Downtown St. Louis: Making the grade?
$4.3 billion invested, but still a lot of disappointments
St. Louis Business Journal - by Lisa R. Brown
Ten years ago, there was no trendy loft district downtown. No Westin. No convention center hotel. Streets and sidewalks emptied after dark as office workers had few restaurants or retail options to choose from.
Much has changed over the past decade, thanks in part to the St. Louis Downtown Development Action Plan adopted in 1999. Now, efforts are under way to refine goals for the city’s urban core and build on the momentum.
A look at the results compared with the original plan reveals a mix of successes and many failures. John Fox Arnold, chairman of law firm Lashly & Baer and co-chair of the ’99 plan, said the intent wasn’t to focus on one silver bullet but to take a comprehensive approach. “The belief was that downtown had to be redeveloped business by business, block by block.”
Assessing progress
The 200-page plan from a decade ago lists dozens of priorities and strategies to attract more than $1 billion in investment downtown. The monetary level of investment has been met — $4.3 billion since 2000, according to the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis, a private, not-for-profit organization with a board of directors comprised of city business leaders. The Partnership is now overseeing the efforts to update the plan.
The biggest successes include adding more than 1,000 residential units in the Washington Avenue loft district and the renovation of the Old Post Office at Eighth and Olive streets.
A critical component was boosting the residential population from 8,500. It now has reached 11,800. That figure is touted as a success by many, although it falls short of the plan’s aggressive goal of 12,800 residents by 2004 and 18,300 by 2010.
Downtown also got a new Major League Baseball stadium that wasn’t anticipated in the plan, a Four Seasons hotel and Lumière Place hotel and casino north of Laclede’s Landing, and a new convention center hotel, the Renaissance Grand Hotel & Suites at 800 Washington Ave.
As the Renaissance brought new life to Washington Avenue, developers began snapping up vacant warehouses nearby and converting them to lofts, fueling the condo boom that brought new retailers and street-level activity downtown.
“The plan’s flexibility served as a good framework for realizing downtown’s potential and changing direction as opportunities like the new ballpark and Lumiere Place arose,” said St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.
St. Louis Deputy Mayor Barb Geisman said that when the plan was adopted, there were more than 70 historic buildings downtown that were vacant or underutilized. Today, she said there are less than a dozen, and more than 4,300 residential units occupy the renovated historic buildings. “We’ve made great headway on getting buildings re-used,” she said. “The next frontier is new construction.”
Falling short
But the plan also reveals a swath of disappointments. Corporate headquarters have not relocated downtown, as was envisioned, and a new Class A office tower has not materialized. A comprehensive streetscape improvement plan is lacking, and there have yet to be any new infill residential developments. The Roberts Cos.’ $70 million condo tower, under construction at Eighth and Locust streets, is the first new residential construction downtown in decades.
Other disappointments include St. Louis Centre, a 300,000-square-foot enclosed mall steps away from the America’s Center convention complex. Pyramid Cos. acquired it in late 2006 and planned a massive transformation into condos, shops and office space. But Pyramid, once downtown’s largest developer, shuttered operations last April, and St. Louis Centre remains a vacant shell. The future of some of Pyramid’s other massive undeveloped buildings downtown also remains uncertain, including the half-million-square-foot Arcade Building at Eighth and Olive streets.
Mike Jones, who helped write the 1999 plan as the city’s deputy mayor for development, opines that the 24-year-old St. Louis Centre structure should be demolished. Jones is now executive assistant to County Executive Charlie Dooley.
“St. Louis Centre was a mistake,” Jones said. “What you ought to do with a mistake is tear it down and do something else with the space.”
One preliminary proposal, designed by Spinnaker Cos., the owner of St. Louis Centre, and Overland-based developer and general contractor Clayco, is in the works to turn the former mall into structured parking with 70,000 square feet of street-level retail space. Geisman said she couldn’t comment specifically about that plan, but said a solution for the hulking gray structure is critical to improving the link between the Washington Avenue loft district and Laclede’s Landing.
Downtown Next
New efforts are under way to update the 1999 plan in the face of changing economic conditions. The Partnership for Downtown St. Louis, led by Jim Cloar, has met with several business and community organizations in recent weeks to gather feedback about revitalization priorities. Cloar said an updated version of the plan, dubbed Downtown Next, will be available this fall.
“The first phase will be a brochure that focuses on major goals that will set the stage for a more detailed framework,” he said. A new leader of the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis will take over the efforts to update the plan in August. Cloar announced earlier this year his plans to step down from the organization he has led since 2001. DHR International, a St. Louis-based executive search firm, is undertaking a national search for his replacement.
Geisman said the mayor’s office has not yet gotten involved in the Partnership’s update of the 1999 plan. She said any new plan will have to be flexible enough to react to changing market conditions.
The city’s current political leadership is supporting a package of public subsidies for a mega mixed-use development downtown, the $600 million Ballpark Village, slated to be built north of Busch Stadium. The project, co-developed by the St. Louis Cardinals and Baltimore-based Cordish Co., has been reworked several times and is awaiting state approval for subsidies, along with better market conditions to sell the bonds to finance the project.
Slay said other major developments he’d like to see completed or move forward in the next four years are the reopening of the Kiel Opera House, the renovation of the Central Library, an overhaul of the Gateway Mall, improvements to America’s Center and the I-70 lid connecting the Arch grounds to the rest of downtown.
The city is working to identify sites for the construction of a new Class A office building. One site that has been identified is vacant ground north of Market Street at Pine near Union Station. Geisman said St. Louis is a finalist in an unidentified, out-of-town corporation’s search to relocate with 400 employees. “A lot of what we have to do to keep the momentum downtown is capitalizing on opportunities as they present themselves,” she said
http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/ ... tory1.html
$4.3 billion invested, but still a lot of disappointments
St. Louis Business Journal - by Lisa R. Brown
Ten years ago, there was no trendy loft district downtown. No Westin. No convention center hotel. Streets and sidewalks emptied after dark as office workers had few restaurants or retail options to choose from.
