MoZaic starts construction; office & retail space coming soon
Business, Featured, Real Estate — By Thatcher Imboden on January 27, 2011 7:40 am
The MoZaic project in Uptown Minneapolis looking west from the Fremont Avenue bridge over the Midtown Greenway
Yesterday, the MoZaic project started construction by erecting a fence and doing other preparation work on site. The project, located on the surface parking lot behind the Lagoon Cinema, will bring 65,000 sq. ft. of Class A office space along with 13,000 sq. ft. of restaurant space by January 2012. The project also includes 436 stalls of structured public parking and 120 stalls of surface parking, which greatly improves public parking in Uptown by consolidating parking into several district facilities. A large public plaza along with a pedestrian/bike bridge and ramp will connect the core Uptown area with the Midtown Greenway trails at Girard Avenue.
Rendering of the MoZaic project looking north from the intersection of Lagoon Avenue and Girard Avenue.
Disclosure: The author of this blog works for The Ackerberg Group, the developer of the project.
The press release is below:
For immediate release
Contact:
Susan Diamond
952-926-4411
sdiamond@jigsawunlimited.com65,000 sq.ft. Class A Office and 13,000 sq.ft. Restaurant Space Under Construction in Uptown
January 26, 2011 | Minneapolis, MN – The Ackerberg Group announced that construction commenced today on MoZaic, a 65,000 square foot, Class A office and 13,000 square foot restaurant/commercial development project in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The project is located on Lagoon Avenue between Hennepin and Fremont Avenues, just south of the Midtown Greenway, north of the Lagoon Cinema and adjacent to the Uptown Transit Station.
MoZaic is the first speculative office project initiated in Minneapolis since 2008. In addition to the office and restaurant space, the 10-story, mixed-use building will feature 436 structured parking stalls and 120 surface parking stalls. A large urban plaza will offer outdoor dining, public seating, and public art, adding add vibrancy to the plaza. The project will also provide much needed direct access to the core of Uptown from the Midtown Greenway bike and pedestrian trails by adding a new ramp and bridge at Girard Avenue.
Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak said, “The MoZaic groundbreaking is a great victory for Minneapolis that is based on years of great work by the developer and the community to create a new Uptown landmark. We’re particularly pleased that MoZaic will bring more daytime office workers to Uptown and create an exciting new public plaza and Greenway connection and we can’t wait to see the finished product.”
The project will improve public parking in Uptown by nearly doubling the existing public parking on the site to over 550 stalls. The public parking ramp will occupy floors two through seven in the building and will feature a six-story “green” wall facing the plaza.
MoZaic is expected to be complete in January 2012 and will provide much needed Class A space in Uptown, a market known for limited open floor plates and few Class A buildings. The top three floors (floors 8, 9 and 10) of the building will contain office space totaling over 65,000 square feet. The floor-to-ceiling glass structure will step back on each floor to create deck space for tenants and add to the building’s architectural impact. Floor plates range from approximately 18,000 to 24,000 square feet and will feature unobstructed views of downtown Minneapolis, Lake Calhoun, Lake of the Isles, and south Minneapolis.
Minneapolis Ward 10 City Council Member Meg Tuthill expressed her enthusiasm for the project, commenting, “I am thrilled about the 65,000 square feet of office space in the MoZaic project because Uptown needs day jobs.”
Developer Stuart Ackerberg expressed being thrilled with beginning this important new project for Uptown, saying, “We are grateful to so many for their help and effort in getting this project started. We hope that the neighborhoods and community are proud of the completed development and the addition of a wonderful public gathering place at MoZaic. We are blessed to call Uptown home and add to its economy and vibrancy.”
A future phase of development is anticipated on the east side of the site and could accommodate 100,000 to 150,000 square feet of additional commercial, residential or mixed-use space.
In addition to The Ackerberg Group as developer, the project team consists of BKV Group as architect and Ryan Companies as general contractor.
