Most people associate the term “beer goggles” with an inebriated state of affairs in which a member of the opposite (in some cases same) sex appears more attractive. As an urban nerd, I think “beer goggles” can apply to urban places, as entire cities can look more attractive after a drink, particularly when you are strolling down a sidewalk on a pleasant evening after a nice meal with friends. In the case of the Northbound Smokehouse Brewpub, however, I hadn’t even raised the first pint of Smokehouse Porter to my lips when I gazed out the large windows toward the…

Earlier this year I attended “The Contested City,” a two-day seminar organized by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The event brought together urban journalists and writers from across the country to hear presentations and discuss, among other things, the impact of the Tea Party on urban planning and development, as well as the overall impact of technology on our industry. The speakers and discussion was much more varied, and while I will write in more detail about certain ideas, the following are little nuggets to chew on. Enjoy! “You have to show up” Meaningful business and personal relationships are…

What is going on with East Lake Street in Minneapolis? That’s the question the Longfellow Community Council (LCC) asked me last year when I was tasked with a market study to determine reasons and solutions for a stubbornly high commercial vacancy rate. The answer goes far beyond waiting for retail demand to return and space to absorb. East Lake Street (between Hiawatha Avenue and the Mississippi River) suffers from a variety of systemic maladies, just like any number of aging commercial corridors around the country. The good news is there is a lot of potential, with a corridor vision, attention…

One of my favorite comedy bits is Robin Williams having an imaginary conversation with a Scotsman about how the Scots invented golf. You can view it on YouTube here (the key to this post occurs at 1:21), and it goes something like this: “Aye, here’s my idea for a sport. You knock a ball in to a gopher hole.” “You mean like pool?” “No, bulls#*t, not with a straight stick, with a little f%#*@d up piece of wood.” “Like croquet?” “Aw, f%#k no! Hundreds of f%#*!@g yards away! Whack the ball and it goes into a f%#*!@g hole.” “So it’s…

Let’s get one thing out of the way…high density and rental housing will likely be required as part of the redevelopment of the KMart site in Minneapolis. If we can accept that as fact, perhaps we can get this thing done and reopen Nicollet Avenue, perhaps add a streetcar, connect to the Midtown Greenway, and create a wonderful urban development that raises the value of the city around it. Everyone has their own story about how much they dislike that KMart or how it is bad for the city. As for me, four years ago I completed the Lyn-Lake Small…

In the past four weeks the Soap Factory, as part of its Common Room series, has led some fascinating walking tours. Most recent was Invisible Minneapolis, which looked at development plans that never came to be. It was a compelling peek at what could have been in our city and left me both completely depressed and hopeful that good decisions can be made in the future. One of the Invisible Minneapolis stops was the largely vacant Block E, a multi-use retail/entertainment center that opened in 2004 and just eight short years later sits largely vacant. The four ground floor anchor…

Take a look at this map and tell me what is missing? If you guessed freeways, you are correct. This is a section of south Minneapolis on the City of Minneapolis Bicycle Map. You can find the online version and printable PDFs here. In this case, freeways are difficult to see – I really had to look to find them – it’s like they aren’t there. They appear more like an abondoned railroad would on a standard street map – there is nothing there but space. You only notice freeways because the urban grid doesn’t cross at every street. Otherwise…

“You’d think with all the taxes we pay that they could have put in a sidewalk.” That is the exasperated comment from my mother-in-law as she and I were driving past the local playground near their house in the Milwaukee suburbs with my kids in the back seat. She has a very good point. The previous day she walked the half-mile or so from her house to the playground (adjacent to an elementary school) with my two-year-old son Shaw in the stroller. The walk begins in their subdivision, developed in the 1990s, which has no sidewalks but relatively wide streets…

Austin, Texas is home to a growing list of high-quality urban infill projects, from small examples like Saltillo Lofts to large-scale redevelopments like the Mueller Airport project. Until now, however, there were no examples of how to redevelop aging automobile-oriented commercial corridors. The Airport Boulevard project seeks to change that. In a complex public/private partnership, the city of Austin is working with Fort Worth-based Gateway Planning Group to create a master plan and implementation program for redevelopment of the corridor, including a large underutilized mall and various smaller sized-sites along a three-mile stretch of Airport Boulevard. The roadway was originally…

When it opened in 2010, Walnut Creek Apartments provided 422 apartment units and 35,000 square feet of street-facing retail immediately adjacent to the Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre Station of the BART system, located in Walnut Creek, California, in the bay area east of San Francisco. What isn’t immediately evident when visiting this attractive transit-oriented development is that it is the culmination of a decade of planning that followed several proposed projects that were rejected by the public prior to that. The key to achieving this successful transit-oriented development (TOD) was the facilitation of an intensive charrette process, followed by the…