Of all the public markets, Pike Place Market in Seattle is my favorite. It has a (here comes a gem from planning lingo) “patina” about it. Probably because it is 100 years old and the patina is actually accumulated grime on the walls from those fish-throwing guys. Sure I love the original Farmers Market adjacent The Grove in Los Angeles, and there’s Faneuil Hall in Boston, the gorgeous renovation of the Ferry Building in San Francisco, the wonderful Reading Terminal Market in Philly, and even the upstart Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis, but Pike Place Market wins me over. Pike…

My take on the recent ULI fall meeting in San Francisco was a feeling of cautious optimism. Why? We already know the economy and real estate industry are a mess. Now that we’re used to it, we’re tying to predict the recovery. Will the recession and corresponding recovery be V-shaped, U-shaped, or the dreaded L-shaped? When will vacancy decline? When will rents go up? When will actual property values increase? Which will recover first, industrial, retail, housing, office (hint, it won’t be office), or hotels? The common thread to any recovery statistics was “when jobs are created.” It all comes…

I’m not sure why train conductors wear those distinctive conductor hats with a brim, but I’m glad they do. I boarded the new Northstar commuter rail last Friday morning, during its inagural week of service, and was greeted by a conductor wearing a hat with a friendly “welcome aboard.” Surely, you ask, what kind of idiot wakes up at 5:30AM only to drive 52 miles out of the city just to catch a train back to his house!? Well, for one, because this is a truly historic moment in Twin Cities and Minnesota history – new commuter rail service critical…

An interesting battle among various stakeholders over a proposed Walgreens store in the Highland neighborhood of St. Paul took an unusual twist recently when, after the local business and neighborhood associations and the city planning commission approved the plan, the city council unanimously rejected it. The plan calls for a 9,000-plus square foot Walgreens store to be built fronting Ford Parkway, the primary street in the core of the Highland commerical district, a relatively dense mini downtown that includes a variety of restaurants and shops, a medical clinic, banks, two bookstores, a movie theater and a full-service grocery store. It…

With so much attention given to green development these days, I figure it is worth looking back at a green building five years after opening to see how things are going. Five years ago I wrote a case study for the Urban Land Institute about Colorado Court, a 44-unit affordable housing project in Santa Monica. Colorado Court was cutting edge at the time. Let’s see what we can learn five years on. In 2004, Colorado Court was just two years old. Developed by the Community Corporation of Santa Monica, it includes a number of green features, including carpeting and insulation…