Much has changed over the past decade, thanks in part to the St. Louis Downtown Development Action Plan adopted in 1999. Now, efforts are under way to refine goals for the city’s urban core and build on the momentum.
A look at the results compared with the original plan reveals a mix of successes and many failures. John Fox Arnold, chairman of law firm Lashly & Baer and co-chair of the ’99 plan, said the intent wasn’t to focus on one silver bullet but to take a comprehensive approach. “The belief was that downtown had to be redeveloped business by business, block by block.”
Assessing progress
The 200-page plan from a decade ago lists dozens of priorities and strategies to attract more than $1 billion in investment downtown. The monetary level of investment has been met — $4.3 billion since 2000, according to the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis, a private, not-for-profit organization with a board of directors comprised of city business leaders. The Partnership is now overseeing the efforts to update the plan.
The biggest successes include adding more than 1,000 residential units in the Washington Avenue loft district and the renovation of the Old Post Office at Eighth and Olive streets.
A critical component was boosting the residential population from 8,500. It now has reached 11,800. That figure is touted as a success by many, although it falls short of the plan’s aggressive goal of 12,800 residents by 2004 and 18,300 by 2010.
Downtown also got a new Major League Baseball stadium that wasn’t anticipated in the plan, a Four Seasons hotel and Lumière Place hotel and casino north of Laclede’s Landing, and a new convention center hotel, the Renaissance Grand Hotel & Suites at 800 Washington Ave.
As the Renaissance brought new life to Washington Avenue, developers began snapping up vacant warehouses nearby and converting them to lofts, fueling the condo boom that brought new retailers and street-level activity downtown.
“The plan’s flexibility served as a good framework for realizing downtown’s potential and changing direction as opportunities like the new ballpark and Lumiere Place arose,” said St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.
St. Louis Deputy Mayor Barb Geisman said that when the plan was adopted, there were more than 70 historic buildings downtown that were vacant or underutilized. Today, she said there are less than a dozen, and more than 4,300 residential units occupy the renovated historic buildings. “We’ve made great headway on getting buildings re-used,” she said. “The next frontier is new construction.”
Falling short
But the plan also reveals a swath of disappointments. Corporate headquarters have not relocated downtown, as was envisioned, and a new Class A office tower has not materialized. A comprehensive streetscape improvement plan is lacking, and there have yet to be any new infill residential developments. The Roberts Cos.’ $70 million condo tower, under construction at Eighth and Locust streets, is the first new residential construction downtown in decades.
Other disappointments include St. Louis Centre, a 300,000-square-foot enclosed mall steps away from the America’s Center convention complex. Pyramid Cos. acquired it in late 2006 and planned a massive transformation into condos, shops and office space. But Pyramid, once downtown’s largest developer, shuttered operations last April, and St. Louis Centre remains a vacant shell. The future of some of Pyramid’s other massive undeveloped buildings downtown also remains uncertain, including the half-million-square-foot Arcade Building at Eighth and Olive streets.
Mike Jones, who helped write the 1999 plan as the city’s deputy mayor for development, opines that the 24-year-old St. Louis Centre structure should be demolished. Jones is now executive assistant to County Executive Charlie Dooley.
“St. Louis Centre was a mistake,” Jones said. “What you ought to do with a mistake is tear it down and do something else with the space.”
One preliminary proposal, designed by Spinnaker Cos., the owner of St. Louis Centre, and Overland-based developer and general contractor Clayco, is in the works to turn the former mall into structured parking with 70,000 square feet of street-level retail space. Geisman said she couldn’t comment specifically about that plan, but said a solution for the hulking gray structure is critical to improving the link between the Washington Avenue loft district and Laclede’s Landing.
Downtown Next
New efforts are under way to update the 1999 plan in the face of changing economic conditions. The Partnership for Downtown St. Louis, led by Jim Cloar, has met with several business and community organizations in recent weeks to gather feedback about revitalization priorities. Cloar said an updated version of the plan, dubbed Downtown Next, will be available this fall.
“The first phase will be a brochure that focuses on major goals that will set the stage for a more detailed framework,” he said. A new leader of the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis will take over the efforts to update the plan in August. Cloar announced earlier this year his plans to step down from the organization he has led since 2001. DHR International, a St. Louis-based executive search firm, is undertaking a national search for his replacement.
Geisman said the mayor’s office has not yet gotten involved in the Partnership’s update of the 1999 plan. She said any new plan will have to be flexible enough to react to changing market conditions.
The city’s current political leadership is supporting a package of public subsidies for a mega mixed-use development downtown, the $600 million Ballpark Village, slated to be built north of Busch Stadium. The project, co-developed by the St. Louis Cardinals and Baltimore-based Cordish Co., has been reworked several times and is awaiting state approval for subsidies, along with better market conditions to sell the bonds to finance the project.
Slay said other major developments he’d like to see completed or move forward in the next four years are the reopening of the Kiel Opera House, the renovation of the Central Library, an overhaul of the Gateway Mall, improvements to America’s Center and the I-70 lid connecting the Arch grounds to the rest of downtown.
The city is working to identify sites for the construction of a new Class A office building. One site that has been identified is vacant ground north of Market Street at Pine near Union Station. Geisman said St. Louis is a finalist in an unidentified, out-of-town corporation’s search to relocate with 400 employees. “A lot of what we have to do to keep the momentum downtown is capitalizing on opportunities as they present themselves,” she said
http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/ ... tory1.html
