Donjek :: The Cents of Place Blog

Donjek Project: Historic Hudson Manufacturing Building Reuse

I'm currently in the process of concluding work with a historic reuse team focused on next steps for the H.D. Hudson Manufacturing Building in Hastings, Minnesota. The City-owned Hudson Building is of substantial size, and offers open floor plans and high ceilings - a blank, solid canvas. The Hudson was featured as a "hot property" recently in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

From a finance perspective, the chief hurdle for historic reuse is reconciling long-term lease rates or purchase prices, with a rehabilitation investment that may include remediation, demolition, site costs, and a collection of items that can petrify typical investors: HVAC, roofs, stormwater management, vertical circulation, accessibility improvements. My role on the team, led by Will Stark of Stark Preservation Planning, has been to:

• Evaluate and quantify the long-term financial gap between the value of the building's net income and its required investment
• Identify funding sources and mechanisms that private and public parties could employ to make reuse of the building feasible in a financial sense
• Inform scenarios for the City's next steps with the building, with financial analysis. Cost, speed, and scale of reuse each impact the financial outlook for its future
• Narrate findings related to the downtown marketplace and project finance, to citizens, the City Council, and other stakeholders.

Historic structures offer uncommon attributes for the very reason that their construction occurred in a different marketplace. In the late 1800s when the Hudson Company put up the Hastings facility, materials including stone and lumber were available at lower real cost than today. The proximity of the building to the Mississippi River distinguishes the building regionally, in part because regulations have evolved to protect the river from development impacts. The reuse or demolition of the structure will, either way, continue to influence the health of downtown Hastings.

Related Articles:

• Victory in the Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition!
• Layers of Stone, Layers of Finance at Historic Fort Snelling
• St. Paul's Rice Park: Part Catalyst, Part Message

Hudson Building image courtesy of Stark Preservation Planning and Peter Musty

Urban Economies: Going with the Flow

Reading Ed Glaeser's Triumph of the City (which I mentioned in this post on transfer of ideas in cities), I learned that in the year 1816, transporting goods across land in early America cost an equivalent amount to shipping it from Boston to London. The comparative relationship tilted settlement and trade distinctly toward our waterways; construction of the Erie Canal and the Illinois and Michigan Canal completed a loop that connected four corners of the developing country. Between 1850 and 1970, at least five of the ten largest U.S. cities were located on this trade circuit.

Waterways remained critical as arteries to transport commodities and other inputs for trade and commerce; they also provided the doorway through which most entered frontier towns like my place, St. Paul. Over time, comparative pricing and relationships to rivers changed - railroads, then cars and trucks, airplanes, and digital thoroughfares provided radically cheaper modes of overland movement. 

Ports facilitate accumulation of value through transfer of material from one transportation mode to another. In the past, the fact that river ports fronted riverways was only significant in that barge transportation was cost-effective. As freight rail (for long runs) and trucks (for shorter runs) compete with river navigation, many river ports have declined. Minneapolis' Upper Harbor Terminal, for example, has managed falling volumes in recent years, the region's barge traffic dominated by the St. Paul (downriver) harbor.

Today, the relationships of "prices" continue to shift. In particular, the pressure to attract and retain talent is familiar to American mayors and business operators across the country.  In addition to creating recreation amenities, urban riverfronts also create collective open space that draws the eye through the city landscape. When perceived as safe and clean, access to river frontages creates substantial property value and economic potential. In addition to moving things in and out, the role of some riverfronts has expanded to focus on use as open space magnets that  make places more distinct and attractive. 

Our river, the Mississippi, formed and shapes both Minneapolis and St. Paul in important ways. Earlier this year, a team to which I served as regional advisor won the Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition, now evolved into the Minneapolis Riverfront Development Initiative. I've been engaged for several months managing a project focused on strengthening the connection of downtown Minneapolis to the Mississippi via the Gateway. Comparable efforts have been underway in St. Paul over the last twenty years, including the Great River Park master plan developed in the last year. This subject, conveniently, presents an opportunity for field work: I'm looking forward to August visits to Roman river towns Maastricht, Ghent, and London.

Open space and riverfronts cannot by themselves replace key economic functions such as port activities. Still, as larger forces transform cities, the prominence and role of rivers continue to be key in distinguishing prosperous regions.

Photo courtesy of pmarkham/Flickr.

