Oasis of Liberty?
By Mitch Berg
Word has it that one of my favorite downtown Saint Paul buildings – the Endicott/Pioneer building – has been bought by someone who intends to empty it, and lease the space to groups and organizations involved with next year’s national GOP convention.
Local DFLers are, predictably, snivelling like spoiled toddlers.
Gosh – downtown Saint Paul has a huge vacancy rate, and someone wants to come in and fill that space with paying customers, displacing whatever current customers are there to move to other office space…
…yeah. The horror.
Note to the new owners; install water cannon.
June 15th, 2007 at 6:38 am
I worked in the Endicott for a year back in the 90s. Fine old building. I loved the arcade connecting it with the Pioneer Press building. The stairs on the first floor are marble, and deeply grooved from over 100 years of foot traffic.
June 15th, 2007 at 6:58 am
Let me get this straight… You think it’s a GOOD idea to kick out the long term paying tenants so that the new building owner can make a quick buck leasing to the RNC?
Brilliant. Kick out the current tenants just when the rental costs are about to inflate because of the convention. You’ve just lost at least three more downtown businesses.
June 15th, 2007 at 7:22 am
Snivelling spoiled toddler = Doug.
June 15th, 2007 at 7:48 am
Did the arcade have Tempest?
Avoid spikes!
Or Tron? I could never ride that motorcycle, but I liked blasting out of the cone.
June 15th, 2007 at 7:55 am
That’s a cool building. Angryclown also recalls a spinning restaurant on top of a hotel in your town – with not much to look at but all the bacon you can eat. Also lots of those habitrails downtown so you don’t have to go outside ever.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Let me get this straight… You think it’s a GOOD idea to kick out the long term paying tenants so that the new building owner can make a quick buck leasing to the RNC?
Oh, I’m sorry, Doug – I wasn’t aware you were privy to the new owners’ post-09/08 plans!
Because buying a century-old piece of real estate in a depressed downtown is such a great way to make a “quick buck”.
Brilliant. Kick out the current tenants
Right. That never happens otherwise with commercial real estate.
just when the rental costs are about to inflate because of the convention.
For starters – better before than after, huh?
You don’t sound like you know much about Saint Paul, by the way; for a downtown with a 20-30% vacancy rate, rents are already pretty inflated.
You’ve just lost at least three more downtown businesses.
Assuming they leave downtown Saint Paul – and that’s what you’re doing, assuming. They might. But it’s a net gain – and anything that brings more tenants downtown is inherently a good thing.
As to the plans for the building after the convention – we’ll see, won’t we?
June 15th, 2007 at 8:27 am
Cool old building. Hate to see long-tem tenants politily asked to leave, but if that brings investment dollars into downtown, I say go for it. Maybe they can move to Fiema’s.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:14 am
AC,
I think the hotel you mentioned is in Minneapolis (in the IDS Center)… although, the fact that I live here (and have been in it at least twice in the past ten years) and can’t quite remember the building’s name, much less where the building sits, is a bit of a double-dumbass on me.
However, perhaps I shouldn’t disregard the possibility that we have (or had) a revolving restaurant on top of a hotel in both of our Twin Cities… we might be a one horse town, but it isn’t hard to imagine two luxuries like that.
Lileks will know.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:36 am
No, I believe AC is refering to what used to be the Radisson on Kellogg. I think it is a Crowne Plaza now.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Go figure… I get my own home towns wrong. Just another indication of how lame my Friday is shaping up.
At least I’ll get to watch “Rescue Me” when I get home… damn the first 15 minutes were hillarious.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Assclown vomited: “Angryclown also recalls a spinning restaurant on top of a hotel in your town..”
No Assclown, the restaurant was stationary. The only thing spinning was your pointy, empty head……..another rubbing alcohol blackout followed by a hangover.
