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Seven Corners Hotel & Student Housing [cancelled]
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 11:23 am
by schmitzm03
Has the Mortenson proposal for a 30 story hotel and 12 story student housing development in the Seven Corners area of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood been discussed anywhere? I couldn't find anything here, but in snooping around the city's environmental review website, I found an EAW from late fall early winter 2019. Here it is:
http://www.minneapolismn.gov/cped/planning/WCMSP-221092
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 11:25 am
by Anondson
Sounds like a good portion of the block too.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 11:38 am
by bubzki2
Oof, that's a lot of small scale parcels lost for one mega project. Would be much better if they integrated at least the end buildings into it.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 11:43 am
by LakeCharles
The massing from the plan.
The minimum parking requirement is 381, they are proposing 300.
Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 11:53 am
by Anondson
Whoa. Lotta mass. Student housing low enough to keep skyline views.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 11:55 am
by lordmoke
Yiiiiikes.
If there's not a way to make this project happen on a space that's already mostly surface lot without preserving at least some of the existing small-scale buildings, it's not worth building.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 12:03 pm
by twincitizen
Remove the 35W ramps at Washington and build some of this on the reclaimed land instead. That would at least save the buildings on the SE end of the block. My god, at a bare minimum save the Bullwinkles building at the corner!! It's 3 stories...that has to be worth something.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 12:28 pm
by SurlyLHT
Remove the 35W ramps at Washington and build some of this on the reclaimed land instead. That would at least save the buildings on the SE end of the block. My god, at a bare minimum save the Bullwinkles building at the corner!! It's 3 stories...that has to be worth something.
It would be really easy to remove the 3rd Street Ramp and just have it go from trench to 3rd st itself (Or is the Washington?) This would free up space for a building fronting 3rd St or Cedar Ave
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 12:31 pm
by alexschief
Not great to lose the small-scale parcels, but if the building includes a lot of small retail spaces, it'll be fine.
Bigger issue:
Air filters should be required on buildings this close to the highway. There's just
an extraordinary amount of research emerging about the effects of air pollution, which turn out to be quite a bit more damaging than anyone knew. Building a tower directly next to I-35W—that will house students no less—is the kind of thing that should trigger significant mitigation.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 12:33 pm
by SurlyLHT
Or try this.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 12:50 pm
by twincitizen
Not great to lose the small-scale parcels, but if the building includes a lot of small retail spaces, it'll be fine.
I generally agree with this sentiment when historic preservation is discussed. In any other city, your take is probably correct. But we have so little 100+ year old fabric like this left. I mean, Minneapolis is obviously way past the point of no return in this department, but it's still so very tempting to save what little we have left. I don't need this entire block preserved "just because", but tearing it all down just seems reckless and obviously bad. It's baffling that this stretch of buildings is not in a historic district. The least they could do is something like the Nye's development. This is a huge project, easily exceeding $100MM. They can afford to save 1 or 2 old buildings here.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 12:52 pm
by amiller92
Remove the 35W ramps at Washington and build some of this on the reclaimed land instead. That would at least save the buildings on the SE end of the block. My god, at a bare minimum save the Bullwinkles building at the corner!! It's 3 stories...that has to be worth something.
I was gonna say that those buildings seem quite lightly-used, aside from off and on Bullwinkles and the Indian restaurant, and maybe that's true, but the Google Streetview is interesting for how little anything there has changed between 2007 and 2016.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 12:54 pm
by amiller92
Not great to lose the small-scale parcels, but if the building includes a lot of small retail spaces, it'll be fine.
I generally agree with this sentiment when historic preservation is discussed. In any other city, your take is probably correct. But we have so little 100+ year old fabric like this left. I mean, Minneapolis is obviously way past the point of no return in this department, but it's still so very tempting to save what little we have left. I don't need this entire block preserved "just because", but tearing it all down just seems reckless and obviously bad. It's baffling that this stretch of buildings is not in a historic district. The least they could do is something like the Nye's development. This is a huge project, easily exceeding $100MM. They can afford to save 1 or 2 old buildings here.
Yeah, a "corners" historic district, covering at least Bullwinkles, the building across 15th, the former Sgt. Preston's and maybe Town Hall building would make some sense even to me.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 12:58 pm
by ko123
Pretty sure the proposal is already dead.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 2:03 pm
by twincitizen
I was gonna say that those buildings seem quite lightly-used, aside from off and on Bullwinkles and the Indian restaurant, and maybe that's true, but the Google Streetview is interesting for how little anything there has changed between 2007 and 2016.
A big factor in the lack of change is probably because the properties were being assembled for development that whole time. I think much, if not all of it, was owned by a single party, and the church sold more recently, finally facilitating development of the entire block.
Pretty sure the proposal is already dead.
That would help explain the lack of it ever being covered by MSP Biz Journal or Finance & Commerce. With a developer like Mortenson attached, you'd think something would've been said about it by now.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 2:56 pm
by schmitzm03
Pretty sure the proposal is already dead.
That would help explain why, in contrast to what is posted on the city EAW page, neither the zoning and planning committee nor the full council appear to have reviewed this. Would be nice to fill in the back parking lot area, but I agree with all the comments regarding the massing. It is massive!
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 3:02 pm
by EOst
It would be a travesty if the city permitted Mortenson to demolish that block. This block, the Day Block-Periscope stretch, and the Runyon's block at the other end of downtown are basically the only remains of the historic downtown Minneapolis business district.
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 4:11 pm
by twincitizen
I've never been a huge proponent of forced preservation, but yeah, Minneapolis should make it extremely difficult to demolish any commercial buildings built before 1900. This kinda gets at the issue with historic preservation districts. Maybe we should just make it harder to tear down the *really* old stuff that we can't make more of, and not worry so much about what new buildings look like or how tall they are in said districts. This intact block of buildings not being protected by any city policy is a massive oversight caused by an over-obsession with "districts".
Re: Seven Corners: Hotel (30 stories) & Student Housing (12 stories)
Posted: January 10th, 2020, 6:46 pm
by Silophant
Yeah, I'm definitely on the side of preserving actual historic buildings, but go ahead and build whatever in the gaps where they've already been lost, instead of this weird "build new stuff similar, but not too similar, to the historic fabric" that we get in the historic districts.
In any case: