A digest of weekly real estate related articles and other

• What do you buy  instead of paying your mortgage? An iPad of course! (h/t @StevenLadin)
• Minneapolis – St. Paul is smart! But we didn’t need a survey to tell us we where the #1 most intelligent city according to Travel & Leisure.
• Brookdale Center is now up for grabs, after working it’s way through foreclosure it is now on the market for sale at a price tag of $17.5 million via Finance & Commerce
• Whole Foods is coming to Edina, wonder what took them so long to open up there? They are going to be located in Centennial Lakes Plaza from MSPBJ.
• Investor may scrap it’s plans to purchase The Grand Hotel in Minneapolis after conducting due diligence from MSPBJ.
• Top 10 Mid-Year Retail Rock Stars via RISNews
• Distressed asset specialist Beal Bank enters market with first branch opening in Edina off France Avenue from Finance & Commerce
• Good read on Businessweek about the man the bought the Detroit Pontiac Silverdome for just over $500k a little less than a year ago.
• Real estate in emerging economies are outperforming those of industrialized nations via PRnewswire