"Redevelopment is tricky," said John Errigo, project manager of Metro Plains Development. "If you're in a location where it's all built up and you're doing a 200-unit high-rise, how do you dedicate land? You really can't."
Errigo said a parks dedication fee would add $600,000 to the cost of his current condominium project at the former Ramsey County Jail site in downtown St. Paul. That translates to about $2,000 more per unit, he said, which would get passed onto buyers.
Adding much needed park space at developer expense is a great idea, though I wonder how useful the kind of spaces that would be inserted into most projects would be . . . Would they be tiny, unuseable spaces, or would they be things like the oft-vauntned "public amenities" that are included in some of the more dense (i.e. tall) Minneapolis condo developements?
"hotter" areas (like the Ramsey Cty. jail site), but it might affect mariginal (i.e. poor) areas. Of course, it's those areas where we badly need infill development . . .
I guess the benefits of this proposal lie in the details, but all in all, I'm all for it.
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