urbanSTL

DeBaliviere wrote:While I'm no fan of the stadium garages, it would probably be pretty tough to tear them down - Stadium West, especially, since it provides parking for the Eagleton Courthouse, BofA Plaza, 1010 Market Street, etc. in addition to being used for baseball. Stadium East might be another story since the Equitable and Deloitte buildings are the only large office buildings in the vicinity.



Maybe they could support additional floors as the Kiener Garages supposedly do?

Having worked downtown in St. Louis Place (the 25-story red brick building in front of Met Square), I can tell you that my company had us park in Stadium East, even though it was 3-4 blocks away, and that M-F that garage is full during the day. The parking spaces are needed. Now, replacing the garage with a mixed-use structure would be great. But it needs to keep the public parking. This could be done by putting retail and offices around the perimeter, with public parking in the core up to say, level 6-7.

Every structure has a life span before maintenance costs really start eating up profits without a major upgrading or remodel. I'm assuming that these garages were built in the mid to late 60's, which puts them about 40 years old now. I bet they have another 10-20 years remaing before the concrete really starts wearing down. If the area is hot then I'm sure it will make sense for the garage owner to consider a demo/rebuild with additonal uses. I'm sure you engineering folks could shed some more light on this possibility then I can.

Sadly enough, if more people lived downtown or took the train into downtown for work, then we wouldn't NEED so many garages, or have to extend them.

MetroLink has been in operation for just over a decade, and does not have the ability to contain a ridership of 20,000 commuters. Maybe one day, the day that those bridges come down.

^MetroLink already averages over 40,000 riders a day, with summertime peaks of over 60,000 weekday riders. Cross County alone is expected to add another 20,000 riders to the system.

southslider wrote:^MetroLink already averages over 40,000 riders a day, with summertime peaks of over 60,000 weekday riders. Cross County alone is expected to add another 20,000 riders to the system.

Anybody know what the absolute capacity of the current system is, assuming of course that they could find the cash to buy as many cars as they could use (and expand the car storage areas)? I imagine there is a limit on how many cars can be on the system at one time, and thus how often you could run the cars. I'd guess its like every 2 to 3 minutes continuously or so...although during Fair St. Louis and other downtown events they seem to run every minute for awhile.

Current METRO stats:



Metro carried over 46.5 million passengers on Metro Trains & MetroBuses in 2005



Metro has a fleet of 77 rail cars, in addition will add 26 new cars with the Green Line opening this summer - a total of 103 rail cars in 2006.



Metro trains carries a daily average of approximately 43,000 passengers. Peak hours trains run every 5-10 minutes (according to volume), off peak hours trains run every 10-20 minutes, late nights trains run every 20-30 minutes. With the opening of the green line Metro trains are expected to carry over 63,000 passengers every day.

^Always a conservative estimate. That way, no one is unhappy when you're wrong. Btw, the better off the ridership actually is, the more delayed (albeit months, not years) the pending deficit will be.

I tried skimming some pgs bk but dont want to go too far because things about this development are everchanging and this thread is 33 pgs long. About the 2,000 parking spaces, I remember hearing they wanted to put them underground? Or was that the Bottle District, or is that both? Have they stated any solid plans about how they want to accomodate the parking spaces? From what I can tell of the renderings they appear to be all underground or at least not anywhere in site, but who trusts the renderings?

rockintheburbsTC wrote:I tried skimming some pgs bk but dont want to go too far because things about this development are everchanging and this thread is 33 pgs long. About the 2,000 parking spaces, I remember hearing they wanted to put them underground? Or was that the Bottle District, or is that both? Have they stated any solid plans about how they want to accomodate the parking spaces? From what I can tell of the renderings they appear to be all underground or at least not anywhere in site, but who trusts the renderings?

They haven't stated anything publicly about the specifics of this project in well over a year, other than that it would have three towers approximately 25 stories tall, 300,000 SF of office space, 450,000 SF of retail space, 2,000 parking spaces, and UP TO 1200 residential units. That's all we know. That, and the fact that there is an impasse between the developers and the city over how much of a TIF the city will provide, whether the city will back the TIF bonds, and how much development the city will get for its money (or our money).



The renderings on http://www.cordish.com are over a year old. Way back when, when the Cardinals were still threatening to move to Illinois, I remember seeing some project specs for Ballpark Village that mentioned they MIGHT put those 2,000 spaces underground, but I've neither seen nor heard anything to confirm that since.

The site plan that was released a while back seemed to have both under and above ground parking. Like everything, I don't think we will really know for sure until final construction plans are released.

I imagine that the residential buildings will have both above and below ground parking much like the residential towers that Opus is building.