The Almighty showed His infinite wisdom once again when he spared you the angony of wet brain syndrome by withholding the organ in the first place.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Radisson in Duluth has a spinning restaurant on the top.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Pretty sad, Badda and not-so-swiftee. Angryclown knows more about your little burg than you do. Nice job with the generic invective though, swift one. You got that on a macro? None of Angryclown’s concern, of course, but if you want to keep up your rep as a vicious little asshole, you’ll need to refresh your material every couple months.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:27 am
The Carousel Restaurant. Not tops by Angryclown’s standards, but you farmers could take the little wives there for a nice birthday dinner if the Arby’s is full.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:37 am
What is angryclown’s favorite restaurant?
It would be nice to how high the eating establishment “bar” is set if one of us “farmers” were ever to visit New Jersey.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Angryclown used to enjoy Windows on the World. Till your guy became president and helped turn it into Windows on the Sidewalk.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Hmmm… just trying to talk with AC and he insists on remaining a contemptable little Jersey turd.
(Apologies to all of the diminutive excrement from the East Coast.)
June 15th, 2007 at 10:53 am
You totally burned me with the Jersey thing, Badda. Almost as bad as the anonymous nitwit (Angryclown can’t keep you all straight!) who thought Angryclown lived in North Carolina.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:16 am
“Did the arcade have Tempest?”
Arcade in the broader sense, it was a connecting area between the three buildings that had entrances and some shops.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:20 am
“What is angryclown’s favorite restaurant? ”
Hooters?
June 15th, 2007 at 11:25 am
If chicken wings and large-breasted waitresses are wrong, Kerm, Angryclown doesn’t wanna be right.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:28 am
So angryclown and Rosie are together on the whole “inside job” thing?
It is now becoming less of a mystery why angryclown assumes conservatives agree with everything that “Coulter, Buchanan and O’Reilly” say.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:28 am
“Angryclown doesn’t wanna be right.’
Which would explain A LOT.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Nah, Troy, Angryclown isn’t big on nutty conspiracy theories. Or obnoxious overweight lesbian celebs, as far as that goes. 9/11 was just the first in a long string of Bush fuck-ups.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Dang! And I already looked up these fine books to put your mind at ease:
http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Survival-Guide-Complete-Protection/dp/1400049628/
http://www.amazon.com/How-Survive-Robot-Uprising-Defending/dp/1582345929/
Oh well, I put them up in case anyone else is worried about that sort of thing. 😉
June 15th, 2007 at 11:42 am
AC is easily fooled into believing that women at Hooters are all large breasted. This guy needs to learn about physics, geometry, and push-up bras.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Wow, AC must have a soft spot for GW… he didn’t start his chronological list of criticisms with anything before 2001.
(Psst… chronological has to do with time, AC.)
June 15th, 2007 at 11:50 am
The trick, Trojan Man, is to turn the zombies and the robots against each other. Then we fight whoever’s left.
It’s really the only way humanity can survive.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Bush was inaugurated in 2001, big guy. Before that his fuck-ups only harmed Texans, Rangers fans and whoever had to take his spot in Vietnam.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:56 am
And why Bush couldn’t do in 8 months what Clinton failed to do in 8 years is a just reprehensible.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Then it was a pretty stupid thing to say for you, AC… 1) not specifying the GW presidency versus the GW governorship (or career in general), 2) using the word “first”, 3) hacking and flacking against anything to the right of Stalin and for anything to the left of Lieberman.
Jeez… just trying to talk nice to this guy and he goes WAY overboard (and threadjacks, to book). Well, if it makes you feel better.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
I always enjoy a thread that discusses the breasts of the employees of Hooters.
Perhaps Angry Clown has a favoite table at the Hoboken Hooters.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Generic invective? Why you ungrateful little leftist puke!
I spent precious minutes carefully crafting a personal (as personal as I can get on Berg’s blog) response to you…and still you whine like a $2 whore.
There is just no pleasing a moonbat is there?
Isn’t it time for you to climb back into Michael Moore’s asscrack for the day AssClown? That pasty white skin of yours must be getting dried out by now.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Swiftee, as a Berg-certified genetically-irreverent plate-thrower I must observe that your invective does lack a certain panache.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I know you’re under a lot of pressure, Swift One. What with spending all your time turning your kids into intellectual veal calves. Not to mention protesting abortions for rape and incest victims. But I guess if it weren’t for rape and incest, you wouldn’t get any cards on Fathers’ Day, wouldya?
