4915 West Pine

chriss752 · PostOct 21, 2019#12019-10-21T04:32+00:00

Balke Brown is planning a 7-floor, 146-unit apartment building on the parking lot between the Euclid+Pine and Del Coronado buildings. They will buy the surface loot from Emerald Equity Group for over $2 Million, The project will cost $37 Million to build. All 146 apartments will be 1 Bedroom units and each will have its own parking space.

The LCRA will review the request for PILOTs for the project. 10 years equaling annual real estate taxes of $850 per unit and the annual increases in the real estate tax of 2.5%. The LCRA will review this at their October 22nd meeting.

I don't know who the architect is or the timeline. Also, sorry for the rendering being junky. It came from the agenda.

wabash · PostOct 21, 2019#22019-10-21T04:51+00:00

The Whole Foods effect rolls on. Great to hear.

Good to have another apartment project in the pipeline for this part of town along with Koman’s 200 unit proposal on Laclede.

urbanitas · PostOct 21, 2019#32019-10-21T21:42+00:00

chriss752 wrote: ↑
Oct 21, 2019
Balke Brown is planning a 7-floor, 146-unit apartment building on the parking lot between the Euclid+Pine and Del Coronado buildings. They will buy the surface loot from Emerald Equity Group for over $2 Million, The project will cost $37 Million to build. All 146 apartments will be 1 Bedroom units and each will have its own parking space.

The LCRA will review the request for PILOTs for the project. 10 years equaling annual real estate taxes of $850 per unit and the annual increases in the real estate tax of 2.5%. The LCRA will review this at their October 22nd meeting.

I don't know who the architect is or the timeline. Also, sorry for the rendering being junky. It came from the agenda.

Just a guess, but the architect is probably Humphreys & Partners Architects. It looks very much like their style, and they designed the last two projects developed by Balke Brown Transwestern, which were the Highlands apartment buildings, Cortona and Encore.

chriss752 · PostOct 21, 2019#42019-10-21T21:51+00:00

urbanitas wrote: ↑
Oct 21, 2019
Just a guess, but it's probably Humphreys & Partners Architects. It looks like their style, and they designed the last two projects developed by Balke Brown Transwestern, which were the Highlands apartment buildings, Cortona and Encore.

I thought about them being the architect but I have the doubts that make me think not. If they are, great. I would guess Trivers.
McPherson (Jack Grone) commented this on my post explaining why Tax Assurance could be better than a Tax Abatement...

"One interesting bit is the development incentive of "tax assurance" as opposed to "tax abatement." My understanding of "assurance" is that it gives the developers (and their lenders) clear, 10-yr projections for the expected property tax coss, but it doesn't provide a "discount" on the tax bill in the same way that a tax abatement does. If this is indeed the case, it's more evidence that incentives can gradually be phased out in the CWE, which is a good thing.
Quick calculation shows annual projected taxes of $850 per unit on 146 units would yield about $124,000 for the city and its schools in the first year after the project is completed. In 2018, this property generated just $11,400 in taxes according to the Assessor's website. So this would be a meaningful win for the City and the public school. (IIRC, tax assurance is also being used just to the NOrth, for the new AC Hotel by Marriott on York Ave.)
One more thought: It'd be interesting to see how the requested $850/unit initial tax rate compared to the implied tax rates on comparable 1-bed units already in the neighborhood."

wabash · PostOct 22, 2019#52019-10-22T02:20+00:00

Crazy that if this and the Laclede proposal are built there will have been over 1,100 residential units added within a block and a half of Euclid & West Pine since 2015.

framer · PostOct 22, 2019#62019-10-22T04:41+00:00

I don't know how I've never noticed this lot before.

Good stuff.

chaifetz10 · PostOct 22, 2019#72019-10-22T05:25+00:00

The CWE is slowly, but surely, running out of empty lots for new development. Yes, there are some high profile sites still available like Kingshighway & Lindell and Euclid & Lindell, but if this pace of construction continues then at some point developers are going to run out of land. Hopefully a fully built out CWE core will eventually (even if it's 10 - 20 years down the road) expand projects like this further north and east.

urbanitas · PostOct 22, 2019#82019-10-22T06:17+00:00

The Boy Scouts are sitting on a gold mine at 4568 West Pine. Maybe they should develop it themselves. They have an army of free labor; they could learn a trade and earn a merit badge or two...

chriss752 · PostOct 22, 2019#92019-10-22T06:22+00:00

urbanitas wrote:The Boy Scouts are sitting on a gold mine at 4568 West Pine. Maybe they should develop it themselves. They have an army of free labor; they could learn a trade and earn a merit badge or two...

I have a idea about the Boy Scout parcel. The Euclid project sure looks like it was designed to be expanded. The balconies on the East side are in between two blank walls. If KOMAN expanded the Euclid, it would be able to form a central courtyard with a pool that those units, and new ones, look out over.

It’s an idea, but they could’ve planned ahead.

