Personally, I think it looks like a cross between a laser jet printer, a drunk Frank Gehry and something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is not a compliment. However, be this as it may, preference on architectural styling, no one should be surprised as this is the usual forgettable stuff that post-modernist firms like HKS Architects have been creating for quite some time.

I’ve been a critic of professional sports financing for a long time and will continue to be; but now that it’s a reality that the Vikings will get a new home, I’d like to see it be as good as possible. That means we need a combination of respectful architecture and urban design. This proposal fails on both fronts.

For all it’s faults, the City of Indianapolis built Lucas Oil Stadium. It’s a large, expensive taxpayer subsidizes stadium, but it does pay homage to classical architecture. It doesn’t always have the best street frontage, but it still pretends the pedestrian exists. Going into tonight, I had my fingers crossed that we’d get something similar to Indianapolis.

The architecture and urban design of the new Vikings stadium are bad, at best. I’ll ignore architecture here. The urban design isn’t shaping out to be an improvement over the current footprint of the Metrodome. Urban design is very important, and for this reason, I ask the City of Minneapolis Council to consider that upon their approval of the site plan.

Along the plaza, facing the current Metrodome light rail station, a large plaza opens up to large glass walls. This will likely be an impressive sight from inside the new stadium, but it won’t do much for pedestrian activity or promoting a lively streetscape during non-game days. The plaza needs more activity.

It’s a large building that adds a small park to the Metrodome’s existing footprint. We need more. But, what’s a green space with an active surrounding? The park like space will likely be empty without adjacent buildings nearby to add activity.

There are no new improved transportation connections between the Downtown East neighborhood and the rest of downtown or the River. It’s basically a new, modern rendition of the Metrodome: an over-sized, unquestionably ugly spaceship that adds nothing to the built environment.

The large plaza will be lively during the football season, but will likely be a wind-swept space during regular 9 to 5 Monday-Saturday. It’s a large, nondescript plaza that pays homage to the stadiums large set of windows, and not to the surrounding environment.

This will arguably be the worst part of the stadium. It’s a large, multistory blank wall. No activity here except a parking lot and some emergency exit doors. It’s blank, dark and ignores the urban environment. This is unacceptable – a 5 to 6 story blank wall? No windows. A few doors. Lots of emptiness.

There really isn’t much here that will act as an improvement in the urban design department, and it is hard to see how a building like this will promote additional development. Who would want to live by a monolithic, mega church of a building that only occasionally pays homage to the cultural Gods of Football. It’ll be empty 95% of the time and chaotic the other 5%.

Now, with e-pulltabs being as they are, all we need to do now is find a way to pay for itself (and, if you don’t care for it, well – if history repeats itself, it’ll likely be torn down in about 20 years).

Reblogged from Thoughts on the Urban Environment:

It looks as if Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton is pushing the Vikings to look downtown Minneapolis. While I'm not going to dive into my thoughts and opinions on the stadium proposal, I wanted to share a diatribe that really explains what is driving the public and policy makers into making such a poor economic decision. 

It was 1998. I was in middle school.

Read more… 642 more words

Pretty cool #Vikings!Too bad pull tabs have yet to even pay for that cool fly thru video…

— Hal Kimball (@kimballhal) May 14, 2013

New #Vikings stadium very mega-churchy. I suppose appropriate. twitter.com/CoreyLAnderson…

— Corey Anderson (@CoreyLAnderson) May 14, 2013

new #Vikings Stadium will have a glass roof. Let’s see 17″ of snow on that;) & did anyone tell the designer about the other MN Precip- Hail?