Donjek Projects: Victory in the Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition!

One of multiple reasons for my extended silence on the Cents of Place blog has been my involvement in the intense exercise of the Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition. I posted in early November that my team, led by Kennedy and Violich Architecture (KVA) of Boston and the Tom Leader Studio of Berkeley, had been among four teams selected from over fifty to engage in a second round of competition.

This morning, the competition's supporters and sponsors (including the Walker Art Center, the University of Minnesota's College of Design, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, the Minneapolis Parks Foundation, and others) gathered on Nicollet Island to announce that our team is the winner of the competition!

The process, inside our team, unfolded like a charette, only on a broader and deeper scale than I’ve seen before. Since early November, this team pulled together volumes to inform a thorough approach to a complicated river corridor. There are many meeting points in the project area that each represent opportunities: Where North meets Northeast, river meets shores, trails meet bridge heads, industrial meets other land uses, central business district meets neighborhoods. Hydrology, bridge design, area culture and history (indigenous, pioneer and more recent), land use economics, institutions, equity of access to parks - these topics and many others received focused, research-driven attention. Led by Tom Leader, and Sheila Kennedy and Frano Violich of KVA, this team produced an innovative approach to tie these issues all together in physical space.

It's a privelege to be a member of this team. I've also marveled at the compelling mix of collaborators who made this possible, from the sponsors to standout project manager Mary DeLaittre. That we will together have the opportunity to continue working, focused on a particular site to be determined on the Upper River in Minneapolis, promises to be a professional highlight.

See the final proposal here.

Donjek Projects: Part of Finalist Team in Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition

I am very pleased to announce that I will be participating in a final round of competition in the Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition as part of a team led by the Tom Leader Studio and Kennedy and Violich Architecture. The competition is facilitated by a collaborative of arts, design and open space organizations, and will culminate in public presentations by the four teams selected as finalists. Other firms on the team are ConsultEcon and Sherwood Engineers.

The collaborative of sponsors is a unique and creative one, including the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, Minneapolis Parks Foundation, University of Minnesota College of Design, and the Walker Art Center. The competition's project manager is the inventive Mary deLaittre of Groundwork City Building. 

I joined the team with enthusiasm and I'm pleased to report that Donjek and its collaborators have been selected as one of four finalist teams, chosen from 55 applicants. According to Bill Morrish, a jury member for the competition and Dean of the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons the New School of Design (and founding director of the University of Minnesota's Metropolitan Design Center), the competition drew interest of teams hailing from fourteen countries across five continents. 

Teams will converge on Minneapolis late this month, and submission and public presentation of ideas will be presented in late January. The role of Donjek is to provide public finance and economic expertise, as well as local, regional and historic context to inform the ambitious goals of the team. Stay tuned for more details about our proposal! 

Revelations in Milwaukee: Historic Reuse, Natural-Lit Parking and Free Parking

I’ve returned from a recent junket to fair Milwaukee. I hadn’t been to Milwaukee in fifteen years, and parts of the city have changed dramatically since then. Two examples and a policy observation:

• I noticed on my tour of the lakeshore, the vital reuse of the Milwaukee River Flushing Station (pictured). Alterra Coffee (in combination with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and Milwaukee County) rehabilitated the station, which was built in 1888 to flush sewage harbored in the river into Lake Michigan. Does this strike you as an ironic piece of infrastructure to reuse as a coffee shop?

In fact, it works conspicuously well. The building remains owned by the sewerage district (“MMSD”), and the county owns all land from the periphery of the building to the edge of the site. The physical structure is aligned with its new mission: Pervious pavement and water filtration systems are narrated on displays constructed by the county’s parks department. The building’s lakeshore location is not surprisingly home to a brisk business moving excellent food and coffee; Alterra also sponsors a music series with wares ranging from opera to Latin American.

Special thanks to Bill Robison, Principal at Engberg Anderson, an architecture firm with offices in Milwaukee, Madison and Tucson. As the lead architect on this reuse project, Bill partnered with Alterra, MMSD and the county, and generously responded to my recent cold inquiry about its development.

