Wednesday, May 10, 2006

3 Finals Down One More To Go Then…Cabin Time!!

Monday, the first final was submitted for PA 5221 in the form of our final development project. Nick and I chose the Bunge Grain Elevator next to Van Cleve Park in the Southeast Como neighborhood of Minneapolis. The site is currently under consideration for redevelopment by Project for Pride and Living (PPL) and Urban Works Architecture with over 150 units of housing. Our project was only able to create about 49 units of housing on the site, however, the project showed the difficulty and high stress of real estate projects. I had several sites in mind before we settled on the Bunge project, including a commercial property on the corner of Larpanteur and Lindig that could be better used as a 3 to 4-story rental property for students with classes on the St. Paul campus and to increase the amount of rental properties to offset the over investment in condos. Rental properties have their place and uses in society, renting although not a long-term benefit can have benefits for the short term.

Tuesday involved a final in Understanding the Urban Environment from 8:00 till 10:00 AM that went fairly well and spent the rest of the day resting. Today then consisted of a final quiz in comm 3431 Persuasion Theory and working on the take-home final for John Adam’s American Cities II class. I think of all my classes at the University, I was the most disappointed with Adam’s class. While he has done great things for the Urban Studies and Geography departments of the University and for the state of Minnesota, there was nothing ground breaking about his class. For me, it was heavy repetition from Judith Martin’s Intro to Urban Studies 2 years ago. A much better transportation class was Fundamentals of Transit Planning that I took Spring Semester of 2005.

The take-home final is due Friday in the afternoon leaving me this evening and all day Thursday to finish it. Friday, my folks, Kristen and I are all heading to the Cabin for some needed rest and relaxation and to put the dock into the lake. The weather calls for rain, so hopefully we can catch up on some good movie and television watching as well as some delicious air popped popcorn from the Presto Air Popper.

Finals week is coming to an end and I hope everyone had a great semester. We’ll need to have a celebration before leaving the house of 1715 Lindig.

Until next time,

Andrew

1 comment:

Unknown said...

A celebration would be fabulous!