— Λοβε Θυ Νειγηβορ (@gbrunkhorst) May 14, 2013

Is it just me, or does the new Minnesota #Vikings Stadium look like an enormous inkjet printer? twitpic.com/cqe8ps via @streetsmn

— Doug Armato (@noctambulate) May 14, 2013

@streetsmn Architect must have thought space when the Vikings management said they wanted it to look like a ship…

— Mitchell Austin (@msaplanner) May 14, 2013

The new #Vikings stadium blows every other facility in the league out of the water. #SuckItNFL

— Ted Glover (@purplebuckeye) May 14, 2013

Is it just me, or does the new Minnesota #Vikings Stadium look like an enormous inkjet printer? twitpic.com/cqe8ps via @streetsmn

— Doug Armato (@noctambulate) May 14, 2013

I like the new #Vikings stadium design.It looks like a football stadium and the Fortress of Solitude had a baby.#VikingsStadium

— Michael Hoffman (@michaelchoffman) May 14, 2013

Not a huge fan of the new #Vikings stadium design, but whatever–it’s new, keeps them here, and will allow us to host a Super Bowl.

— Ben Passer (@BenPasser) May 14, 2013

So we waited all that long for another warehouse with a roof to play football in for the #vikings

— Paul Dockendorf (@Rockendorf666) May 14, 2013

Looks like the #Vikings are getting an awesome stadium….maybe they can be fortunate enough to identify and sign an above average QB

— MattPresto (@MattPresto) May 14, 2013

This stadium was definitely worth the financial fight!It is AMAZING #Vikings

— PR & Football (@AndreatheActres) May 14, 2013

This new #vikings stadium is sick as hell

— Tyler Torgerson (@Ttorgerson7) May 14, 2013

New #Vikings stadium looks like it’s from Star Trek.

— Ryan Heckman (@ryanmheckman) May 14, 2013

Join local urban and transportation celebrity bloggers on the 1st Annual Minneapolis Bike ‘n’ Brew Tour.

The route is a simple 8 (eight) miles that start at Harriet Brewing Company at 5pm. The route will then progress up through Northeast as the night goes on. Here’s the line-up:

“The place was pretty in its way, as much as it could be, like a daisy in a field full of rust.” – Charlie LeDuff 

I’ve just finished reading two great books on Detroit and I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t help but observe that people who grew up in Detroit have more character and perspective than the average American. The city seems to breed this. And, I can’t explain why, but I’ve always loved Detroit. Maybe it started with my fascination of Barry Sanders – the Walter Payton of the 90s – or that I always root for the underdog? And … Detroit just feels AMERICAN.

• Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff

It’s a memoir that’s very Detroit: gritty, tragic and character-building. It tells a good tale of the good, bad, ugly and absolutely beautiful sides of Detroit. It’s written by a former beat reporter, Charlie LeDuff; who is just the right amount of crazy. There’s a lot to like, but he does a spectuacular job of summarizing the economic struggle that is not only Detroit, but also wholly American.

Detroit’s slide was long and inexorable. You might blame it on white racism and legal mortgage covenants that barred blacks from living anywhere but the most squalid ghettos.

You might blame the city’s collapse on the 1967 riot and the white flight that followed. You might blame it on Coleman Young – the city’s first black mayor – and his culture of corruption and the cronyism.

You could blame it on the gas shocks of the seventies, which opend the door to foreign car competition.

You might point to the trade agreements of the Clinton years that allowed American manufacturers to leave the country by the back door. 

You might blame the UAW, which demanded things like near-full pay for idle workers, or the myopic management, who instead of saying no took their piece and simply tacked the cost onto the price of the car.

Then there is the thought that Detroit was simply a boomtown that went bust, a city that began to fall apart the minute Henry Ford began to build it. The car made Detroit and the car unmade Detroit. Detroit was built in some ways to be disposable. The auto industry allowed for sprawl. It allowed a man to escape the smoldering city with its grubby factory and steaming smokestacks. [page 79-80]

This book is great, but those looking to touch more on the urban planning side of things …

• Detroit City is the Place to Be

When I started planning school, Detroit was all the rage. It was a blank slate, supposedly, that could be bent at the artist’s will. It was cheap, urban and allotted you ample opportunity to create a smarmy “ruin porn” blog. This prospect of Detroit was always exciting to me, although I always felt the renaissance people were proclaiming was over-hyped.

