“Places Rated” Sweepstakes In acting, there are the Oscars, the Emmies, the Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild awards — not to mention countless film festivals (Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, etc.) each awarding its own equivalent of statuettes and blue ribbons. So, too, there is now a cottage industry of publications that rank the “best” places....Read More
Defective Designs — & Their Fallout Usually when a nuclear reactor is first shut down, an electric pump pulls heated water from the vessel to a heat exchanger, and cool water from a river or ocean is brought in to draw off that heat. But at the Japanese reactors, after losing electric power, that system could not...Read More
A Year to Remember — With 9-plus Months to Go Looking back over the last — oh — couple decades, there are years that simply fade into history, when nothing memorable or significant seemed to happen. Like 1994. Or 2006. Or the seventies. 2011 is not going to be one of those years. Between the political...Read More
Good Bones, But Needs Rehab Age: 20-plus years Square feet: 830,000 Location : Downtown Minneapolis How much: estimated rehab budget of $120 million. Unless your fixer upper happens to host NBA games, don’t expect Mayor R.T. Rybak to propose a “public-private partnership” to help defray your costs. Yet, that’s exactly what’s being contemplated to help...Read More
$3.19 to $3.29 to $3.39 to ??? It seemed odd, at least to me, that Twin Cities gas prices were seemingly stuck at $3.19 a gallon even as turmoil in the Middle East spread and the price of a barrel of oil shot toward $100. The other shoe landed with a thud earlier this week,...Read More
Once upon a time, when “MF” really had no other connonation, it was fine to abbreviate “Multi-Family” as “MF.” However, as real estate get both “younger” and more online, I suspect that “MF” is increasingly associated with another, not-so-nice definition. So, here’s my advice to MLS: time to retire “MF,” and substitute “Duplex,” “Triplex,” and...Read More
