St. Louis Infrastructure and Development Review 11:40 PM

I've been lax on updating lately, despite the fact that St. Louis has seen some big news as of late. So why not crunch it all into one convenient post?

First, Highway 40's open again. Interstate 64. Whatever.

I'm flabbergasted by the largely positive response to the re-opening of the highway. It provided nothing for St. Louis but more highway lanes, fewer homes in Richmond Heights, a look fresh out of 1960s Brasilia, and better-designed interchanges. For hundreds of millions? Pardon my dripping sarcasm, but grrrreeeaaaaat. Call me out for not actually having driven the highway yet (not been home since it opened), but the pictures seem to me to only highlight the project's total lack of imagination.

Where's the lush median?

Source

What about High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lanes? These are pretty standard on many roadways. If you don't have at least one other person in the car with you, you cannot use the lane with a symbol like the one below:

Source

HOV Lanes encourage (read: enforce) carpooling and therefore fewer smog-emitting cars on the road.

Better yet, as I've argued on this blog, why not simply end I-64/40 at McCausland/Clayton Road. At this point, there could either be an urban boulevard with a 35-40 MPH speed limit or...no roadway at all. The region survived a year or so without this segment of the interstate; it's hard to argue that it was vital to the survival of the region at this point. This would have been a great opportunity to open up Forest Park to the neighborhoods to the south and show that pedestrian traffic flow matters as much as automobiles. Oh well; another generation or two of an obtrusive interstate in a city that has far too many.

I know it's too late to complain (yet I persist), but I just am nauseated by the positive response to this large and wasteful infrastructure project when the region has so many greater needs for transportation infrastructure.

Next, the Archgrounds International Design Competition! Hearkening to the original international competition that netted Eero Saarinen's landmark Gateway Arch proposal, the National Park Service will hold another competition with an eye to reinvigorating the present grounds and forging connections with surrounding neighborhoods, including the East St. Louis riverfront. In keeping with my teeth-gnashing over Highway 40, I am absolutely thrilled that the project could see the removal of the depressed lanes of I-70 and even the elevated lanes at Laclede's Landing. This portion of the highway is set to become obsolete as I-70 is re-routed into Illinois over the new Mississippi River Bridge. Proposals must include removing this divisive eyesore from the equation if the Arch is ever to be psychologically connected to Laclede's Landing and downtown. I am beyond excited at these prospects!

Ballpark Village. I agree with blogger Rick Bonasch's (St. Louis Rising) sentiments on recent discussions of the Ballpark Village development. There's no "village" component being discussed at all! Not including residential in this high-profile parcel would be an enormous mistake, especially considering Blue Urban witnessed a nearly instant sell-out of the Ballpark Lofts development in a down economy.

The Bottle District. HRI, Inc. of New Orleans is set to redevelop the old McGuire Moving and Storage building into lofts geared toward artists. Excellent! It's great to see the Bottle District development start off on a positive, organic note. There are no contrived 700-foot skyscraper pipe dreams--just a sensible proposal to restore a historic building and inject new life into it.

Grand Center. Not to be outdone by downtown, Grand Center may soon be getting its own artist loft development in the old Metropolitan Building. Right now, this is coming to me in the form of an unsubstantiated claim on the Urban St. Louis forums, but hopefully we'll hear some sort of confirmation soon. This building was scheduled to become a hotel of the Hyatt brand, but those plans have fallen through.

As for hotels, Grand Center may soon have two. Again, Urban St. Louis forum rumormongers (a term of affection, mind you) stated that St. Louis University President Lawrence Biondi was opposed to a hotel proposal on Forest Park Avenue just south of campus, this one of the Holiday Inn chain. That one may still be going forward. But SLU is not sitting idly by. SLU is partnering with the Lawrence Group to transform the former Interiors Unlimited Building adjacent to Triumph Restaurant and the Moto Museum into a luxury hotel.

Could St. Louis be emerging from the recession?

Ballpark Boondoggle 5:59 PM

From Miscellaneous Items

By now, all of St. Louis is abuzz with the news that our once lofty Ballpark Village will be, by the time of the All Star Game, a softball field and accompanying parking lot.