That’s where this book comes in: it’s a real in-depth journalistic piece by Mark Binelli, a native Detroiter who return to his hometown. The best way to describe the thesis of this book is from a headline over at The Atlantic Cities, “Detroit Isn’t Some Kind of Abstract Art Project”.

These projects make Detroit a better, more vibrant place and I would never discourage anyone from trying to make something happen (what’s going on seems exciting!). The problem lies in the fact that Detroit has a long history, politic and otherwise, and more importantly, people live there. While a dilapidated house is painted pink in some ironic gesture, someone – likely poor – living next to the home will likely be insulted.

The ideas of urban agriculture do show promise, so do efforts to rehab and re-purpose historic buildings. I believe though what the author, Binelli, writes when he says that this effort will only go as far. Crime is the real deterrent . Detroit has a big crime problem (also outlined in LeDuff’s book) and a huge educational gap. Renovations downtown and artistic innovation are great, but rarely help or uplift those Detroit residents in the most need. It’s not so much that the artist are doing anything bad. They certainly aren’t. But, if we want to see a real economic and social change in Detroit, it probably will come from decreasing crime and improving education.

These books are not a hopeless parable. In my mind, they share unbelievable tales of life in a hard town filled with some strange, resilient and strong people. They are actually pretty uplifting. I think that many people are looking to find some ‘morale of the story’ in contemporary non-fiction about Detroit. If that’s what they’re looking for, they’re not going to find it – there is no morale, just a very complex political, social and economic history of a resilient people.

Reblogged from Thoughts on the Urban Environment:

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What was once a neighborhood coffee shop, high-end camera shop, kitschy nick-knack decor shop and Birkenstock storefront is now a high-end boutique clothing store (See: The Onion, "Report: Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization"). The clothing store Anthropologie recently renovated a corner of Grand Avenue's Milton Mall and has drastically changed the street scape of one of America's prettiest neighborhoods…

Read more… 397 more words

• Bipartisan support for I-94 Expansion between Maple Grove & St. Cloud [Star Tribune]

You know what we need? More lanes on I-94 to St. Cloud.

“Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, backed by a bipartisan cohort of about three dozen lawmakers, local elected officials and business folks, came to the Minnesota Capitol to offer support for about $400 million worth of improvements to I-94 and Minnesota Highway 10.” – Star Tribune

 This is a political proposal and MnDOT has expressed interest against such an expansion. A MnDOT spokesperson recently said that the project is not a top priority because it “doesn’t meet all of the metrics at this time.” If I were the MnDOT representative, I would have removed “at this time” from the statement. Why? Because it’s not needed and spending $100 million to (slightly) improve peak hour long-distance commutes seems like a bad, misguided and expensive idea. Resources could certainly be dedicated in other directions.

I found myself driving from Minneapolis to St. Cloud at least half a dozen times in the past year. Never has it taken more than 1 hour and 20 minutes to go the approximately 65 miles. What good would one extra lane do? Apparently this proposal will create jobs. We’ll see about that. At best, it’ll speed up summertime Lake Cabin commutes up north.

• Mayo Clinic wants money for expansion [Star Tribune]

As it turns out, the Mayo Clinic doesn’t want money to actually expand its operations. The hospital wants it to provide other local community investments. Here is what the spending will go towards [Link]:

$91M: Transportation

$159M: Transit

$101M: Public utilities

$47M: Public spaces

$98M: Parcel development

$70M: Parking structures

$19M: Other uses

$70 million for parking structures? $98 million for parcel development (of which, is apparently going towards “Mayo and Rochester officials want to develop the high-end hotels, restaurants and other amenities in the city that would enable the Mayo Clinic to attract more patients and their loved ones.”) These efforts won’t be going towards better medical care, but a better experience for those lucky enough to visit Rochester as a “destination medical center”.

