[Mpls] Building Height

[md]

An article in this week's Skyway News (July 4-10) reports on the condo project
by Magellan, Village Green and BKV... These were the guys who "somehow" grew their 
project to a ridiculous 48 floors...which apparently drew the ire and scorn
of Citizens for a Loring Park Community.

The architect's drawings of the 48 and now the 39 story structures
seems oddly out of proportion to reality...deliberately?

I was walking around Oak Grove and Groveland looking for the surviving 
buildings of architect Edward Somerby Stebbins...two (or perhaps more)
of which have been devoured by condos or apartments and I wondered
if Loring Park is the most condo/apartment intensive neighborhood 
in Minneapolis?

I thought I'd find out how many are in Loring Park, but only found a few...
Perhaps the earliest are the apartments built in 1912 facing Loring Park 
with long balconies bedecked with bicycles...then there are some
double towers...Summit house, Loring Green East and West, Mendota Homes 
and Greenway Gables, and One Ten Grant which was possibly the tallest, 
topping out at 32 stories?    

And then there's "The Groveland" which makes no sense at all...
it looks like 7 floors, but it's spread all over the place like one of those 
squiddy things from The Matrix and it's hovering over the edge of 35W.  
Who would want to live there?  
 
Perhaps CLPC said "Yes!" to the Eitel project because they are mostly
condo/apartment dwellers and think another one is just fine...but
do they realize just how TALL 39 stories is?

Is there some kind of greed-machine viagra fueled competition to
build the tallest condo in Minneapolis?  Why agree to that?

Neither Loring Park, Lowry Hill or Elliot Park need to be over-run
with these monolithic skypollutin towers.  These neighborhoods
are the historic heart of Minneapolis.  They should not be glassed
and steeled and Starbucksed to oblivion.

Anyway...it's worth taking a moment to remember why Eitel hospital was built 
and the people who lived or worked there...
http://www.mnmed.org/publications/MNMed2003/September/Holtan2.html


Madeline Douglass
Kingfield