It has been a long time since I’ve posted an installment of my “Suburb of the Month” series on transit in the Twin Cities suburbs, mostly due to my limited ability to take pictures at this time. However, I have a picture relevant to the Excelsior area, and even though it wasn’t my planned next […]
Many people want to live in a new-construction, detached home, but the traditional way to achieve that – owning your own house and lot – may not be achievable or desirable for all. Part one of this series covered two options: owning the interior only of a detached structure, either a traditional detached townhome, or […]
There’s many advantages to living in a detached house – they generally offer more space, more separation and privacy from neighbors, and a discrete place to drive up to, look at, and call your own. But there’s definitely drawbacks to the primary ways of acquiring a detached home (owning a house and land or renting […]
Our current world situation led me to think about the song Downtown’s Dead, by the esteemed urbanist and bro-country performer Sam Hunt. Although I doubt that a global pandemic was on his mind when he penned this tune in 2018, it does raise a question that increasingly is being pondered. Is downtown dead? Most employers […]
On why structured parking is allegedly problematic for regional retail in general, which is causing problems at West End. This installment will look at the overall evolution of regional retail – from downtown, to the regional malls, to lifestyle centers like West End. Downtown 2.0: The Mall With the massive movement of people to the […]
Much as Golden Valley is the closest suburb to downtown Minneapolis, West Saint Paul is the closest suburb to downtown Saint Paul. Unlike Golden Valley, West Saint Paul has fairly good transit, especially on Robert St. No streetcars ran in West Saint Paul, though three streetcar lines ran from downtown Saint Paul to the city […]
Hello, streets.mn readers! My name is John Charles Wilson and I have a history of commenting on this blog. Now I am taking the plunge and writing posts of my own. This post is planned to be the first in a series about public transit in the Twin Cities suburbs, how good or bad it […]
Your author has spent a good deal of time in Lakeville. My wife grew up there, and it’s where my in-laws still live. In fact, our family of four lived there for a summer in between selling and buying a house. My father-in-law runs a small business there, and I’ve even spent a number of […]
On my bus ride home each day the bus takes me by the vacant former Edina Public Works site in the Grandview district. I’m not the first to write about this topic – there’s an entire section of the city website dedicated to this parcel of land. Dating back to 2014, the Star Tribune did […]
The new I-35W Minnesota River Bridge will include a “pedestrian trail” to accommodate walkers and bikers across the Minnesota River. This is great news for folks commuting across the Minnesota River, as the nearest year-round crossing of the river is seven miles downstream at I-494. There’s a catch, though. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) […]