urbanSTL

These look like the exact same plans to me. It's just one has dots for shrubbery and colors in the "streets." And let's call them what they are...parking access lanes; since, you know, they'll inevitably be fully fenced in and toll-boothed at the entrances on 7th, Broadway and Walnut...

It really is a disgusting plan once you allow yourself to get over the squat Live! model with its Cardinals bar (amazing!), Cardinals Hall of Fame (wow!), Anheuser-Busch bar (oh my!) and PBR bar (yippee-ki-yay!) + future tenants (my money's on A-B and/or Cardinals' memorabilia).

They'll make their building and build these parking lots, sure, but I'll eat my hat if they do any meaningful infrastructure work besides grading for concrete pours and run-off. Or, if anything other than a McDonald's gets built on there in the next eight years.

Oh, sorry, I forget the basic wiring for street lights within the lots. By my guess, we should have about 75+ glaring down onto the pavement and back up off it on game nights and non-game nights alike. It'll be a beautiful sight, looking out past the stadium from the 1st base foul line, right into a field of 20-ft high fluorescents.

No, it all comes down the Cardinals knowing that there's money being made at the surrounding parking lots/garages. This is their effort to claim a large portion of that game day revenue, to the detriment of downtown and the surrounding lots...of which there are MANY (understatement):

Now with a couple walls of the Bowling Hall of Fame building knocked down, 99.9% of St. Louisians are getting their first ever look inside.

^I've seen better designed Walmart parking lots. The city really dropped the ball on this one. I thought the deal was for 7 blocks with sidewalks, street trees, etc. It almost seems as if the Cardinals and Cordish built this first phase to save face. Let's throw up something really cheesy and cheap that we can make a killing on, charge for parking and hold the city ransom. Don't be surprised if the come asking for even bigger subsidies for any future phases.

You know, surface parking lots are a natural human habitat. I know this because entire apartment complexes and office parks and commercial districts are built in the middle of them. Funny thing though, being in one of those places, either inside my car, or walking through one, just doesn't feel natural...I wonder how that could be...

As has been mentioned multiple times, the two most recent site plans are the same. I just wanted to put them next to each other for easy comparison. How exciting...




With that said, the top plan does detail how two way traffic will work on 8th and Walnut. The City needs to extend that past BPV.

There are subtle differences between the public presentation board and the actual building plan. The former suggests a street grid, something they stressed in the public presentation itself. This seems deceptive, now that we realize what this is.

• 1. In the public presentation, they colored the access lanes the color of the surrounding streets to imply a grid that's not actually there. The actual building plan presents it as an uninterrupted pour of concrete.
  
  2. The public presentation has a double line flanking the internal streets, implying a curb and elevation change. The actual building plan shows no curb or elevation change to the north ... again, just one uninterrupted pour of asphalt.
  
  3. The public presentation shows only three curb cuts into the parking lots to the south. The actual building plan shows eight — pretty much one for every parking lane.

Elevation change, curbs, limited curb cuts, different engineering for a city street vs. a parking lot pour ... These are what make the difference between a street and a parking lot access lane. They sold the City a sreet grid but are planning to put in a single giant mega-block parking lot instead.

Presbyterian wrote:It appears that Cordish and the Cards are now saying that they aren't planning to restore the street grid at Ballpark Village, after all. Instead, they are proposing to use public TIF funds to build a large private parking lot on one huge mega-block there — including where restored streets and sidewalks were going to be. No streets. No sidewalks. No streetlights. None of it. Just a continuous asphalt parking surface.

Does anyone know what city officials would be responsible to hold Cordish and the Cards to their promise to restore the full street grid? I think this is one worth fighting for. The restored street grid was the one redeeming quality left to this development.

I think this development is an absolute outrage. The fact that public funds are being used to create a huge private parking lot is poisonous icing on an already toxic cake.

I was already quite upset about the soul-sucking, mind_ucking, completely uninspired design of the first phase. I have seen Walmart and QuikTrip locations that reflect greater regard for aesthetics. I cannot believe that the Cardinals waited for years, and the city turned a blind eye and never fined the Cardinals one penny, only to build a larger and only slightly more aesthetically pleasing version of Al Hrabosky's Tool Shed. Yes, I know, there will be faux brick and old-timey streetlights like so many other half-azz attempts at redevelopment in St. Louis. But the structure and the design look at least twenty years past their prime in the renderings, so imagine how disappointing they'll be once they become reality...

