This one's from an interesting March 5 Strib article on the housing market for suburban dense housing, and is from a project not in Ramsey's Town Center, but in Eagan - Eagan Village Plaza, to be precise about its actual imaginative name.
"Density can get you if you don't watch out;" or "Rentals, rentals, oh my, oh my, possibly here in our owner-occupied planned Town Center," were two alternative headlines I thought of using for this post. The article explains things but I will excerpt because Strib archives things so that after two weeks you can read it only via paid "archive" access:
Putting the 'urban' in suburbia stalls as condo demand slows
Many suburbs aiming to create high-energy, walkable urban villages along the lines of downtown Stillwater or 50th and France in Edina are being forced to rethink their plans.
By David Peterson, Star Tribune
• 612-673-4440 • dapeterson@startribune.com
Last update: March 04, 2007 – 9:44 PM
The movement to plant a bit of the city in Twin Cities suburbs is wilting. A chill in the market for high-priced condos has hampered the attempts of suburbs to create or revive traditional village centers, where people can walk from tightly clustered homes to restaurants and parks.
In cities such as Eagan and Roseville, developers have withdrawn their proposals altogether. In others, such as Apple Valley and Minnetonka, they are backing away from upscale condos in favor of apartments, leaving cities with the choice of either changing their vision or starting all over.
Along with the rest of the new-housing industry, "the condo market's in the toilet right now," said John Cox, deputy city administrator in Champlin, where a long-dreamed-of town center project is languishing. "We're not going to buy out apartment buildings, only to put up more apartment buildings."
And now get this, Ramsey residents [including Ben the Ramsey taxpayer], as if you need a Strib reporter to tell you:
With millions already invested, not to mention years of angry public hearings, city officials are disheartened.
"This is such a tough process, over so many years, with so much emotion," sighed Danna Elling Schultz, a City Council member in Hastings, where riverfront condos aimed at enlivening a historic downtown are on hold. "I don't want the bottom to fall out now."
Well, I want the bottom to fall out in Ramsey, if it means rethinking the Kurak-porkbarrel project (recall how Pattiann's 2000 campaign literature talked of quaint gazebos). Rethinking could alter it into something better than what DR Horton has curiously put on the ground in hopes of selling the stuff to somebody ["Legoland," at Hwy 116 and Ramsey Blvd, the poly-colored monstrosity that somebody made the Devil do, so we would thank God for our calmer homes and appreciate that we are housed elsewhere].
Rental-wise, Strib's Peterson continued:
In Minnetonka, city officials cautiously surveyed nearby residents when the developer of a controversial village center in the Glen Lake area reported recently that he failed to sell a single condo in several months of marketing, and wanted to switch to apartments instead.
The result: 72 hostile reactions, but also 46 expressions of strong support.
"Minnetonka has no place to walk around in," said Chris Pears, who lives in the city and teaches at Minnetonka High School. "I love the fact that Edina has a little 'downtown' with a cinema, where a family can walk around and buy an ice cream. I'd prefer condos, but what I really want is enough activity to upgrade a tired area and bring more nice things in."
Still, the very notion of introducing what [Apple Valley developer Eric] Pedersen speaks of as "inner-city densities" to the suburbs draws plenty of resistance on its own, without centering the projects on apartments on top of it.
"Not likely," said planner Jeff Smyser, of Lino Lakes, when asked about the prospect of switching some planned condos to rentals to accelerate that suburb's slow-moving town center project. "Our council didn't want the town center to be primarily rental. An important part of it was that it be owner-occupied."
The pause in what felt a year or two ago like a mad rush to build ambitious town centers is a testament in part to the complexity of creating them at all, said Michael Lander, who runs the Lander Group, a company specializing in urban lofts and condos.
"In the 'burbs, you buy a cornfield, put up some houses or a Home Depot, run a piece of asphalt to it, and you're set," he said. "But we're just now figuring this new stuff out."
Last year a landowner invited Lander to diagnose the state of the highly touted town center project in Ramsey, past Anoka along Hwy. 10. Two years after the plan for that project won a national urban design award from the American Institute of Architects, it's "struggling," he said.
"The master plan was very well done ... with beautiful parks and sidewalks and well-formed spaces," he said. "But it turns out that's very expensive to do. Those things aren't free."
Amen, Brother Lander. And from across the road from the oppulent new city hall Ben continues to smile and watch over who's going to be paying how much for how long, for what the Council's done so far, not to mention what it still intends.
Indeed, it's an apt subject for a separate posting, older Ramsey homes on big lots, and who lives there vs. density's okay, for them. I have some photos, and will post about it. Not for now, howerver.
In contrast to density is great, there are low income people are not extinct thoughts, in particular Habitat for Humanity and its praiseworthy efforts, including a presence in Ramsey:
Click on the image to enlarge it [or right click and open a new window] to read the text in this Jan-Feb 2007 Ramsey Resident p.5 highlight of the effort. I expect the location might be at the vacant single-family sites diagonally across from the Ramsey Market [Tom Thumb store] at 149th & Ramsey Blvd. There, infrastructure looks in place, but the building effort has been in abeyance for months.
Habitat for Humanity is a good thing to have, and if located there, it is part of the walkable community for the Ramsey Market, but I would not want to lug three Coborn's shopping bags over that Town Center corner-to-corner walk, in extreme cold or heat. But - it's away from the maddening crowd, further from the tracks, so bless it for that.