Lake and Minnehaha c. 1938
This week’s podcast is a roundtable conversation about East Lake Street featuring Sam Newberg, one of our regular contributors. As part of his day job, Sam recently completed a study on development potential of the East Lake corridor, which runs from Hiawatha East to the Mississippi River. Sam, Spencer Agnew, Nate Hood and myself met up at Merlin’s Rest on East Lake street last week to talk about the study, and all over our indivdual thoughts about the past and future of East Lake street. Our conversation covered a lot of ground, from form based codes to auto-oriented development to the story of the West River Commons to different potential futures of the street. This is going to be the first of many streets dot em en round tables, and I hope you enjoy our conversation..
The file is here. You can subscribe to the whole thing on iTunes.
Good show, I obviously have an interest in this area (see my URL)!
A few things…
1. Isn't the Lander group now in charge of the 46th and 46th building after the previous developer bailed?
2. Molly Quinn's was actually supposed to be in the West River Commons building, but when the original building burned down prior to completion, they had to seek another location, and thus the old Embers building.
I think the hypothetical $5m question answered it all. Even with the money, coming up with a real idea is hard. People talk about residential/retail, but what small retail spots are looking for spaces?
It's a mess.
Good questions –
"Isn’t the Lander group now in charge of the 46th and 46th building after the previous developer bailed?" – I don't know. I'll look into it.
"Molly Quinn’s was actually supposed to be in the West River Commons building, but when the original building burned down prior to completion, they had to seek another location, and thus the old Embers building." Interesting. I had no idea. East Lake Street sometimes feels like a world in and of itself. Not much information seems to get out about it.
"I think the hypothetical $5m question answered it all. Even with the money, coming up with a real idea is hard. People talk about residential/retail, but what small retail spots are looking for spaces?" Agreed. It's tough. I think a lot of times, it's about the cultural change more so than any physical change – although, physcial urban form changes help a lot – but there needs to be a will, a way and a market to make it actually happen.