And as if all of this wasn't insulting enough, has anyone else noticed the proliferation of billboards in the final rendering? I see Ford, PNC Bank, etc. I can accept this in the ballpark, as even Sportsman's Park on North Grand had all kinds of billboards facing the street as well as the field. But I thought Ballpark Village should be spared of any advertising with the obvious exception of the Cardinals Nation and Budweiser restaurants. In other words, unless PNC Bank plans on opening a branch, and unless Ford plans to sell Fusions and F-150s there, why should we be subjected to their ads in Ballpark Village when they already have them across the street? And what's next- Viagra? Insta-Credit Auto Mart? Fred's Cheapo Depot? This place is already going to be a year-round Hoosierfest. This tackiness just rubs more salt in an open wound.

But I think the biggest outrage of all is the Cardinals' decision to NOT restore the street grid. That tells me that they have no definite plans to build anything beyond Phase One, and they couldn't care less about the integrity of this development and how it relates to downtown. Of course, I'm not naive enough to think that they would be, not when it gets in the way of making money. But this is where our incompetent leadership fails us again. The same city government that threatened to fine me or throw me in jail over peeling paint on my garage door let the Cardinals off the hook for millions of dollars in penalties on more than one occasion by pushing back deadlines when it became clear that construction would be delayed on the Ballpark Village site at least 71 times in the last decade. Our so-called leaders have no standards and obviously don't care enough to demand that the Cardinals give at least some consideration to aesthetics and proper planning.

At least with a proper street grid in place, the development of the empty blocks could have developed in a more organic fashion than any Corporate America Suckfest that Cordish could have come up with in subsequent phases. Without it, it's just another parking lot in a downtown that's literally drowning in asphalt as it is.

I am outraged, and a bit embarrassed to be part of "Cardinals Nation", whatever the hell that is.

And frankly, I'd rather stare at an empty site with a "For Sale" sign than for the Cardinals and Cordish to do anything at all with it at this point.

This whole plan looks so busted and cheap it's just depressing. Why don't they allow the cardinals to walk on the entire project. They should be required to sell the six individual "blocks" to different developers, require certain guidelines (certain heights, density, etc.) This whole area should be developed by mutiple groups, not some single, oversized project that could likely fail in 10 years.. Think Union Station/ St. Louis Center.

Bowling Hall of Fame building gone.

I don't get the big fuss over the tearing down of the Bowling Hall of Fame. I never saw that building as anything special. I actually though it was pretty ugly.

It is okay the building is coming down.

It is not okay that the land it sits on and the road in front of it are going to become more surface parking that will likely not be built on for years.

Wow, you guys are some real cynics. I understand that this development has been in the works for 15 yrs, but come on. The last time this really tried to get going, the market was at its peak. This time, it's starting at the bottom of the market. Have some faith.

For the record, I'm not too excited about all this retail/entertainment either.

A couple of solid blocks of nice urban residential with a strip of commercial facing the stadium and some on the corners would have been just fine with me.

The site really is prime for residential. Units with a view into the ballpark would fetch huge money. You can only kinda barely see in from some of the best positioned units in Point 400 but they rent those top floors for astronomical rates and seem to have pretty good occupancy. If I had enough money and influence I would build an 8 floor residential unit in BPV in a heartbeat.

gone corporate wrote:rents for a building will always trump revenues from parking.

If only this were actually the case.

threeonefour wrote:I am outraged

That is one of the finest rants I have ever read on this forum. Bravo.

STLEnginerd wrote:What IS the holdup here? Are the Cards demanding too much for the land? Are they contractually locked in with Cordish as the sole developer? Is there really no interest from major developers?

I don't think they're asking anything for the land or looking for developers, since the Cardinals & Cordish consider themselves the developers. And I don't think major developers have expressed interest because the Cardinals/Cordish are running their own show. Stifel & Centene expressed interest at different times, look where that got them. Why deal with Cards & Cordish when developers can keep costs low and qualify for more tax credits by focusing on historic buildings (ie Arcade, Chemical, Cupples 9, Bride's House Bldg)? It's not like there's a dirth of development opportunities outside of BPV. Even directly adjacent to the Ballpark.

I love the retaining pond! that's a nice suburbuban style added touch! I didn't know we needed retaining ponds in the heart of the CBD. how hilarious. anyway, I certainly hope the remaining blocks get developed as originally planned, but I'd rather see a Soulardesque/ Wrigleyville type neighborhood versus this Boulevard/ new urbanism sterile environment created downtown. Will these buildings be built so that towers can still go above them or was that just pretend times?

The 8th Street pedestrian overpass (one of the last vestiges of Busch II) is starting to come down.