I’m not sure of what the transportation, transit, utilities or “other uses” will be. My guess is that it won’t necessarily be dedicated for the greater benefit of Rochester, but the short-term benefit of the clinic. It’s not like this $500 plus million will be going to cancer research, or affordable healthcare, or preventative care. It’ll be going towards adding nice things to the community to help attract wealthy outsiders who might be visiting those who are ill and temporarily staying at the hospital.

It begs the question,what would you do with $500 million? If you said, “Give it to one of the world’s most profitable hospitals”, then you’re on the same page as our Governor here in Minnesota. Here’s what the Pioneer Press reported:

“The Mayo Clinic is seeking more than $500 million in state support for economic development projects in the medical center’s hometown of Rochester — a deal that clinic officials say would guarantee the world-famous clinic stays and grows in Minnesota. … … Gov. Mark Dayton, who recently underwent back surgery at Mayo, said during the announcement that he supports the plan, adding that bond support might cost the state about $30 million per year.” -Pioneer Press [Jan. 30, 2013]

The Mayo Clinic is a world famous non-profit hospital that has annual profits of over $600 million. I used to go to a Mayo Clinic branch. They’re great and I have only positive things to say about them. They certainly help Rochester (their home base – and another small city that I do genuinely like). But, if you’re expansion is dependent on $500 million in state aid, then it’s not sustainable. Sorry Mayo.

Officials are forecasting 25,000 to 30,000 new jobs as a result. These numbers make the Field of Dreams numbers seem tame. Who are these economic development consultants?Who is doing this math? If we build this one development, the town will add jobs that are the equivalent of 1/4 the population of the town? Thankfully there is some skepticism in the State Legislature [hear ye', hear ye']!

• Freakonomics Podcast nails parking [WNYC] and you should listen to it!

The link is here. I want to thank the 12 people who e-mailed me a link to the podcast! I’ll have to start listening again.

• Three ways to improve walkability without touching the streets

One of my favorite bloggers, Bill Lindeke, had a great post at Streets.MN about how to improve walkability without doing any expensive redesigns. All of them involve easy-to-use technologies that already exist (which is a plus): Add red light cameras, no turn on red and actually go the distance and ban cell phones in cars.

• Downtown St. Paul – Does it need more “Class A” office space? [Star Tribune]

I remember hearing an interview with Mayor Coleman of St. Paul. He said that St. Paul is doing the big stuff right (e.g.: Excel, Saints, Etc.) and that it now needed to concentrate on the small stuff. I was surprised when I heard him say that St. Paul needs another ‘Class A’ office tower. With St. Paul vacancy up (and Minneapolis down) in the office market, it seems like a big, new tower might be one of the last things the city needs.

“Mayor Chris Coleman has said he’d like to see it torn down and replaced with a Class A office building, with first- and second-floor amenities that tie in with downtown’s bar and restaurant scene.” – Star Tribune

The Macy’s building isn’t actually very good. However, I’m not sure if it needs to be torn down. I recommend us not making the mistakes of the past. I think this building might be best under-utilized or not used at all as opposed to meeting the wrecking ball. The last thing St. Paul needs right now is a parking lot – and I’m not confident the office market (unless heavily subsidized) would accommodate the site at the time being.

• Entertainment District Stuff [Strong Towns]

I wrote this thing for Strong Towns. Don’t read the comment section – it gets a little too violent. I like this idea, and I think it’s important for a lot of struggling cities, so I wanted to re-post some of it …

Believe it or not, Omaha has some good urbanism. There is a solid urban form, nice architecture and it’s all intertwined into a historic fabric. Minus the excessively large one-way streets, most urbanists would be very pleased to replicate this in their hometowns.

There is a problem with Omaha’s best urban neighborhood: it’s loud, drunk and single-use. Correction. That’s only on Friday and Saturday night. The problem with Omaha’s best urban neighborhood: it’s silent, empty and single-use.

