I was happy to see the Star Tribune counterpoint this week pushing back against a piece from earlier in February calling for reduced developer fees in order to make housing more affordable. The for-sale housing construction industry has every right to make this issue its priority, but as this week’s piece pointed out, communities need to pay for public amenities like parks and other things. We like nice stuff. I can accept the argument that part of the social contract in the Twin Cities is we have higher expectations for our public realm and developer fees are higher as a…

Direct transit links are not only good for urban quality of life but improve regional competitiveness. They should be a no-brainer. Being able to land in a city and board a train with assurance you’ll be downtown in a fixed amount of time provides peace of mind for residents, tourists and businesspeople alike. A pleasant and even scenic journey bolsters this experience, and makes a powerful first impression that can boost investment. On a recent trip to Denver I finally got to experience the long-awaited A Line, which opened in 2016. Having grown tired of the long drive in to…

The current debates over the Minneapolis 2040 comprehensive plan and inclusionary housing raise some interesting ideas for consideration about the city and Twin Cities metro area overall. First, more housing at all levels of affordability is critical to the future of the city, not for the sake of density itself but rather the city’s ability to remain remotely livable. Second, a well-calibrated inclusionary housing policy is a workable idea but only a tiny piece of the overall housing picture that needs addressing. And third, it’s up to the metro area, not just the city of Minneapolis, to accommodate more affordable…

Kudos to Twin Cities leaders for not offering the kitchen sink to Amazon, as it seems the company had New York and Washington in mind all along. In the time it took for Amazon to decide what city (cities) to build its new HQ2, the Twin Cities added nearly half of the jobs it would have gained from landing Amazon. It does beg the question – what are we doing to attract future employment and talent to the Twin Cities? And do we need Amazon anyway? A quick back-of-the-napkin calculation (I order my napkins and pens from Amazon) reveals the…

The highlight of watching my son’s soccer game last month was the rare sight of a 747 taking off from the nearby MSP airport. For me, the highlight of CNU in Detroit (DTW) last year was arriving that the terminal to see a 747 parked at the gate, preparing for the long flight to Seoul (ICN). The 747 still stops people short, a combination of stellar industrial design, a symbol of cultural and technological change, and an encapsulation of the wonder of flight. As a kid there were three 747 departures per day out of MSP (didn’t you learn your…

The global economy is fascinating to me, particularly the supply chain, logistics and how goods are moved across the planet. I’ve followed this since writing two articles in 2009 and 2010 for Urban Land magazine. Now that the expanded Panama Canal is complete (in 2016), allowing significantly larger container ships through, what are the impacts on global trade and real estate? Research departments at the large real estate firms are already speculating, and reporting some shifts in activity. Most consumer goods imported from across the Pacific are unloaded at west coast ports, and containers are loaded on trains and/or trucks…

Cycling home from Merlin’s Rest the other evening started out lovely. I passed by the Eero Saarinen-designed Christ Church Lutheran, and found its tower so nicely uplit in the night sky that I circled back, stopped, and stood in the courtyard for some time, listening to the fountain and watching clouds scuttle past the moon. I continued my ride down to 38th Street and Hiawatha, where my reverie was disrupted by a coincidental chain of events reminded me that, despite progress, our city is still fundamentally built for the movement of cars. It’s time to get to work. The short…

This is the third in a series of posts about development at 38th Street Station. The first presented the overall 38th Street Station vision, and the second looked how pedestrians get to the 38th Street station. We are aware of the City of Minneapolis policy and plan, completed in 2007 in cooperation with local neighborhood groups, for the area around the 38th Street station of the Blue Line, so this post considers how the 38th Street Station plan meets the transit-oriented development (TOD) policy goals of Met Transit. The Metropolitan Council has a Transit Oriented Development Policy with four major…

Imagine walking to the 38th Street station to catch a Blue Line train and walking along a tree-lined 38th Street, stopping to grab a coffee and having a chat with a neighbor at the plaza. Imagine getting off the train after a Twins game and stopping for a drink at a sidewalk café or picking up some fresh vegetables from a vendor. Imagine this occurring right at the station. The Lander Group 38th Street Station plan envisions all of this, with additional housing and retail options all framed by a vastly improved public realm. I’ve been working with Lander Group for about nine months on the 38th…

The other day I saw a father and his kid stand at the corner, waiting to cross the street. They had just bought a doughnut at A Baker’s Wife (the best bakery in the city), located at 42nd Street and 28th Avenue in south Minneapolis. Whether they were heading to their car or walking home, crossing the street was required of them, and the light was red so they had to wait. The kid was perhaps three years old, wise enough to know the basics about crossing the street.   What happened next was profoundly sad. Remember how Ralphie feels…