Nov. 2004, you too as an architect could get Continuing Education credit for the session where Natalie got second billing to a promoter with a host of interesting lawsuits-against-him files from the 1990's in the County Courthouse in Anoka, the one and only John Feges, uber-promoter and Kurak Town Center bird dog.
Every so often you come upon one of those past hyper-propagandistic things that Natalie probably would like to bury fifty feet under. Here is one, and there is at least a line or two of truth in it that cannot be disputed:
Ramsey — Creating a Genuine Town Center
1.0 HSW Hours of Continuing Education
Ramsey Town Center incorporates 320 acres of new growth at a proposed multi-modal transit facility in a third ring suburban location. The master plan consists of over 2,500 units of mid to high-density housing, 700,000 square feet of retail, and 460,000 square feet of office, medical and civic uses. Vertical and horizontal mixed-uses are connected with pedestrian-oriented streets and an integrated park and trail system that focuses on The ‘Center’. The plan’s growth out of essential qualities of the natural landscape, the integral inclusion of that landscape into the plan, and the hours of community input have created a unique heart to the existing community. Ramsey Town Center is already being recognized as a regional model for growth completely unlike previous development along the Highway 10 corridor, or within the Twin Cities and was awarded a 2003 AIA Minnesota Honor Award for its planning innovation and thoughtful creation. With all new trends in the development world, the Ramsey Master Plan is challenging long held notions in all aspects of the construction industry from design, engineering, approvals, land sales, and financing. The speakers will discuss the creation and evolution of the plan, different perspectives on how it was received, including unique challenges, behind the scenes stories, and insights into how to get an integrated mixed-use plan done and implemented.
John Feges is Principal in the Benchmark Development Company. He has background in all aspects of the construction industry including architectural construction administration, real estate land sales, and construction product development. Feges has been involved in all aspects of the Ramsey plan from its community roots as a resident of the area, to lead developer. His experience in development has generated a multitude of insights throughout the process.
Natalie Haas Steffen is a Metropolitan Council Member and thirty-year Ramsey resident. Haas Steffen has been very involved in public policy surrounding The Ramsey Town Center. On the Met Council, she chairs The Natural Resource Development Task Force, and is a member of The Transportation and Community Development Committee. She has served as Ramsey City Council member, Commissioner of The Minnesota Department of Human Services, Anoka County Commissioner, and member of The NorthStar Corridor Development Authority.
Bruce Jacobson is an urban designer, landscape architect and Principal in the firm Close Landscape Architects Inc. Jacobson has a multitude of experiences with public and private sector clients. He has helped create community plans in Denver at the height of the New Town boom and in Washington, DC. His work in the Twin Cities for the last decade includes The Como Park master plan, Midtown Greenway Corridor, White Bear Lake Marina Triangle, and the Elliot Park Neighborhood Master Plan.
Pete Keely, AIA, is an architect and urban designer and is Vice President at Elness Swenson Graham Architects, helping the firm to lead the industry in multi-family housing, urban redevelopment and community master planning. His work covers all aspects of design planning and construction on numerous projects throughout the Twin Cities and beyond, with specific focus on residentialand mixed-use developments.
Completely unlike any other based on scale of failure, based on cramdown City Hall palace building, based on you name it - others have shoppes and restaurants - that's my unlike any other example.
But ...unlike any other... well yes, in a feeling like there's a big hot stone in the pit of your stomach - so galling, unlike any other.
Feges and Keely are still at it, three-legged milking stools and all after Bruce Nedegaard took gas while they took cash, for services rendered, the great new thing being Collage Studio of Urban Design.
See, also, here, here, here, here, here and here. Summit of Ramsey Hill they call it. Probably something the neighbors hate, like Ramsey Town Center and Town Center Gardens - anger in the exurbs, for cause. And those Fegesian-Keelyan graphics - such a cutsy-hokey stench surrounding them, it could gag a maggot.
And how is all this, for bastardizing the City of Ramsey and what it once was.