While originally having many diverse purposes, the Old Market neighborhood now is mainly articulated around one function: entertainment (and the odd antique shop). This would be tolerable if Omaha had other similar neighborhoods. They don’t – and neither do most American cities. That is precisely why we can’t be surrendering our best places over exclusively to entertainment.

We should not be disconnecting our downtowns from all other aspects of life. And, while it’s tempting to pursue entertainment as a vehicle of downtown revitalization, it will only get you so far. Proposals for entertainment districts occasionally sprout up in City Council meetings as the next big thing. While it certainly is tempting in its efforts to capitalize on people’s passion for retail, sports, food and drink, it is a development prospect that should be viewed with skepticism. You can read more on Entertainment Districts here.

Believe it or not, Omaha has some good urbanism. There is a solid urban form, nice architecture and it’s all intertwined into a historic fabric. Minus the excessively large one-way streets, most urbanists would be very pleased to replicate this in their hometowns.

There is a problem with Omaha’s best urban neighborhood: it’s loud, drunk and single-use. Correction. That’s only on Friday and Saturday night. The problem with Omaha’s best urban neighborhood: it’s silent, empty and single-use.

While originally having many diverse purposes, the Old Market neighborhood now is mainly articulated around one function: entertainment (and the odd antique shop). This would be tolerable if Omaha had other similar neighborhoods. They don’t – and neither do most American cities. That is precisely why we can’t be surrendering our best places over exclusively to entertainment.

We should not be disconnecting our downtowns from all other aspects of life. And, while it’s tempting to pursue entertainment as a vehicle of downtown revitalization, it will only get you so far. Proposals for entertainment districts occasionally sprout up in City Council meetings as the next big thing. While it certainly is tempting in its efforts to capitalize on people’s passion for retail, sports, food and drink, it is a development prospect that should be viewed with skepticism.

You’ll find two types of entertainment districts: overnight and naturally-occurring [you can read more]. To its credit, Omaha has the better of the two – a naturally-occurring district composed of many different businesses, buildings, landlords and decision-makers. The area has the ingredients of other successful places, but it’s hard not to feel that something is missing.

It lacks one crucial element: people. Since entertainment is more or less modern code-speak for food and drink., it means that if it isn’t a weekend, these places are silent. For a place to be successful, it needs people. All types of people – not just 25 year old’s on a Friday or Saturday night out.

This policy needs to shift from making cities places to visit, and concentrate on making them places to live. Entertainment districts, even the best ones, can fail at creating a lively mix of retail, residential, commercial and civic space. Unless you’re a certain demographic, these are isolating locations, usually not worthy of the public affection beyond the handful of large sporting events, conventions or Friday night bar excursions. In fact, show me an existing or proposed entertainment district and I’ll show you a struggling city. Yet, we still continuously encourage entertainment as a revitalization tool.

Unfortunately, these types of environments don’t help in attracting other sorts into the urban settings. Baby boomers and families with young children aren’t going to be attracted to these places and want to be surrounded by the airport of late-night noise pollution. It’s hard not to feel that naturally-occurring entertainment districts are closely related to adult theme parks.

Paris and Florence don’t have entertainment districts. Neither does San Francisco. Melbourne doesn’t either. What these cities have are spaces for people. In the Midwest, we don’t have a lot of these great places or a long urban or architectural history, and the areas that we do have need to be done well (and expanded). That’s not to say that the activities that take place in the Old Market should be regulated or banned, but they should be more open to other activities. There is nothing inherently wrong with a district that encourages bars or arts, but it must be done right. Whatever the case, it cannot become a single-use monoculture.

I attempt to park on Mears Park in Lowertown in St. Paul on Monday through Thursday evenings. Read about it on Streets.MN …

The longest it took me to park was 3 minutes and 41 seconds. Most of the time was sitting at stop lights and not searching for parking. The farthest I had to park away was approximately 1.5 blocks.

The song playing is Nighttiming (West Coast) by Coconut Records. It’s a really good song, and I recommend heading over to iTunes and purchasing it.

I’ll have more about this on Streets.MN tomorrow.