urbanSTL

anyone want to speculate on possible tenants?

SanSai Japanese Grill (www.sansaiusa.com)

Cheesecake Factory because there is one in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore. In fact, since Cordish developed the Baltimore Inner Harbor, I bet we can count on a lot of those tenants locating in Ballpark Village.



http://www.baltimore.org/baltimore_inner_harbor.htm

I went to the Baltimore inner harbor site and started thinking about the water taxi. Has anyone ever thought about starting a water taxi that goes between St. Charles County on the Missouri River all the way to the Arch downtown at high speed? If it was very low draw, could it skip the lock & dam and go over the chain of rocks? I wonder how it would compare to a light rail going to the same place in St. Charles County?



With some kind of high speed water taxi or hovercraft, Metro could link up Downtown, South County, North County, Alton, St. Charles, Eureka, -- Chicago?

See...... now when the Cards were having STL and IL fight over them, we should have let them relocate to East St. Louis.



There would have been so MANY "other" options of shops there. We should have been more forward thinking man......







This is what happens when you fall sick on a friday evening and have nothing better to do than reply to posts.

I was on Emporis.com this morning and noticed that they have a total of six towers/mid-rises listed for the site. Here they are with # of floors...



Tower I - 32 floors

Tower II - 28 floors

Tower III - 26 floors

Tower IV - 11 floors

Tower V - 18 floors

Tower VI - 19 floors



Now, only Tower I has a year of completion listed next to it - in this case 2008. My understanding was that the first tower would not be quite this tall, so if it's actually 32 stories that is great. Also, I would also assume that Towers IV - VI would be included in Phase 1 to comprise the other blocks? If so, that is great density to be added to downtown.

I didn't see a reference to this article yet:



http://www.slfp.com/ConstructionNews.htm



SLFP sometimes has much better stories than elsewhere.

Solid article. Every day I hope to see official, signed, retail and restaurant announcements.

Has there been ANY news of "anchor stores" for the BPV?

Is it just me, or does that Lee guy give off a creepy Donald Trump vibe?



Uh, sorry; wrong thread.

OK, I'm waiting for the Post Dispatch to be outraged by the public subsidy for the new Whitaker development planned for the Noah's Ark site in St. Charles. The develpment is comparable to BPV Phase I, and the TIF is 65 million -- like the BPV TIF. I will concede that St. Charles is at least as blighted as Des Peres - home of the TIF funded West County mall.



http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/s ... enDocument



I'm waiting for the Post Dispatch to try to kill this development and cripple St. Charles, the way it tried to affect BPV in its own city. I'm waiting. Still waiting. Waiting...

TIF is abused everywhere. St. Charles is capitalizing on this, like any other locality would. The state had tried to redfine TIF with more stringent measures , but I think that bill died before it ever came to vote.



STL city (certain parts) is what TIF should really be used for.

Actually, the Post published a long editorial supporting the Ballpark Village TIF.

Hey does anyone know a timeframe on the Ball Park Village??

TheWayoftheArch wrote:Groundbreaking this spring. Completion 2009.

Completion of 1st phase, I assume. Do they have tentative targets for successive phases?

^I looked on both the Cordish and Cardinals' websites and I could not find any mention of a proposed completion date for any phase. In fact neither site seems to have updated the BPV plans from what was proposed two years ago or more (the Cardinal's web site still shows the rendering of that silly aquarium they were talking about across from the Westin). Has anyone found a website for this project yet? You'd think that if they were trying to fill retail space they would have a website up by now.



EDIT: On Cordish's website, under press releases, there is a release dated 10/27 that says about the $387 million first phase, "construction on Ballpark Village could begin Spring 2007, with the anticipated completion of the first phase in the spring of 2009." It also says that the development agreement reached with the city is only for the first phase. No agreement has been reached for subsequent phases (which I believe included most of the residential units), thus no target dates.

38 pictures:



http://www.kmov.com/cgi-bin/bi/slidesho ... xtimage=26

I think I'll be spending some time in the "cardinals nation" area in the future. I can't wait for this to happen, I wish they had started construction as soon as the stadium was completed.

I was at a presentation meeting at the Cordish offices this past Tuesday and they said April 2009 was the target date for Phase I, although he admitted that was an agressive date. He mentioned that all the infratructure for the other towers would be in place by the end of Phase I but the towers would go up in 1 1/2 year intervals (or longer as they don't want to saturate the downtown market).



I was really impressed with the presentation and the combination of models and 3D videos used to display the project. You could really get a sense of what it will be like to be in the park area of the project looking out. I have faith in these guys and think it will be a great project.

I can't wait to see things start to go up. I just love seeing the construction, watching a tower rise from the ground. Seeing this entire area turned into a thriving district is going to be something else.

If completed according to plans then this will be similar to Victory Park in Dallas (next to American Airlines Center). Although they are moving fast with construction in Victory Park and it's more upscale they seem to serve the same purpose and both will bring a new look to their respective areas. I'm excited about this project but saddened that I won't be here to see it. Will definitely have to come back when it's finished.

trent wrote:I can't wait to see things start to go up. I just love seeing the construction, watching a tower rise from the ground. Seeing this entire area turned into a thriving district is going to be something else.

I'm looking forward to this as well. Even though the Cardinals had a great year and won the World Series in their inaugural season at the new Busch Stadium, I must say I still couldn't help but be a bit disappointed every time I was there when I looked into the gaping hole north of Clark.



It will be nice to walk to the game (hopefully as early in the season as possible) and see some tangible progress on this project. I'm confident that the finished product will be great, and I can't wait to experience it, but I'll just be satisfied in the meantime to see some progress there.