• Milwaukee Art Museum’s renovation and expansion includes dramatic architecture and serves the need for a much-enhanced connection between downtown and Lake Michigan. Of course, as principal of a public finance and transportation consulting firm, I was most drawn to the underground parking garage lit with skylights (also pictured). Facilities Director Charles Loomis explained that sensors evaluate the quality of light admitted through the skylights and adjust the use of lighting to supplement, creating significant (but to date unquantified) energy cost savings to the museum.  And to preempt your question before you read below, museum parking is not free.

• A recent post at Urban Milwaukee cited SBT and Colliers data showing the median metered hourly parking rate in downtown Milwaukee is $0.63, versus a national average of $1.48. Author Jeramey Jannene suggests an oversupply of metered parking downtown has suppressed redevelopment efforts: The zoning code requires structured parking in site plans, which represents a mandate to lose money in an environment with an oversupply of cheap on-street parking.

In St. Paul, a very different discussion is taking place regarding the anticipated loss of roughly 85% of on-street parking on University Avenue as light rail transit is added to the street’s modes. At the same time, the Metropolitan Council has indicated their wish to discourage the building of structured parking just off the avenue in order to avoid the avenue’s use as a park-and-ride. Arguably, the main impact of this move is to drive up land values and favor those who control larger parcels near University. It also highlights the importance of the type of transportation consulting that Donjek’s Dan Walsh can provide, including analysis and negotiation for structured parking, shared parking, and travel demand management (TDM).

The travel log would remain incomplete without noting our visit to Sprecher Brewery, where I sampled their very fine Shakparo beer, fermented according to an African protocol using bananas.  The beer tent in Milwaukee continues to get bigger and bigger!

Photo of Milwaukee River Flushing Station: Retinal Fetish, Flickr. Parking garage photo: J. Commers

Rushford, Minnesota, or Trading Places Part 2

From Thursday to Saturday of last week, I joined other members of the Minnesota Design Team for a project in Rushford, Minnesota.  The Design Team is a volunteer organization of planners of every stripe – our team included architects, hydrologists, a transportation planner, urban designers, public finance and economic development consultants. 

The process is akin to an extended charrette based on a volume of input received from community residents.  The goal is to give additional tools and ideas to towns across Minnesota, which they can tailor and implement to improve the economic climate, physical design and political efficacy of their community.  It’s worked statewide since 1983.

For most readers, Rushford’s name will conjur images of the flash flooding that devastated the town and surrounding region in August, 2007.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers presented recent findings suggesting the rainfall (in excess of 17 inches in areas of the watershed) approximated a “500-year flood” level.  Collecting from a large area, the water converged on Rushford, flowing at over five times its usual volume and reaching a rate of 38,000 cubic feet per second.  The impact of water that topped over levees and was trapped in town by the remainder of the dike system, has been tremendous.

The financial impact of the flood will exert a toll on Rushford for years to come.  Many homeowners did not carry flood insurance, noting its cost.  Today, mortgages remain due while some properties are now a lot with a hole in the ground, the homes having been demolished and removed.  The state of recovery for businesses appears to have benefited from a state-appropriated $35 million dedicated to relief for damaged businesses across southeast Minnesota. 

Still, citizens emphasized to us that Rushford, a settlement since the 1850s, has a long history of which the flood is just one recent chapter.  The physical attributes of the place are striking – the confluence of the Root River and Rush Creek, the high bluffs typical of the geologic form known as the Driftless Area in southeast Minnesota, western Wisconsin and northeast Iowa. 

Other strengths come to mind.  School enrollment has diminished modestly but is projected to be stable in the next 5-10 years.  Tax base has increased over 10% annually since 1999.  A company called Rushford Hypersonic recently announced a partnership with the University of Minnesota to develop nanotechnology products from University research and patents.  From one large coop employer in town, I heard words I don’t often hear:  “We have adequate access to a pool of skilled workers.”  Each of these trends is significant and positive.

Rushford and Washington, D.C. – the first subject in this series – are more different than they are alike.  However, one of the key themes I discussed in the last post was the need for public and private entities to invest together in the success of places and the people who create them.  Rushford is a great example of a community prepared to distinguish itself through investment of financial and sweat equity.  My chief hope, beyond their success, is that these investments address safeguarding the town from future flooding.

