Obama's New Urban Policy

This may be of interest to people visiting this blog.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/urban_policy/

Big Box or Not? or is there a 3rd way?

This note was passed on to me from Karin DuPaul:

"why not a super target shopping area like on uni. and hamline area? If you had shops like Target and Menards I would never leave the eastside."

I agree somewhat but have also heard many people say that they don't want big box retail or Wal-Mart. I agree with both sentiments, so maybe there is a middle path. I shop at Target on White Bear all the time and would prefer to go to a closer location, but I also don't want to see oceans of parking lot in this development. The Target that went into downtown Minneapolis cost the city big time but maybe there is a way to build something similar that is still compact and cost effective.

There is definately a need for basic retail service like Target in the area. Does it fit within people's vision for the site? I don't know. I think if there is one I would like it to be a bit more compact than the University location.
Any thoughts?

Proposed Site Principles

At the first committee meeting last week, a list of proposed site principles was distributed. These principles are supposed to be based on the comments from the public meeting and other comments from the community.

1. Honor and amplify the historic nature of the community and 3M.
2. Maximize site potential for light industrial/manufacturing jobs with a focus on green industries, buildings and energy.
3. Commercial and/or retail uses should be consistent with neighborhood scale.
4. Create/enhance transit connections to/from and through the site.
5. Improve neighborhood safety through building and public realm design.
6. Ensure accessibility and family-friendly spaces in the design elements.

Well what do you think? This isn't my list and it isn't meant to be the final list of principles, but does it reflect what the community wants? Absent from the list but present in our discussion at the committee meeting was the feeling that whatever is built there should be special. This is a rare opportuinity for Saint Paul and I don't think anyone is hoping for an ordinary development.

Port Authority has site for documents

The Saint Paul Port Authority has created a site for posting documents related to the project. You can visit it at http://www.sppa.com/3m/

Proposals from Jacob Dorer

This was sent to the Dayton's Bluff Community Council about a month ago and I asked Jacob if he would let me post it. Some great ideas and its nice to see how other towns have dealt with similar projects. - Paul

Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:33 pm (PST)
Hi again,

I thought we could use this email list to sort of bounce ideas off
each other about what to do with the old 3M site. I should probably
say that the Port Authority likes to do light industrial uses mostly,
so anything else would involve them selling or giving the site to the
city or another entity. Examples of what they have done in the past
are the Phalen Corridor and the Williams Hill Business Development.

OK, so my idea and dream would be to have the 3M site be a
transit-oriented mixed-use neighborhood. What does that mean? I would
like to have it connected to downtown by streetcar and sidewalks so
that residents could get there without having to build tons of surface
parking lots or ramps. I think that more people will want to move back
to the city and we have a great chance to start something great here
in Dayton's Bluff. Imagine a new development of commercial/retail
space on the first level topped with condos and apartments. We could
design in a great park system and the public art we all love (I know,
i know, not everyone loves the art). Some other cities have done this
sort of thing with great results.

I was just in Portland, OR, where they did something almost exactly
like this in the South Waterfront area
(http://southwaterfront.com/transportation/streetcar). It used to
house warehouses and parking lots. Now it has a university complex,
housing, parks, and businesses. Portland estimates that the streetcar
lines in the city as a whole have led to $2.3 billion in new
development in their downtown area. Imagine if we could jump start
something like that in our neighborhood! Portland did have to spend
money in Tax increment financing and other ways to get there, but we
will spend money any way we proceed and indeed already have to
purchase the site. Portland, by the way, is one of the few cities
WITHOUT a vacant housing problem because so many people want to live
there.

Another example is the Baltimore Inner Harbor
(http://globalharbors.org/advice_to_a_city.html). This is an area that
was a blighted neighborhood of closed shipping industries (sort of
reminiscent our closed manufacturing giants around here). They have
worked for about 20 years and the site is about 300 acres, so it is a
much bigger area, but it is now the biggest tourist attraction in
Baltimore. They saved and reused many of the historic buildings and
they say it now generates $60 million in property tax revenue per
year.

One last example is Santana Row, in San Jose
(http://www.lgc.org/freepub/land_use/models/santana_row.html). It
might be the most similar in that what happened was that the city of
San Jose bought a failed shopping center that was a 43 acre site. They
spent 1 one billion dollars on the project and it now has 680,000
square feet of retail space; 1,200 luxury rental units including
townhomes, lofts, and flats; a 214- room boutique hotel; a 12-screen
cinema; 5,200 parking spaces; a pedestrian-friendly main street;
public open space; plazas and courtyards. They have plans to include
light-rail and bus service. All this on 10 acres less than we have at
our disposal! Wouldn't you like to be able to shop in the neighborhood
instead of driving everywhere?

No one will want to move to St. Paul because of a new suburban-style
business park. We need to have the foresight to dream big to make our
city special, not just go with a small ad-hoc plan that parcels off a
great opportunity, making big dreams impossible. What do the rest of
you think?

Jacob Dorer

A Comment from Beth Cleary

Thank you for this opportunity for neighborhood/citizen ideas for the 3M Site re-development.

I live on Sixth at Arcade, and see the 3M facility out all my back windows. It is a mammoth site, and given its proximity to another enormous, and largely un-redeveloped, facility (the former brewery on Minnehaha), it feels imperative that creative thinking be applied to both of these facilities.

A correctional facility of any kind, located in the middle of a long-struggling residential/retail neighborhood, will *doom* this neighborhood for generations. To invite in that grimness is a supremely uncreative idea, a merely instrumental idea, and a frankly insulting idea. This neighborhood needs comprehensive uplift, and a facility dedicated to incarceration and all of the practices related to that, is uplift's opposite.

The other person who has posted a comment calls for a mixed-use future for the 3M site. Outside of the widely-opposed correctional facility, mixed-use seems inevitable. Again, the future of *both* enormous facilities, within a stone's throw of each other, should be considered. And given the splendid HealthPartners facility nearby in the fledgling Phalen Corridor, why not imagine a "health corridor" of some kind, where indeed in the 3M facility (which I assume will need to be extensively overhauled environmentally re: standards)there will be healthcare providers, perhaps even research, and complementary health practitioners including artists and therapists of various sorts (yoga, movement, hydro-, etc.), and perhaps even a forward-thinking living community that would contribute to and benefit from the complementary and traditional health services in their "neighborhood"? It certainly makes sense to build upon the infusion of themes/workers/capital in the HealthPartners Specialty Clinic. Why not contact the University of Minnesota, which perhaps could help design such a facility?

People are living longer, and will need to work and contribute their wisdom to society longer. See the work that Harvard University is doing, supporting the career-transition work of late-career professionals into "second careers," starting in their sixties. This gargantuan site could be the setting for a MN-based forward-thinking experiment in the same vein, that really harnesses the complementary expertises of scientists, doctors, complementary therapists and artists, all of whom can re-imagine together a new way of sustaining community together.

Again, thank you for inviting comments. I look forward to reading others.

Beth Cleary
Dayton's Bluff

3M site background

This is pretty basic but it has a picture and a map for visitors who are not familiar with the location.
http://www.placeography.org/index.php/3M_Plant,_Saint_Paul,_Minnesota