GoHarvOrGoHome · PostOct 22, 2019#102019-10-22T13:56+00:00

The Boy Scout organization is hurting right now in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. Wouldn't be surprised at all to see them consolidate operations in the near future.

framer · PostOct 22, 2019#112019-10-22T16:39+00:00

I miss the Marshmallow on West Pine.

wabash · PostOct 22, 2019#122019-10-22T17:37+00:00

^Would have made for a nice counterpoint to One Hundred.

stlgasm · PostOct 22, 2019#132019-10-22T17:51+00:00

I miss the Round Building too. It definitely was a prominent feature of the CWE skyline. A development group was very close to finalizing a deal to rehab it into market-rate apartments, but the plan ultimately fell apart. If I recall, it was hard-fought battle. Here are a couple pics I took around 1996.

sc4mayor · PostOct 22, 2019#142019-10-22T19:26+00:00

wabash wrote: ↑
Oct 22, 2019
Crazy that if this and the Laclede proposal are built there will have been over 1,100 residential units added within a block and a half of Euclid & West Pine since 2015.

That is very, very impressive.
Here is the PD reporting on this particular project for those who are interested:
https://www.stltoday.com/business/local ... c0499.html

hebeters2 · PostOct 22, 2019#152019-10-22T20:13+00:00

1,100 residences The traffic in the cwe is near or beyond capacity. 1,000 new residences and each of them invite say three persons with autos on any given day/night to the neighborhood where do they go? Where do they park? Euclid is already a mess of traffic.

stlgasm · PostOct 22, 2019#162019-10-22T20:19+00:00

hebeters2 wrote: ↑
Oct 22, 2019
1,100 residences The traffic in the cwe is near or beyond capacity. 1,000 new residences and each of them invite say three persons with autos on any given day/night to the neighborhood where do they go? Where do they park? Euclid is already a mess of traffic.

That’s life in the big city. Traffic congestion and scarcity of parking should be our worst problem...

wabash · PostOct 22, 2019#172019-10-22T20:51+00:00

hebeters2 wrote:1,100 residences The traffic in the cwe is near or beyond capacity. 1,000 new residences and each of them invite say three persons with autos on any given day/night to the neighborhood where do they go? Where do they park? Euclid is already a mess of traffic.

If only Euclid intersected with some sort of parkway or light rail line to allow for quick and easy access by both drivers and pedestrians. Or perhaps a garage could be built right in the heart of the Corridor, maybe at Euclid and Lindell, to provide a convenient place for any visitors to park?

aprice · PostOct 22, 2019#182019-10-22T20:55+00:00

hebeters2 wrote: ↑
Oct 22, 2019
Euclid is already a mess of traffic.

lol it's really not though

sc4mayor · PostOct 22, 2019#192019-10-22T20:55+00:00

^^^ Here, here!

And if the people living in all these new apartments are anything like myself and my other fellow apartment dwellers, they're not having any where close to three people over on any given day lol. More seriously though, the best way to mitigate car traffic around the CWE would be to encourage people to get out of their cars, lots of traffic would help with that. As would eliminating parking minimums, adding additional cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, and I've always thought a legit bus only BRT lane on either Lindell (preferably) or Forest Park Ave would be a nice complement to east-west MetroLink service. And more convenient to much of the Central Corridor neighborhoods and attractions.

The kind of density we're starting to see in the Central West End, Skinky-D, and other nearby neighborhoods is really, really good for the city...even with the additional traffic.

I'll also second wabash and aprice...the traffic isn't that bad as it is. FPA could easily lose a lane in each direction and not see much of a change in travel times.

RockChalkSTL · PostOct 22, 2019#202019-10-22T20:58+00:00

I'll take severe traffic if it means that the city is bustling.

addxb2 · PostOct 22, 2019#212019-10-22T21:42+00:00

Also, any traffic headaches are deserved as the closed streets are 99% the reason traffic is unable to flow freely around the grid we've built.

STLrainbow · PostOct 22, 2019#222019-10-22T22:07+00:00

^^ sc, really is a shame the CWE Metrolink isn't underground and at FPA, with entrances from North and South sides of the avenue... I think things would be much further along in the area if we had that location more in the thick of things since opening. (Same for Grand Center if the Midtown station was underground at Grand and Lindell.) But since it's not, I agree a BRT route down Lindell or FPA is definitely warranted.

chriss752 · PostOct 23, 2019#232019-10-23T00:44+00:00

Clearer rendering.

framer · PostOct 23, 2019#242019-10-23T16:28+00:00

Thanks for the new pic. Not a bad looking building, IMO. Nothing groundbreaking, of course, but pretty nice.

sc4mayor · PostOct 23, 2019#252019-10-23T16:33+00:00

^ I agree, I like it too. I also really like how it fills in one of those three big empty surface lots between Euclid, Kingshighway, West Pine and Lindell.

Edit: Here is the BJ reporting on this project if anyone is interested:

The seven-story building — of which two stories will be parking — will only offer one-bedroom apartments and range in size from 480 square feet to 780 square feet. A courtyard and pool also are planned for the development.

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... s_headline

4915 West Pine

4915 West Pine

4915 West Pine

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