"Lots of Energy in the Street" - Dutch Firm Produces Solar and Geothermal System Underneath

Ever run your car over the heating system of an office building? If you’ve been to Scharwoude in the Netherlands, you may have – but you would not have known it. As reported in this week’s Economist magazine, Dutch company Ooms Avenhorn Group has developed a heating and cooling system that relies on asphalt roadways and underlying aquifers. The company’s offices in Scharwoude are heated and cooled using this method. An excerpt of the article:

"The heat-collector itself is a circuit of connected water pipes. Most of them run from one side of the street to the other, just under the asphalt layer. Some, however, dive deep into the ground. In summer, when the surface of the street gets hot, water pumped through the pipes picks up this heat and takes it underground through one of the diving pipes. About 100 metres down lies a natural aquifer into which a series of heat exchangers have been built. The hot water from the street runs through them, warming the groundwater, before returning to the surface via another pipe. The aquifer is thus used as a heat store.

In winter, the circuit is changed slightly. Water is pumped through the heat exchangers to pick up the heat that was stored during summer. This water goes into the Ooms building and is used to warm it up. The water is then pumped under the asphalt, and the residual heat it carries helps to keep the road free of snow and ice. By now the water has been cooled to near freezing point, and it is once again sent underground—this time through a different pipe, to a second aquifer. Here, another set of heat exchangers is used to cool the groundwater. This store of cold water is then used in summer to keep the Ooms building cool.

The result is cheap heating in winter and cheap cooling in summer. And there is a bonus. Summer heating softens asphalt, making it easier for heavy traffic to damage the road surface. Dr de Bondt's system not only saves electricity, but also saves the road. Expect to see more examples of it, in other countries, soon."

Janet Attarian (project manager of Chicago’s new initiative to use alleys more productively) asked in a recent New York Times article, “can you make alleys do more for you?” Converting streets into energy collection and storage facilities may just qualify.

Why is this important? It could serve several significant ends:

 • Generating and storing energy through this combined solar/geothermal method provides a financial hedge against significant price fluctuations of conventional alternatives such as natural gas.

• Moving some infrastructure for heating and cooling under the street may increase the square footage available for the primary building purpose, be it housing, manufacturing, office or retail.

• Making streets and alleys “work for you” as energy infrastructure increases the intensity of use of urban land and bolsters tax base, providing support for the private and public efforts required for regions to differentiate.

Photo:  Courtesy of Flickr.

Placemaker News Miscellany, 11.26.2007

With the News Service now up and running, it’s tempting for me to make note of a sample of stories of interest to the placemaking audience: 

• Chicago’s Green Alleys initiative is featured in an article published in today’s New York Times, which notes that the city’s paved alleys represent an area equivalent to “five midsize airports.” The initiative’s project manager, Janet Attarian, asks in the article, “if you’ve got to resurface an alley anyway, can you make it do more for you?” In addition to reducing the volume of stormwater runoff (and consequent public and private cost), attention focused on alleys could lead to a broader, fruitful discussion about using this land more productively in a financial and economic sense.

• Relocating a State Fairground is bound to be contentious, as is the case in Lincoln, Nebraska, where university officials have proposed construction of a research campus financed via public-private partnership. Read a short column by University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman here.

• Market jitters today are pushing the price of Treasury bills and notes up, as investors migrate toward securities with minimal risk. The result of increased prices for these bonds is to reduce yields or interest rates. For placemakers using private or public capital, this will be a critical dynamic to monitor, with the hope that we avoid combined low-growth, inflationary condition known as “stagflation” experienced in the ‘70s.

Water Resources Development Act of 2007 - Law via Override

Domestic infrastructure, in all its glory! 

Today, the U.S. Senate joined the House in overriding a Presidential veto of the Water Resources Development Act.  The override represents the President’s first and is covered well in this article in the New York Times and this one in the Washington Post. 

Following the 79-14 vote to pass the $23 billion water bill over Presidential veto, the Senate passed a $151 billion health, education and labor spending bill.  And as the Post article notes, House and Senate conferees reached agreement on a transportation and housing investment bill.  The adjacent map represents the override vote in the House yesterday; U.S. States are sized in proportion to population and hence representation in Congress.  

Coverage in the next few days will focus on the overall cost of the bill and the override politics, but for those of you interested in some of the contents of the legislation, below is a sampling of significant provisions.  Gluttons, reach the full text of the bill here. 

(Sec. 2004) Directs the Secretary to prepare a compilation of U.S. laws related to water resources development enacted after November 8, 1966, and before January 1, 2008.

