One of my earliest memories is riding the bus downtown with my grandfather. We’d leave my grandparents house on Burton Lane in Minneapolis, and walk a short block to the bus stop to catch the Route 20 to head downtown. Mass transit and tall buildings – urbanism at an early age. Why take the bus downtown? Actually, my grandfather didn’t want his Oldsmobile scratched or dented in a parking ramp. I must confess to a mixed family history with regard to mass transit. My great grandfather slipped and fell on a trolley track in the 1930s, breaking his hip and developing pneumonia,…

Sometimes a real estate development project opens and seems to have the hopes of an entire city wrapped in its prospects for success.  The new Midtown Exchange in Minneapolis is one such project, and how do I put this…it is fantastic!  Besides being such a big and impressive public/private project, I have high hopes that all goes well with it, so that years from now we can look back and say it was worth it. I hope it works because it is a great project.  By that I mean 1.2 million square feet of renovated art deco greatness, with 88…