About Wellington and Lexington/University, Tim's perspective on this issue is exactly the one that both the City and developers like Wellington rely on to continue business as usual. After all, developers like Steve Wellington are immersed in this stuff everyday and must know better than we commonfolk what is possible to do where, right? As Wellington has said, "the market at Lexington and University is my check book."
Wellington Management recently did Emerald Gardens, a 200+ unit condo development near University and 280 that has been very successful, and is now launching the next phase called Metro Lofts which will be just north of Emerald Gardens right on University Avenue. Next to Emerald Gardens is 808 Berry Place, a high-quality rental apartment building that has also been extremely successful, and includes 30% "affordable units." Wellington will be the first to tell you that he initially envisioned office development on the site, and was only convinced to do housing by others and "the market," against his better judgement. Central Community Housing Trust in Minneapolis is re-making communities by building high-quality affordable housing at places like East Village in Elliot Park and all four corner at Franklin and Portland. CCHT made an offer to buy the Lexington/University parcel before Wellington did, but had been bad-mouthed to the former owners by PED staff and others, so the former owners balked at selling to CCHT for essentially the same price that Wellington eventually paid. Wellington is a "practical" developer, meaning he follows the market trends and doesn't take risks. This is true of most developers. I don't blame Wellington for being interested in Lexington and University or for being the type of developer that he is. Although I do think he under-estimated the breadth and depth of community buy-in for a vision of a mixed-use, transit-oriented housing development on the site. Most of the blame for the suburban-style Aldi's (phase I), and now a proposed drive-through bank on Lexington (phase II), lies with the City leadership and PED. Two years ago, 200 of us commonfolk participated in a PED led planning study for the Lexington/University intersection and came up with a plan that called for mixed-use, transit-oriented development. This plan was adopted as part of the Comp Plan, but PED and City Council bowed to pressure from local developers, including one Steve Wellington, and decided not to make corresponding changes to the zoning. The City is about to break ground on one of the first projects in the country to put housing units above a new branch library at the corner of University and Dale. This development will have underground parking for the housing, 1st floor library, 2nd floor parking for the library, then floors 3-5 will be apartments. Local community organizations had been trying to re-develop the site for a decade, and their persistence finally paid off when Mayor Kelly made this project a priority (though the time-line has now been pushed back so that the project will not be finished prior to the November election, which was clearly the original goal). There are a lot of variables that determine what type of development is possible, where, and at what time. Quality development that benefits both the City as a whole and the residents of the immediate area is almost never easy to do. But when you have willing partners in elected officials, community stakeholders, City staff, and patient developers, great things are almost always possible. Russ Stark Hamline-Midway -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Erik Hare Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 9:05 AM To: St. Paul Issues Forum Subject: Re: [StPaul] Lexington & University On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Tim Erickson wrote: > I worry that "urban enthusiasts," myself among them, might be somewhat out of > touch with the financial realities of developing a site like Lexington and > University. I have lots of ideas for how the site should look, but the fact > is - I've got really no clue about what will actually "work." Tim, I'm going to go backwards on what you and I and all us other "urban enthusiasts" believe for just a moment. Bear with me. :-) Whatever is built on this site affects you in many ways. One that is very important is this -- you should be a CUSTOMER of whatever goes in there. I saw a study long, long ago that said that people spend like 60% of disposable income withing 5 miles of where they live, 10% within 5 of where they work, and 30% regionally. You and your neighbors should, reasonably, make up a majority of the income such a place would generate. Now, if there's one thing any decent business will crave it's customer feedback. How are you going to make money if you don't offer a product or service people want? And so, when you make an investment as big as this site will require, can there be anything more valuable than to have direct input on the needs of a majority of customers? A smart devloper would use you, have you send out questionaires for them (for free) and really get piles and pile of info on you -- aggregate income, as well as taste. Now, I realize that this never happens, and I speculated it's because nearly everyone at that level is either too lazy or too much of a control freak to actually make use of the valuable resources they have. But whatever. I think your job is to point out this point, and let them know that you intend to be a customer of whatever is put there. Get to know your 'hood's aggregate income. Do even more of their job for them, because it turns out it's in everyone's interest. Naturally, it would be better if they weren't all lazy or stuck up snots about this, but it is still very true that a long term capital investment of that size that close to you is inherenly a partnership. That some people refuse to realize this is a subject we've gone on about for a long time, but it's irrelevant. They're just wrong, and we need ways of letting them know that. We need to let them know that they are, in fact, about to be partners whether they like it or not. Odds are, they'll start to like it if you do it right. Erik Hare [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.comcast.net/~wabbitoid/ Irvine Park, West End, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, North America, Earth Fine Amish furniture, cedar chests, and crafts http://www.harmonycedar.com _____________________________________________ To Join: St. Paul Issues Forum Rules Discussion Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [email protected] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/ _____________________________________________ To Join: St. Paul Issues Forum Rules Discussion Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [email protected] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
