no parking spaces. Then they could have put a cap over I-94 and turned it into a park with outdoor meeting spaces and a public amphitheater where during the summer months they could host Shakespeare in the Park and small local indie bands could play. But of course instead we get some suburban style development out in the fringes of the suburbs. Sometimes I think these developers care more about making an actual profit then they do about urbanist fantasies. I just don't get it.

I think the consensus on the site is that everyone thinks everyone else is terrible, but not all of them are right.

Hazerz gonna hate, Woodbury gonna Woodbury.

As long as I'm not paying in some way for this sprawltopia, they can go along and do whatever the hell they want. But this CO2 intensive use does affect me, because we all live on the same planet.

At least we're not planning on spending half a billion dollars running some form of high amenity transit to this transit hostile built enviroment. Oh wait we are doing that? Crud.

I actually went to dinner with a friend of my wife's and some of the friends of the friend, and they were talking about how great Woodbury is, but as I listened to them discuss it while I eat my downright bizarre tasting meal at Green Mill in Shoreview, I couldn't for the life of figure out what the appeal was. They were discussing a life that sent them to 3rd ring suburbs in all corners of the metro, and I don't care how cheap a movie is in Inver Grove Heights is, even if my time was worth literally nothing I don't think it would make sense to spend half my life in the car to go to a movie.

I have a few friends that grew up in Woodbury and they'd never go back in a million years. Shoot Woodbury into the sun I guess. I'm not sure what appeal it has outside large homes.

And, you know, I generally agree with your feelings re: Woodbury, but do you really think that posting that is a good idea?

It's pretty tounge and cheek, but there's no way for anybody to know that on the internet, so here I'll do some sincere non snarky commentary.

I don't want to live in Woodbury, and that's my choice, and nobody's forcing me to live in Woodbury. Apparently some people like Woodbury enough to live there, and more power to them. But this is an Urban forum (it has Urban in the name) and you can take that to mean whatever you want (is it about Urbanism? Urban development? Development of any kind?). But I'm sure in a Venn Diagram of people that are passionate about "Urbanism" and an "Urban form" that would qualify as "Urbansim" in one circle, and people that love Woodbury in the other circle, I doubt there's very much overlap. And really no matter what your interest in this forum takes, it's likely that your interests do not align very well with the built environment interests of someone that lives in Woodbury.

So maybe there's somebody in Woodbury that loves this becase, well, whatever (I almost typed something snarky here, this is hard!) but my guess is that person probably doesn't post here. Myself and other people that prefer an Urban lifestyle find Woodbury kind of awful, but that's really a personal choice more than anything. So from an urban standpoint this is pretty bad, but also this is Woodbury and a 6 story megablock mixed use project with 2 stories of underground parking, a story of concrete with retail on the main floor, and six floors of stick on top would be kind of weird and out of place.

I'm of the opinion that a place like Woodbury is financially unproductive and if we ever realign our society to properly pass the costs of a CO2 intensive lifestyle onto the people living that lifestyle, then a place like Woodbury is just going to be so expensive it hurts.

I just get tired of the us vs. them mentality. And posts like Peter's only exacerbate that problem. People are going to choose to live different places regardless, for many different reasons, there's nothing we can do about that. Honestly what's proposed at this site isn't that great, it could definitely be a lot better. However, it's not like this is happening on prime downtown real estate so I just don't understand all the hostility towards the developer, the city government, and certainly not towards the people of Woodbury. We could post every Pulte housing development in the metro and bash it for its poor urban form and perpetuating sprawl, but that's not actually going to change anything. Personally with a site filled with so many passionate urbanists I'd love to see us all get together and clean up a park, or paint a fence, clean graffiti, plant trees. Anything but continuously bashing developments we have no control over! Then we could actually hopefully bring about real change and change peoples perceptions of the city. Though this is the wrong thread so I digress...

Suburbanism is in many ways an escape from the city and all its perceived ills, so while there is an "us vs them" mentality, the suburbs started it :p

This is a suburban development, I don't actually have much of anything to say about it because it is what it is.

If you want to come here to talk about what's getting built and see pictures, regardless of where it is, then this will be a useful thread. But I'm not really sure what the "best case" scenario would be here from an Urbanism standpoint. Even if the Gateway corridor served this project, would anyone want to live an Urban lifestyle in Woodbury? My guess is people are moving to Woodbury to escape that.

That wasn't my point. My point is we have a huge collection of people with similar urban values yet we waste it on bickering and fantasy. None of which is necessarily bad, but we have the capability to make real change. We can get involved in community projects, write letters to the editor, endorse and work with pro transit and smart growth political candidates, attend planning meetings. If you're so concerned about the suburbs and sprawl then we should be doing something about it other then bitching about it on a website filled with alot of people who mostly already agree. Regardless of who started the us vs them mentality, continuing it is not going to get people to change their way of life. Id love to see us get together and develop short term achievable goals and get out in the community and make a difference. Id also love for a mod to split this off from this thread <3

I think if you read more widely in the forum you'll find that many of us, even those of us who think this development is without any merit at all, DO attend meetings, write letters, endorse candidates, and all the rest. Many of us, in fact, can multitask and complain about how abysmal this parking lot masquerading as "city life" is IN BETWEEN sitting on planning committees and talking with our city council members.

I'm not sure why I bother commenting on this site sometimes... It always turns into the same thing. If it's not uber dense (ie the examples above. downtown mpls or the very best parts cherry picked of st paul) then it is crap. Oh yeah, and it should always be taller. At least 60 floors.

If Grand and Lexington is your idea of "uber dense", then...wow. I mean, I thought I was being generous in including an area that has almost nothing over two or three floors and plenty of large lots. Even some off-street surface parking. Not exactly central Istanbul.

Well then nevermind. I'll give up any hope of trying to get some organized community group together. But yes thank you I'm very well aware of the many roles people play in the community who are on this forum, I never once said no one was doing anything. I just thought a concentrated effort would be a cool idea and could help raise the profile of many urban issues as well as make a positive impact on the community.

Well then nevermind. I'll give up any hope of trying to get some organized community group together. But yes thank you I'm very well aware of the many roles people play in the community who are on this forum, I never once said no one was doing anything. I just thought a concentrated effort would be a cool idea and could help raise the profile of many urban issues as well as make a positive impact on the community.

Again, read more. People organized to attend meetings and write emails in, for instance, the recent Dinkytown flare-ups. It happens.

I don't know why you're so offended, but again I never said any of that stuff didn't happen. What I was saying was it would be great to get together as an outside group and do even more, such as community improvement projects and things of that nature, maybe take it one step further and become a group that has name recognition outside of this community. But don't worry I've learned my lesson and I'm done. Im out, so thanks for fighting the good fight on the Planning Committee Snelbian. It was stupid of me to suggest we could do more.

Woodbury is a suburb.

Being a suburb and building suburban development are correlated, but not firmly tied. "Suburb" explains economic ties to a larger city. "Suburbanism" explains a type of land use.

I'd venture to guess that all that sea of parking is already there from the State Farm Days. They are just filling in where they had space so that they would not have to fork over money to rebuild parking.