• Downtown Journal - Three arrested in Downtown BASE jumping attempt. BASE jumping is illegal in Minneapolis. And most cities.
• Behind the Mortgage - Condo for sale in doomed development includes Adult Entertainment room, complete with mirrors, couches, and poles. BTM is offering a bounty for photos.
• Metro Independent Business Association - The MetroIBA members featured in City Pages’ 2008 Best of the Twin Cities.
• MPR - Rural Renewable Energy Alliance donating solar home heating systems to low-income families.
• St Paul Issues Forum - On 24-hour health clubs. The city is trying to close them down because they don’t keep a CPR-trained staff person onsite round-the-clock. This is supposedly overly restrictive and a remnant of sex-club crackdowns from the ’80s.
• 76th Street - “Does Richfield have too much senior housing but not enough affordable senior housing?” If you even have to ask…
• Longfellow Nokomis Real Estate Guide - Foreclosures in their neighborhood. There are LOTS.
• Northstar Commuter Rail - Construction begins on Coon Rapids station.
• District del Sol - This weekend’s Cinco de Mayo activities in St Paul. (pdf) The lowrider car show is Friday from 4-9 on Wabasha.

It’s the 4th quarter holiday season, which means Grinch references abound. Who are we to buck tradition? We’re looking to crown the 2007 Twin Cities Grinch of the Year.

What individual or group has impacted the Twin Cities in a negative way?

To make a nomination, leave a comment below by 11:59pm on Friday, December 21, with the name of the individual or group and a brief explanation of why he/she/they deserve this dishonor. We will narrow the pool down and allow readers to vote for Grinch of the Year beginning Saturday, December 22. We’ll announce the winner on Friday, December 28.

I’ll start you off with some suggestions: Carl Pohlad (Twins stadium/team signings/anybody that rich has to be evil), Carol Molnau (MnDOT stinginess), the MPD (for the August Critical Mass incident), Avista (for their (mis-)management of the Strib), Mike Wendorf (the guy that bitched about tailgating downtown below his condo), Minneapolis Parks & Rec OR Gary the umpire (the kickball disagreement), the guys that beat up Thom Pham, the two chicks that got in a fist fight in the middle of I-694, Kevin McHale (for not keeping Kevin Garnett happy).

What say you? Drop it in the comments.

My first reaction was Nooooooooooooooooo! The move would have meant that the Acadia was that much further away from me. But, since I don’t actually live in Uptown anymore, the difference is trivial.

It’s just a move, not a change in ownership.

The Acadia is/was one of the best things about that little part of town. I hear that used to be a pretty rough corner. Had I been inclined to purchase a newly built condo at Franklin and Nicollet, I’d have been a regular for sure.

The Acadia has served as a Fringe Festival venue in the past. They won’t be having the split space that they currently enjoy, but Cedar-Riverside is a hotbed of Fringe activity. Hopefully they’ll rejoin the line up.

“Boo hoo! Wah!”
Photo by Bruce Bisping, Star Tribune

I’m breaking my personal anti-Strib-linking policy just so I can comment on this story:

When Mike Wendorf moved into a condominium in Minneapolis three years ago, he knew what to expect from downtown living. But reality twisted those expectations when tailgaters twice swarmed around his increasingly residential neighborhood north of the Metrodome over the weekend.

The Gophers crowd had barely hauled away their empty beer kegs from the parking lot next to his high-rise Saturday night when Vikings fans started firing up their grills Sunday morning.

“I expected panhandlers and sirens living in an urban setting, but 300 college kids setting up bars in vacant parking lots for an all-day party, serving underage students and urinating all over, that’s another thing,” said Wendorf, 39, president of the RiverWest condos.

Um, you bought a condo near the Metrodome and you’re surprised by the tailgaters? Those parking lots have been there longer than the other buildings in your “increasingly residential neighborhood.”

“I don’t even know the Vikings fans are down there,” [Wendorf] said Sunday morning, from his balcony perch 18 floors up. “I went to the ‘U’ and had fun, too, so I get it. But the music and vocalness of the college students, all the hooting, hollering and yelling, we don’t hear that from Vikings fans.”

So it’s okay, as long as you can’t hear what’s going on. Great for you, 18 floors up. The folks on the first few floors don’t get a choice either way. I will admit to having been surprised that tailgating for the Gophers was starting as early as 1:30pm for a 7pm game when I was in the area last weekend, but… really?

The article goes on to make the very valid point that both residents and tailgaters would be better served by improved port-a-potty availability, so that desperate times don’t call for the desperate measure of peeing on the side of someone’s building. No further mention of the underage drinking issue.

Pity about the noise, though.

*cue the violins*

With all the condos going up and the questionable saving (or not) of historical buildings, is this something you would rather see on the side of a building downtown? A Moscow suburb decided to experiment with repainting all its drab gray buildings as a Seasonal Affective Disorder antidote.

Now, there aren’t a whole lot of drab gray buildings here. There’s glass, and brick and shiny blue metal and other things. And then there’s Cedar Riverside. But there’s also that one building in Uptown—the alley side of the Rainbow building, I believe [1] [2]—which has got to be one of the most photographed spots in town (at least in Uptown, anyway).