(Sec. 2009) Directs the Secretary to expedite any authorized planning, design, and construction of a flood damage reduction project for an area that, within the preceding five years, has been subject to flooding that resulted in the loss of life and caused damage of sufficient magnitude to warrant a declaration of a major disaster by the President.

(Sec. 2013) Authorizes the Secretary, at the request of a governmental agency or nonfederal interest, to provide technical assistance in managing water resources, including the provision and integration of hydrologic, economic, and environmental data and analyses.

(Sec. 2017) Directs the Secretary to provide public access to water resource and related water quality data in the custody of the Corps of Engineers. [Ed:  Currently exploring whether this could represent a GIS bonanza].

(Sec. 2032) Directs the President to report to Congress describing U.S. vulnerability to damage from flooding, including: (1) an assessment of the extent to which programs relating to flooding address flood risk reduction priorities; (2) the extent to which those programs may be encouraging development and economic activity in flood-prone areas; and (3) recommendations for improving those programs.

(Sec. 3177) Authorizes the Secretary to undertake research on water quality issues affecting the Mississippi River and the development of remediation strategies.

(Sec. 4050) - The Secretary shall conduct a study and prepare a report to evaluate the integrity of the bulkhead system located on and in the vicinity of Duluth-Superior Harbor, Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin, including determination of the causes of corrosion to the bulkhead system and an estimate of the cost of addressing the problem and making necessary repairs.

(Sec. 5158) Authorizes additional assistance for projects including the following samples:

CENTRAL IRON RANGE SANITARY SEWER DISTRICT, MINNESOTA - $12,000,000 for wastewater infrastructure for the Central Iron Range Sanitary Sewer District, Minnesota.

CENTRAL LAKE REGION SANITARY DISTRICT, MINNESOTA - $2,000,000 for sanitary sewer and wastewater infrastructure for the Central Lake Region Sanitary District, Minnesota.

GOODVIEW, MINNESOTA - $3,000,000 for water quality infrastructure, Goodview, Minnesota.

GRAND RAPIDS, MINNESOTA - $5,000,000 for wastewater infrastructure, Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

WILLMAR, MINNESOTA - $15,000,000 for wastewater infrastructure, Willmar, Minnesota.

WINSTON-SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA - $3,000,000 for stormwater upgrades, City of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY, CALIFORNIA- $20,000,000 for the planning, design, and construction of water related infrastructure for Santa Monica Bay and the coastal zone of Los Angeles County, California.

(Title VII) - Provisions related to the Louisiana Coastal Area.

Placemaking requires dependable, quality infrastructure for wastewater, drinking water, and river navigation, among others.  In their most recent report card for U.S. infrastructure (released 2005), the American Society of Civil Engineers graded each these categories of U.S. infrastructure with a D-.  Making places differently will need to be an increasingly prominent part of the infrastructure solution, and so is investment.  Today's override is a good step. 

New Manual is Not Just Shuffling Cards on Stormwater Management

Stormwater management has been an ongoing thread of discussion here, as has been the campaign to make public finance concepts and decisions more graphic and communicable.  An excellent publication emerged last Friday that promises to serve as a contribution on both fronts.

Using funding from the McKnight Foundation, the St. Paul Riverfront Corporation and SRF Consulting Group worked with a review group of private- and public-sector peers to compile a compact guide to innovative stormwater management measures.  The “Water Quality Manual,” while developed locally, offers a lengthy menu of ways to reduce public and private costs on four scales:  Site, block, neighborhood, and city.  An excerpt of topics:

Site Scale

Permeable pavers

Phosphorous reduction

Dry wells

Cisterns

Block Scale

Underground retention/filtration

Infiltration trenches

Flow-through planters

Swales

Neighborhood Scale

Shoreline stabilization

Low impact development

Oil and grit separators

Alum treatment

City Scale

Street sweeping and vacuuming

Watershed groups

Water monitoring

In addition to solid, if summary, content on each topic, the information is presented on cards bound together with a screw.  The deck can be unscrewed and separated for browsing at development meetings, city council work sessions, charettes – and reshuffled to reflect measures that best fit a particular project.

Akin to some of the decision tools produced by Donjek, this manual will be a useful tool for decision making in both private and public sectors.  Contact the St. Paul Riverfront Corporation for a copy.