Financing is being provided, in part, by MidCountry Bank and through Recovery Zone Facility Revenue Bonds issued by the City of Minneapolis and marketed by Dougherty & Company. Hennepin County’s Transit Oriented Development funds will assist in the funding of the pedestrian/bike bridge and trail connection to the Midtown Greenway.
For more information, please contact Stuart Ackerberg at 612-924-6400 or visit www.ackerberg.com .
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Thatcher Imboden
How cities work and change, how they are the product of their inhabitants and outside forces, and the resulting livability keep me thinking and dreaming about the future. I work in urban real estate development, am Past President of an Uptown business organization, grew up in Uptown, was on an Uptown neighborhood association Board, and am an Uptown and Lyn-Lake historian.
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12 Comments
Awesome. Uptown will definitly be more vibrant with daytime foot traffic. This is a badly needed addition! Kudos to those who are making this happen in uncertain times.
http://www.startribune.com/business/114766334.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O%3ADW3ckUiD3aPc%3A_Yyc%3AaUvckD8EQDUX
Ugh – public subsidy for parking in Uptown? (Specifically, $9.3 million in Recovery Zone Revenue Bonds.) I know Uptown “needs” parking, but in reality there’s plenty of parking available – just not people who are willing to pay the price for parking. Parking is an unproductive use of space and in this case, a BAD public investment.
To be clear, I do think that this project brings many, many good things to Uptown.
Thatcher – on an alternative note, in the interest of full disclosure, it would be an unforgivable omission if this weren’t posted on this site, but I’d like to see an acknowledgment in the post that this project is developed by your employer.
It was posted at the bottom of the post that I work the developer. I can try to edit its location if you feel that it wasn’t well positioned enough. I could see how it could be lost. I also have not posted any opinions on this project on this site and posted just the facts.
As a side note, the way the bonds work (to the best of my knowledge) is that the Feds decided that they’d forgo future tax revenue on the income from the interest paid on these bonds. They determined how many total dollars could be issued and allocated it around the country to different levels of governments, such as to cities, counties or states. Ultimately, the actual cash for a $9 million bond is coming from a private source and not the government. I believe the idea of the particular program was to get money that’s on the side lines and not being invested to get out there and fund projects. By funding projects they’re getting people jobs, those people are earning income and paying income tax, and then the property will be built and help catalyze other development, meanwhile in some cases (like ours) paying property taxes.
I understand your concern about parking, but I’d argue that Uptown’s parking “problem” is one of too much surface land dedicated to parking. Consolidated district parking, as desired in the Uptown Small Area Plan, will hopefully lead to fewer surface lots as the bulk of parking will be consolidated in a more land-efficient model.
We need to have coffee soon.
RE: disclosure – I absolutely agree that the article was fair and factual, and I think it’s important you cover Ackerberg’s work here. I don’t typically read press releases attached to articles, so I’d prefer to see the disclosure in the body of the article. Additionally, not all readers know you’re employed by Ackerberg, so that should be explicit.
Coffee! yes.
Thanks for the feedback. I’ve edited to move up the disclosure above the press release as opposed at the bottom of the post. I appreciate the feedback, as I try to run an above-the-board operation.
I’m all for consolidated parking. How could something like this compare to, say, the parking situation in Old Pasadena? I know those garages (or \structures,\ as they say in California) are city-built, but the revitalization of that area into a bustling, vibrant urban center has been attributed to the management of parking. I don’t know much about the ins and outs of parking and city requirements and the like, but could this garage help Uptown in the same way? Will other stores and restaurants outside of the project be able to count some of its spaces towards city requirements? It seems that as long as the city requires businesses to be able to provide parking, that anything we can do to perhaps minimize those requirements and/or concentrate them into fewer, more efficient spots makes a great deal of sense. If that could be used to help support smaller, independent businesses or restaurants (i.e. the kinds I like to go to!) by making them more affordable or accessible, then all the better. Will this project help with that?
