The Saint Paul Condo Blog

Here is a great photo I took on Thursday night.  The Cathedral was under the lights Wednesday and Thursday night in honor of its 100 year anniversary of the laying of the corner stone.

Did I mention that I LOVE my new camera??

Anywho, it's getting late - time to recharge the phone's battery and I guess mine too!  I am hosting a Sunday Tour tomorrow from 11am to 4pm at the Pointe of Saint Paul, where I currently have 4 listings.  If you are in the neighborhood, stop on down.  You can see why so many people love living at the Pointe!

A while back (maybe even a previous blog software) I wrote about how River Park Lofts installed Trex Decking on their balconies only to have them removed after they failed City inspection (even though they were green lighted by a different department).  Well, River Park Lofts basically threw away $70,000 worth of decking and replaced it with aluminum.  The other option they had was to add frost proof sprinkler heads to all of the balconies, a far more expensive option.  The reason the City is so against Trex (or wood for that matter) is of the combustible nature of the material.  Trex decking may not catch fire, but that's not to say it won't melt.  Losing its load capacity quickly!

Well Trex reared its ugly head again!  This time, the problem was caught in time.  Bonnie Jean Flats just finished hanging their balconies to the back of the building and were picking the Trex color options when it was brought to their attention of River Park's fiasco.  Now they too are looking at the aluminum option.

There are not of a lot of examples of hanging balconies in Saint Paul, so I guess this leads to the problem.  Buildings like the Pointe, City Walk, Gallery Tower, and others all have concrete balconies that were poured as part of the whole floor of the building, making them a little more impervious to fire.

Ah, the joys of being a developer!  I'm glad I'm a Realtor ;)

Now this is what is fun about living in Downtown!  Mears Park is a beehive of activity with the Nature's Valley Grand Prix stage one racing around it. I took some great photos and a really cool video.  I didn't stand in this location long, even though I was protected (ha!) by a hay bail, I didn't want to see how well it would hold if a biker whizzing by at 30mph crashed into it.  I bumped into a lot of residents from River Park Lofts and I could tell that they also enjoyed the extra activity from the race.  Lately, Mears Park has been the hot bed of activity.  Between McNally Smith's lunch time concerts, Music in Mears every Thursday Night through the summer, and this race, it's been a huge increase of fun activities!!

I really feel that Downtown, even though the market is down, that it's about to bloom.  There is so much happening that it's only a matter of time before Downtown really sees the benefit of true urban living.

This has been floating around for about two weeks, the possibility of a Lund's in Downtown.  The paper reported today that the Penfield development, the City, and Lund's are talking about the possibility of adding a Lund's to Downtown.  The early plan sounds like they would nix the slow selling, multilevel, million dollar townhomes that front Robert Street.  This would only remove about six condos from the overall project, but a huge added selling point, and one of the larger stumbling blocks for condo sales in general.

I'm sure the sales at the Penfield would really heat up if they could come to terms with Lund's.  The article in the paper also mentioned that there are already two other smaller grocery stores in downtown, I nearly fell off my chair laughing this morning when I read that!  Calling those small markets grocery stores is a horrible choice of words.  The two stores are more closely related to a Super America with no gas pumps than a grocery store!

Would a Lund's find a large enough customer base in Downtown?  That is a better question than I can answer, plus I am highly addicted to the Super Target in West Saint Paul.  My gut tells me that we would need more high-end condos to have a Lund's or its equivalent.  Would the 300 condos the Penfield bring do the trick?  Time will tell.

Tonight was the second show for the summer long Music in Mears concert series running until the end of August every Thursday night in Mears Park.

This show was the best attended concert in the three year history with my guestimate of 300+- (CORRECTION Joe Spencer with the Mayor's office put the estimat at closer to 400-500) people in attendance.  Two great bands played, the Melismatics and the Honeydogs.

It was a great show, I'll be there again next Thursday from 6pm to 9pm.  I'll be the guy sitting at the blue booth with the Infinity logo.  For all of you RE pros, that's Jay Mahaffey from the Summit Group in the lower right corner.

The condo and loft directory is really the shining feature of my website and I am always looking for ways to make it better.  I recently updated the main page of the directory to include photos, but now I have my sights on the actual building pages. 

Below is a link to a beta page I am working on.  Check it out, and let me know what you think using the comments below this post.  It's a lot of work to update all of the builsing pages to this new style, so i want to make sure you, the actual user of my site, likes it better than the current version.

www.YourStPaulHome.com/beta1

As promised, here are a few photos from the Millard Fillmore Dinner that was held in May.  Next year, I'll make sure to bring my camera!

Above is Amy Sperling (left) and Sheila Berger (Right) from the Penfield.  These two are the best sales reps in the Twin Cities ;)

The turn out for the event was pegged at about 1300 people!  It was quite the get-together.

Here is a picture of Brian Sweeney (Developer for the Farmers Market Flats) learning about about the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary & Trail.

Thanks Caroline for sending the photos!

The Farmers Market Flats development has meet their pre-sale requirements and the ground-breaking is scheduled for June 26th of this year!

To celebrate, we are having a lemonade and treats party tomorrow night from 4pm to 7pm.  This will be one of the last opportunities to purchase a flat at the pre-construction prices!

We will also have on display plenty of interior selections and new, computer generated interior renderings.

Stop on down and tell them you heard about it here!