^Except that I am guessing Cordish wants to squeeze every square inch of ground level retail space they can out of that site. Having separate above-grade parking for each building will really cut into that. So, I suspect that they will either have all underground parking under much of the site, or have one massive parking garage along Walnut Street (see The Boulevard or The Galleria), with ground level retail. I am certainly hoping for the former.

JMedwick wrote:Well it all depends if the economics will support the underground option. I wouldn't be betting that it does.

Again, hence the TIF discussion...

Thanks. Interesting with the TIF. It makes me want the city to give into them if they'll put the parking all underground. That would really be a big boost as far as tipping pts for downtown. I wonder about how much space 2,000 parking spaces would need.

I apologize if I've made this rant before, but I'm tired of looking at vacant lots north of the new ballpark. The Cardinals owners have had years to get financing in place and come up with a development plan - they should have been able to start construction after the ballpark was completed. This project could not start soon enough!

rockintheburbsTC wrote:Thanks. Interesting with the TIF. It makes me want the city to give into them if they'll put the parking all underground. That would really be a big boost as far as tipping pts for downtown. I wonder about how much space 2,000 parking spaces would need.

Garages take up tons of square footage... Just think... Parking spaces are typically 9X17-19 ft... lets just say each spot takes up 150 SF. Not no mention the driving lanes take up at least half of the space...

The Opus tower project (Lindell at least) has plans for two levels of parking below grade, a two story retail at grade, and parking above retail. I'd like to see this sort of situation throughout the village.



Looking at the renderings, which is always tricky to tell what is actually going to be there, but you can see there are several places for above ground parking. I also hope they don't ignore the option of instreet parking as well.

A good general number for square footage per parking space is around 300sf/space. This may seem excessive, but in that number you not only have to consider the space itself, but the amount of vehicular circulation required, as well as the minimal (in relation to the overall size of a garage) but present square footage for vertical circulation of the garage's patrons. You can generally lop off around 15-20sf per space if you decide to design with angled parking instead of perpendicular parking. Approximate numbers are 302.5sf/space @90degrees, 281.7sf/space @ 45-65degrees (round to your heart's content). Another component of the parking equation is the overall design/layout of the garage. While this does not directly impact the overall sf/space, it direclty affects the ease of wayfinding, user-friendlyness and security, definite concerns when you consider the number of spaces involved and the living/working/consuming visitors. So...the grand total square footage requirement of the development would be in the vicinity of 600K sf for parking, add that to the 300K and 400K for office and retail, repsectively, and you have quite a bit of space, not to mention the often thrown about idea of up to 1200 residential units. If Cordish's numbers hold true, we will be looking at a rather dense 6 block area. And while I don't have direct recollection of pricing for above and below ground spaces, the number 3-5x sticks out as the multiplier for underground parking, again 3-5x per space. For anyone wondering about the numbers I pulled, they are directly from Architectural Graphics Standards, 10th Ed. (chapter 1, pg. 103-114, to be exact)

^Actually, a 2x cost multiplier sounds about right. The higher seismic zone increases the cost of above grade parking here slightly. Fortunately, much of the site has been excavated previously and I believe most below-grade structure, foundations, utilities, etc. have already been removed as part of demolition of Busch, so there should be no surprises, excavation costs should be much lower and overall cost might be closer to 1.5x the cost of an above-grade structure.



I would guess the overall Ballpark Village site is somewhere around 9 to 12 acres, depending on whether or not they acquire the Bowling Hall of Fame and close Stadium Plaza. 12 acres = 522720 square feet. So, if you took a bit over 1/3 of the site and built a 3 level underground garage, that should be about 2000 spaces. Not sure on exact construction cost, maybe $60 to $75 per sqaure foot? So, it could cost $35 to $45 million to build 2000 underground spaces on this site, maybe less if they can locate the garage right where Busch used to be. That is less than 10% of the overall estimated development cost of BPV.

^Thanks for pointing that out...I forgot about the seismic activity factor and the fact that the site is pretty well excavated. That definitely makes underground more economical, as well as definitively more aesthetically appealling, as so many forumers have pointed out.



While I am only an architecture student, and as such am currently unihibited by budgetary constraints, the numbers you threw out actually sound about right, remembering what little some studio professors have said.

From Grid

Go StL. Oh and btw, I have heard people call the ballpark village and bottle districts "rumors", why, those projects are for real. I'd say over 95 for cordish and 90 for bottle district. They are clients.

Grid or anyone else who knows from reliable sources, if the proposed 3 residential towers for BPV are a reality, will there be 3, and how tall will they be? And, when is a definite date for this to get started going to happen?



And, if the original Bottle District proposal is reality, does anyone know a definite date when this will happen as well? I would love to see residentail tower(s) in the Bottle District, but let's take one thing at a time, get the commercial and entertainment phase in the building stages, then focus on the residential phase!