I suppose I should say that I’m related to Thatcher, but that doesn’t have any bearings on my opinion. I actually think the new design is kind of unattractive, but I also realize that it’s probably the best one can do given the height restrictions. I vaguely remember the (now very old) renderings of an elegant, twisting tower; that would have been wonderful. The green wall is a nice touch. How do those work in the winter? The most exciting thing about the project, though, is the prospect of more daytime jobs in Uptown. That will be a wonderful thing for the neighborhood.
Interesting you should mention Old Town Pasadena. My girlfriend is from there, so we spend a lot of time in Old Town. Apparently, not too many years back Old Town was a pretty dumpy place… and one thing I hear mentioned is that much of the land was consumed by surface level parking lots. Now, parking is consolidated to a few large ramps and the streetscape is an incredible mix of offices, shopping, dining, and nightlife. I sort of envision Uptown looking like Old Town Pasadena in the future, at least I hope it will. Right now Uptown looks more like Old Town in the immediate hours after the Rose Parade, when all of the businesses have their windows boarded up (joking… sort of).
Slightly off topic, but the one major bottleneck to growth in Uptown may be accessibility by car. Yes, it’s great for biking and walking and the bus station helps, but the roads are congested much of the time, especially in the winter when half of the lanes dissappear due to snow. Not much better in the summer with the added foot traffic. And the lack of dedicated left turn lanes is ridiculous. What I mean is, it can take 20 minutes or more to get to a freeway from Hennepin and Lake, even in off hours. And that’s a major deterent to visiting the area… at least that’s what my friends in the burbs say. Old Town Pasadena is adjacent to I-210 and the Gold Line light rail runs right through it. And they have the intelligence to have six way pedestrian crosswalks on the busy intersections, so everyone can cross the street in all directios at once and get it over with.
While I’m sure many of the jobs in the new office space will be occupied by Uptown residents, there’s no doubt many people will commute in. As Uptown continues to develop, the traffic situation will only get worse. It’s ridiculous that they plan to run light rail around Uptown and not through it.
I think at some point a detailed side-by-side comparison of Uptown and Old Pasadena could be useful. My first impression of that part of Pasadena was that it seemed like a bigger, more round-the-clock Uptown. I first encountered that part of Pasadena after it had become fully revitalized (we moved to LA in 2005), but I’ve seen the photos from as recently as the 1990s; it has definitely come a long way. Donald Shoup’s book The High Price of Free Parking spends a great deal of time discussing how the parking garages and meter management (and use of the revenue) was part of what has made that area so successful. In the process of researching Pasadena business history for a book and museum exhibit I got the chance to speak with many of the people involved in those changes, and they all agreed that addressing the parking issue was one of, if not THE, key to their success. Another nice touch is the universal valet system; you can drop your car off at one valet location, then pick it up at another. And of course the Gold Line.
I have a bunch of other comments about Pasadena, but I’ll hold off for now. (like those streetlights! I also love those six-way crosswalks; it seems like an obvious solution for intersections like Hennepin and Lake) In the meantime, I agree that like it or not, the traffic and parking situation in Uptown needs to be addressed, and hope that the Mozaic garage can somehow be a part of a solution.
Re: Parking consolidation. A local example is 50th and France. There are three ramps in the area that consolidate parking. But there are three surface lots in the area: In front of Lunds, around the postal station, and east of the shops on France between 50th and 51st. I do think the relatively small number of surface lots does add to the appeal of the area.
Regarding the particular project, I think it points out the need for better transit in the area. But I do like the the possible addition of more daytime jobs, the plaza, and the greenway connection.
I’m confused about how tall the building will be – it looks like the 6 parking ramp stories are going to be half the height of the other 4. Does that mean it’ll be closer in height to a 7 story building?
Alex, it’s a 10 story building that’s 112′ tall. That would translate to 11.2′ floor to floor height if each floor were equal height. That’s not as tall as a 10-story office building (which can often have taller floor-to-floors) but is certainly taller than a typical 10-story apartment building. The ground floor restaurant space has a taller floor, which is typical for that sort of space. The garage is fairly compact height-wise, then with fairly decent height on the office building.