The parking lot announcement is particularly troubling, because, in my opinion, nothing could make a sports stadium seem more lifeless than to be surrounded by parking garage monstrosities on most sides--and a surface lot.

When I say nothing is worse, I mean nothing. Literally, leaving it is a grassy lot would have been better.

Pull in a giant T.V. screen, a makeshift stage and seating area; have performances and live media events atop the grass. That's a temporary solution. A parking lot sounds scarily permanent.

The moment the pavement hits the ground for that parking lot, we will be stuck with it for three years minimum; perhaps much, much longer. That is a risk we can't afford to take in downtown St. Louis.

Read apt commentaries by Downtown St. Louis Business blog here and Random Talk on Urban Affairs (RTUA) here.

It is past time to subdivide the land and sell it to smaller developers. It's perhaps the one area in St. Louis that could thumb its nose at the daunting recession we're in. And I value RTUA's Doug's historic preservation take highly; when we demolish historic landmarks, we deserve better than a parking lot and softball field. There should be measures in place to ensure that this site is developed on within a set amount of years or it will be handed over to the city.

EDIT: Michael Allen's Ballpark Farms is definitely worth a look as well!

Ballpark Village in St. Louis: A "Branded City" 11:47 AM

Check out this Mediaweek article on "Branded Cities".
The article stops short of a full-fledged definition of these branded cities, which are a type of retail development. Here is the paragraph that most closely sums them up.

It’s easy to see why branded cities—places where people either work, live or play—are catching on. They are self-contained urban centers where signs aren’t just viewed for a few seconds from a car window—or maybe a few minutes, if someone is on foot. The interactive element provides an added attraction: “If you create an environment where people engage in media, it changes the dynamic,” says Adam Bleibtreu, CEO of The Retail Media Company, which is responsible for the design and advertising strategy of El Portál. “If you give people the opportunity to effect their environment, they talk about it; they come there more frequently; they stay longer.”

So, essentially, they're outdoor plazas with mixed uses that incorporate large screens and signage for public media opportunities. For example, people could descend on the space for a game tournament, or to watch a large television event like the Superbowl, all while being able to stroll through an urban shopping center of sorts.

The article mentions Victory Plaza in Dallas, a mixed-use "branded city" development that is adjacent to American Airlines Center (where the Stars and Mavericks play).

Photo Courtesy of Dallas News

Says the article of Victory Plaza's programming:

Special pre-game and postgame concerts and parties in the plaza draw traffic from the arena, typically ranging from 20,000 to 35,000 people, according to Clark Dunklin, a partner in the out-of-home agency Big Media, which sells ad avails for the complex.

For more information on Victory Park in Dallas, see their website.

While I recently spoke on this blog about avoiding forced "branding" of new urban development, such a concept might seem possible for the portion of Ballpark Village immediately adjacent to the stadium. Surely, of course, these areas are likely to be noticeably empty without an event, but good planning could ensure that the retail uses at street level mandate a wider use of the space than just large scale events.

Above all, I do not want Ballpark Village to turn into a rushed development that crams boxy office towers into a small space on an artificial time frame. This will only prove detrimental to the idea of developing this important piece of downtown real estate into a valuable contributor to a revitalized and connected cityscape.

District-ification in downtown St. Louis 10:46 AM

It's tempting for planners and even plain ol' citizens to approach urban development with the idea that, whatever the development is, it must immediately have an identity.

And so, our city brought us Laclede's Landing, the remnant of the city's warehousing district, revived as a "nightlife district".

Downtown Now! brought us an Old Post Office District. Some refer to most of the "63101" ZIP as the "Central Business District". Some call the area around the Convention Center as the Convention Center District. Now, we have the Loft District on Washington. We almost had the Bottle District, near the Convention Center. We're trying to build a district in disguise--Ballpark Village. And Chouteau's Landing will be downtown's unspoken "Arts District". The Civic Center is yet another district--a product of the City Beautiful movement of the turn-of-the-century that called for grand public buildings to be arrayed along wide boulevards, awing all passers-by (Civil Courts, City Hall, the Municipal Courts Building, all along or near Market Street).

