Skyrocketing construction material costs have been front-page news in recent months. Tamara O’Neill Moreland moderates a wide-ranging discussion with Ari Parritz, Managing Principal of Afton Park, and Chris Osmundson, Director of Development at Alatus, on the many trends in construction that are changing the development of projects now and into the future.

Developers have been

Every day, business and political leaders are tackling the question of how to revive downtown Minneapolis.  After a year of dealing with the pandemic, social unrest, and shuttered businesses, they are searching for ways to bring people back downtown.  Even as the state has ramped up vaccinations against COVID-19, downtown remains a ghost town

Like most things in 2020, the multifamily housing market is in a state of flux. Recently, I had the opportunity to moderate the Bisnow webinar, Twin Cities Deep Dive: Multifamily Update. The panelists included Brent Webb, Development Manager, Mortenson, Christian Osmundson, Director of Development, Alatus, and Josh Brandsted, President of Greco Properties. These leaders

On Tuesday, February 11, 2020, the Minnesota Legislature returned to the Capitol for the start of the 2020 legislative session. Having passed a biennial state budget in 2019, this year’s “short session” will run until May 18, 2020.  With the only politically divided state legislature in the nation and all 201 legislators on the ballot

In case you missed it, WCCO ran a story the other night about a small business owner who has been displaced through condemnation of her property by the massive, two-billion dollar Southwest Light Rail project. The business owner said she was promised by the project’s sponsor, the Metropolitan Council, that she would be “made whole.” 

When the Minneapolis City Council adopted its inclusionary zoning ordinance, together with its Unified Housing Policy, in late 2018 there was optimism that the ordinance would result in the creation of much needed affordable housing in the city.  The ordinance mandates a minimum percentage of 10-20 percent of units within multifamily buildings be affordable where

The fact that Minnesota, and especially the metropolitan region of St. Paul/Minneapolis, is experiencing a severe affordable housing crisis is not disputed.  The Metropolitan Council recently released data documenting that the metro region of Minnesota is growing substantially but that the supply of new housing, affordable across a broad range of housing types, is lagging. 

When policymakers debate new regulatory policies, including those relating to housing, invariably someone will identify that such regulations come at a price, oftentimes a high price.  This usually triggers the response that complying with the regulations will be the “greedy” developer/builder’s problem and they can simply take it out of their profits.  It’s a nice,