June 15th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
(Scrolling up to see what this post was about again) Real estate!
And from there we’ve gotten all the way to Hooters and incest. This just might be the greatest comment thread in the history of the internet. Forensic linguists will spend years mapping the chain of rhetoric; its subtle mutations and permutations that lead from point A to the totally unforseeable at the outset point Q.
Sweet.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
What Kermit said re: Bush and Clinton. Especially given this funny little speech made almost 15 years ago:
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/017919.php
June 15th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Mitch said,
“Because buying a century-old piece of real estate in a depressed downtown is such a great way to make a “quick buck”.”
Buying a century-old piece of real estate with an agreement to do a short term lease to the RNC which will be flush with cash is indeed a great way to make a quick buck.
“Right. That never happens otherwise with commercial real estate.”
Giving a cafe that’s been in operation for 30 years three weeks to vacate, set up and begin operating in a new location may happen all the time although I’ve never heard of it. Oh and, it doesn’t make it right.
But it’s a net gain – and anything that brings more tenants downtown is inherently a good thing.
Talk about making assumptions. You do understand the difference between renting an apartment and staying in a hotel right?
June 16th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Yosarian said,
“Snivelling spoiled toddler = Doug.”
This from the clown who said about fight theater,
“if you’ve ever grappled, you’d know it’s about as “homoerotic” as getting hit in the face with a rake and is, in fact, exhausting, fierce and competitive combat.”
It’s softcore pr0n for the middle aged latent homosexuals fan and cathartic live action fantasy for the 12 – 16 year old Xbox/Playstation crowd. Based on your defense of the “sport” I’m guessing you’ve got a complete set of MMA trading cards hidden between your mattress and boxspring.
June 16th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Hmmmm… More evidence of Yosarians obsession with gay stuff…
http://ramblingrhodes.mu.nu/archives/230219.html
…to which I’ll respond: “This is a Blog-Ocracy, which means you should go eat a cock.”
June 16th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
The two posts above strike me more as evidence of Doug’s obsessions than those of Yossarian. *shrug*
June 17th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Yeah, I’ll bet Doug soiled his monitor again writing those two posts.
June 17th, 2007 at 5:29 am
Doug, if you really enjoy pointing out people’s ‘obsession’ with gay pr0n, why not research Jeff Goldstein over at Protein Wisdom?
Oh wait…that’s already been done.
June 17th, 2007 at 6:58 am
If Narcissism is homosexual then Doug is the flaming pink poster child of the Queer Nation.
June 17th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Oh, relax everyone.
EVERYONE knows that gay jokes are only OK when they’re aimed at conservatives.
See: Nick Coleman’s radio “show”, the Goldstein slur, Dick Cheney’s daughter, and on, and on, and on, and on.
And on.
June 17th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Heh.
June 17th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
“EVERYONE knows that gay jokes are only OK when they’re aimed at conservatives.”
It’s the hypocrisy thing. You wingnuts have it in truckloads. It’s what keeps Stewart and Colbert in scotch and hookers. And yet the 1/2 Hour News Hour sucks.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
*rolls eyes*
I saw no drought of scotch or hooker famine for comics during the Clinton years, so I don’t think “hypocrisy” (or whatever) is a “one side of the aisle” thing, angryclown.
June 18th, 2007 at 4:39 am
That’s cause Clinton was a fat, horny guy, duh! And still, the 1/2 Hour News Hour sucks. And Mitch is apparently the only Minnesota wingnut who’s funny – at least intentionally.
June 18th, 2007 at 6:26 am
With sadness I see you did not note any “hypocrisy” there, “duh”.
I really don’t watch 1/2 Hour News Hour, so I have no opinion. I also don’t know why you think it furthers your argument in any way.
Sometimes I find you very funny, angryclown, and sometimes I’m sure you intend to be. 😉