Some of these "districts" have more merit than others. Those that do have found an identity over time. This is precisely how urban areas work: a wedge is developed and, hopefully, absorbed into the urban fabric over time, becoming part of its story.

We need not force a story at the very outset, though. The district-ification of St. Louis leaves it a choppy, disconnected grouping of intentionally single-use districts.

As I've said many times before, Ballpark Village, Chouteau's Landing, and the Chouteau Lake and Greenway (as well as any Arch-Riverfront development) provide a unique opportunity to reconnect a severely tattered built environment. One of the problems of large, private redevelopment schemes is that they are not accountable to the public and, more importantly, developers rarely know how to develop at the macro-scale, and even less often do they work with other developers on completely "separate" projects.

It is my hope that a combination of citizen vigilance and city-led efforts (Planning and Urban Design Agency, anyone?) will mold these proposed "districts" into an organic whole that will reconnect and benefit the city. Identities of each project might become clouded (God forbid someone enjoy a pre-game snack in Chouteau's Landing rather than Ballpark Village OR enjoy an art gallery in BPV)--but this is good. This is what cities are. Developers don't define and give identity to the built environment--rather, it's a mixture of things for which the chief ingredient is time.

Reiteration on Ballpark Village 12:04 AM

So a couple tenants have signed on to Ballpark Village.

Kansas City-based Polsinelli Shalton Flanigan Suelthaus PC (whew!) is consolidating its downtown and Clayton offices in Ballpark Village.

Brokerage and investment firm Stifel Financial Corp., already located downtown, is in as well.

And, in some of the best news yet, the Urban Blue's Ballpark Lofts are selling like gooey butter cakes--in a terrible market, especially for condos.

So we have an urban village on the west side of the Ballpark. Let's just call that Ballpark Village.

We have confirmed tenants just north of the stadium. Great. Let's throw in some residential and more offices, and that will be the northern part of the Village.

To the south, we have major opportunities. Sure the potential Village to the south is cut off by Highway 40. But there needs to be a push to fill in some vacant lots and build structured parking instead of surface lots just south of the stadium. I would like to see enough infill and new activity to pull pedestrians post-ballgame down to the "Broadway Blues District"--with the incomparable trio of BB's, Beale on Broadway, and the Broadway Oyster Bar miraculously surviving spates of decline and demolition in that area.


View Larger Map

Check out the above map (zoom in to the "A"). Cerre Street is riddled with mixed-use (office, residential, retail, other commercial, even light industrial) potential. Build one structured parking facility on the west end of Cerre (forcing everyone to walk down the street toward new street-level retail). Have this parking garage extend below ground to accommodate for heavy ballgame traffic. Then, ninety percent of the rest of Cerre would be dedicated to a Village atmosphere. As I mentioned, perhaps we'd see some spillover and some real connection between downtown (specifically, this Ballpark Village) and the Broadway Blues District just to the south. Let's do that, and let's call that the Village as well.

But the biggest opportunity is the east of the District.


View Larger Map

That monster needs to go ASAP. That whole city block could be a series of "row house" style, 4-5 story commercial/residential buildings that would quickly become a hot address. This would bring activity and a 1000 percent aesthetic improvement to four blockfaces downtown. Another option, depending on demand, could be high or mid-rise office/residential towers.

Let's not forget this beautiful surface lot between the excellent Pointe 400 building and the stadium itself:


View Larger Map

Again, opportunities are endless. New high rise towers or smaller scale urban infill--it doesn't matter. It would be an amazing improvement and would go a long way in crafting a Village atmosphere that has been so often discussed. Plus, development on this large block could very well tie Ballpark Village to Chouteau's Landing, and specifically to that development's Historic Fourth Street area. Let's do all those things, and let's call them all collectively, Ballpark Village.

Of course, the issue here would be--ahem--parking, parking, parking. Of course, there'd still be room for a couple smaller, multi-story garages with retail on the bottom. Ultimately, though, the city needs to do whatever it can to confine most of the parking underground. The vitality of the Village would be amplified so much if unsightly parking was subterranean, and the Village had a more pedestrian-friendly look and feel to it. And so, yes, that means, sadly, the now historic twin-Busch garage on the west should come down too.