So, would a new-condo-development-sized mural liven up the joint a bit? Or is that asking for trouble? I think that whole complex just north of 94 on the south side of downtown would be the perfect spot. That’s all you would see as you get on the highway from Lyndale.

(via City Comforts)

The Gay 90s is about to sink half a million dollars into their building which is only worth about $315,000, quelling rumors that the site is up for sale to condo developers. The city has been urging the owners for years to make improvements to the property.

A source inside the 90s says the most dramatic change will be a smoking patio built into the front of the building which will provide some shelter from the elements of Hennepin Avenue. Smokers at the Gay 90s have long complained about fights and panhandlers in front of the Gay 90s which is at the busy corner of Hennepin and 4th Street. Not to mention the extreme cold of Minnesota winters.

Gay 90s patron Michael says, “It’s blighted. I’ll just say thank God there’s security there in the yellow shirts each night.”

Rumors about the demise of the 85 year old club have been circulating the community and the Internet for months.

At 6:46 a.m. tomorrow (Tuesday), the U.S. population reaches 300 million Americans. What number are you?

But apart from the national growth, Minnesota’s share of the pie is shrinking according to the Strib:
Minnesota has long been the shining star of growth in the Midwest, but that growth has been pallid compared with the United States as a whole, especially the population explosion that has transformed the Sun Belt. In 1915, Minnesota’s 2.2 million residents accounted for 2.2 percent of the nation’s population, a proportion that has shrunk to 1.7 percent and will keep shrinking, to 1.65 percent, when the nation hits the 400 million mark [in 37 years].

Why is it shrinking? Well, megacities like NYC, L.A. and Miami are growing exponentially as immigrants (illegal and legal), Midwesterners and everyone in between settles on the coasts. Plus, there’s always that pesky weather thing (remember when it snowed two weeks ago?).

For me, the good news is that we’re still growing and not so fast that it’s burdening the system or hampering strategic planning. That is, unless you’re trying to sell a condo.

It was some kind of crazy today when the clouds loomed dark over my building and the snow scurried past my window. Isn’t it supposed to be around 50 degrees in early-mid-October? And didn’t we just have 70 degrees a few days ago?

The rollercoaster weather is making me nuts this year. I never know what to wear, I end up with many layers of clothes on and the laundry piles up! Most mornings I bundle up and most evenings my coat ends up on my arm. Feels like I’m suffering from Multiple Clothing Personality Syndrome. Heating my house is another issue. If it’s warmish out, I turn the heat off and open the windows to get a nice breeze…but if I forget to turn it back on at night, I wake in the morning to seeing my breath expelled in a cloud before my face. Another example: last Saturday, I returned to my car in a Target parking lot only to find that the interior was hot. I clicked on the A/C to get comfortable. This morning, however, my car was like ice inside and I prayed the heat would come through the vent quickly. That dial on my vehicle’s climate control system has made great leaps to opposite ends of the hot/cold spectrum over the past couple weeks.
Read more

So, I get home after a long day at work and a long slow drive home (because god forbid anyone should actually move their vehicles in the rain). I walk in the door, and I’m relieved to be home. Except that I have no food (that I want to eat), and I have an hour before Thursday night tv starts. I have coupons, so despite the cold drizzle, I decide to walk to Arby’s.

I’m on Emerson, heading south. I cross Lagoon, and I hear… drumming. Out of the corner of my eye I see blue t-shirts and a tent. I moseyed on over to the guys in the blue shirts and inquired as to what they were doing sitting outside in the cold and the wet and how the hell did they come to have a tent.

They’re Buckets and Tap Shoes. Playing at… the corner of Lake and Emerson. I was all, “I’ve heard of you!” I had just missed a tap number, apparently, as the three of them were changing out of their tap shoes.

Their tent was set up right outside the leasing office for Track 29 Lofts, where a launch party was being held. Some sort of open house type of thing. For Yet Another Condo Development that I can’t afford. Oh, wait, sorry, they’re townhouses, er, townhomes.

So, yeah, that whole thing was kind of strange. I suppose it would have seemed less weird if the weather were nicer. Anybody catch the band? Buy a townhouse?

A buddy of mine lives over in the warehouse district by 4th Ave North. While he’s a renter, there’s mostly condo lofts in that area, and boy are there a lot of them - and seemingly For Sale Signs on every corner. He mentioned that there’s a condo glut over there, and a cursory glance on Edina Realty’s website indicates that seems to be the case (Edina Realty’s Map Property Finder is a nice tool, you can zoom in on any part of the map as much or as little as you want and it will list all the properties in that area - great for targeting specific blocks). The local markets appear to have slowed down this summer and become more of a buyer’s market. Even in my suburban neighborhood there are 8-10 properties that have been on the market for more than a month, where they used to get snapped up within days of going on the market.

Higher mortgage rates seem to be contributing to this, but also prices that esclated too quickly also seem to be contributing.

We walked over to the Metrodome from his house along 1st St/2nd St and Washington Ave, and the transformation of that neighborhood from abandoned industrial to mostly residential seems nearly complete. It’s quite amazing that 10 years ago, most of that wasn’t there.