I think I'm going to stick with the approximately 210,000 people in the CMSA. That number seems to add up right with the other data I've seen. To address the "for rent/for lease" signs popping up all over the Fargo area east of I-29 would be due to the finish of the academic year. Remember we have some 25,000 college students going to school in town. When a majority of them head home for the summer, it opens up quite a few spots, especially in rental properties and houses near the campus. In fact, most college students know, that the best time to look for an apartment in town is at the beginning of June.
I'm going to have to disagree with the suggestion of moving the CBD to the area occupied by West Acres and the other retail centers. Downtown is already established. It's still the center of the city, spanning outwards from the Red River radially. Sure traffic counts are going up downtown and thats certainly good. As the traffic continues to go up, I'm sure they will convert more of the streets to one-ways.
What we do need, even though this idea is shot down year after year, is a direct connection from the interstate to downtown. The most logical spot would be running parallel, north of Main Avenue meeting up at I29 (1st and 3rd Ave North). The main problem that causes the traffic downtown, other than the increased population, is that there are several dead-ends when trying to move east-west or north-south. Just look at how many blocks split up a street from continuing on.
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en...01015,0.026951
The other thing that is tricky, is that Fargo city blocks are not as large as other city blocks in bigger cities. So it's going to feel cramped. Frankly, I don't think the previous city planners were thinking that Fargo would grow so quickly and didn't think bigger when drawing the plans for the city until maybe the 70's. By then though, it was already too late. So we need to work with what we have. The two railroads bordering the north and south of the the downtown, don't help much either.