If we realized this Village, we'd have a true urban neighborhood on our hands, befitting of the very term "Village".

Because, when I think of Village, I think of an active, comfortable, inviting space where people always congregate--not a sterile, cramped collection of office towers and chain restaurants smashed into the old Busch footprint.

If we're going to build this Village, we should set our sights higher, or, perhaps more appropriately, we should set those sights wider. That means a recognition that the real Village will (or should, at least) go beyond the current borders of that old footprint. It should absorb the Ballpark Lofts, the Westin, Cerre Street, the Broadway Blues District, Chouteau's Landing, and all adjacent parcels.

Just some thoughts.

A rival to Ballpark Village's crater? 11:13 PM

View Larger Map

(Zoom in where the marker is placed to see the site.)

The city says it's owned by Anheuser-Busch.

A little research on the address turns up the St. Louis "Everman Quarry". It's also on a list of Missouri Superfund sites--the list that the Environmental Protection Agency creates to document extremely contaminated sites that require remediation.

What is this place? Does anyone know? Are there any plans for it?

If you can't tell on the map, it's bounded by Virginia on the west, Delor on the north, Walsh on the south, and Michigan on the east.

Can anyone help me out?

Ballpark Village: don't build an artificial office park! 10:45 AM

Wait a second.

I'm not anti-office space.

With a recent article from the P-D expressing that two major law firms are looking at a new home in Clayton (OR a fresh bundle of tax incentives from the city to remain downtown!), we need workers downtown.

But why do we have to stress the "development" of sites? Isn't this a very suburban notion--to take a chunk of land, neatly plan it so as to screen out all unwanteds and funnel in all desires, to control for the expected and the unexpected?

Ballpark Village--and I believe Steve Patterson has expressed the same view over at Urban Review--should be subdivided and rezoned. The city should put through-streets in the site. The lots can then be sold off.

This is the best of both worlds--"development" mentality and urbanism. With an aggressive zoning overlay district, the city could indeed get a Ballpark Village-like development, meaning that a certain percentage of these private lots would have to be dedicated to offices, would have to be so many or so few stories in height, would have to have the same setback and signage requirements, etc.

BUT, the site's land would be competed over, producing a more diverse and potentially much better and much more organic "development".

Jane Jacobs called downtown megaprojects "cataclysmic development"--meaning that if too much money goes into one place at one time, the flood of money drowns the place. It drowns its authenticity and its connection to the dozens of surrounding blocks that were developed without such incentives and excitement and "District-ification". It becomes an island of investment, a fad to be discarded once the novelty has washed away with the money.

If the land that BPV rests upon is truly valuable, private developers will snatch up the lots. Due to the market, they may just erect the office towers that are currently being discussed. But some enterprising developer may also find it useful to develop rental apartments that overlook the stadium. The Ballpark Lofts have certainly done well, according to the Post.

So why restrict development and turn a couple city blocks into an artifical "Village" when we could have good ol' urbanism do the work?

I want to lease a space in Slay's "world-class" office park, a.k.a. Ballpark Village 9:03 PM

By now, all St. Louisans are aware that, if Ballpark Village even gets off the ground, Centene Corp. won't be moving from its Clayton abode to a front row seat to Cardinals' games.

That's okay, though, because Mayor Slay doesn't mind a bit of a change of plans, per today's mayorslay.com blog post:

First, I want a world-class development built. What will it be? The Cardinals want to shift from condos to office space. I am fine with that. Downtown needs more office space and more jobs.

All right. So those seeking a mixed use "neighborhood" to fill the current crater (some jokester has changed the name of the Village on its wikipedia page to "Crater Village") should be resigned to "Officepark Village"? I guess City Hall thinks so.


Wait--village? Doesn't that suggest a residential community? Ballpark Business District sound more fitting, Mayor Slay? That better include some world-class Class A office space!


It's probably for the better. Ambitious redevelopments backed by Slay tend to have some nasty strings attached:



Century Building demolition photo courtesy of Built St. Louis