urbanSTL

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Mar 12, 2022

chriss752 wrote: ↑

Mar 11, 2022

_nomad_ wrote: ↑

Mar 11, 2022

A number of people quoted say Clayton has a "small-town" feel that they fear losing, I cannot understand that term. How can one of the primary business and political hubs of a region populated by nearly 3 million people possibly be considered "small-town" in feeling or any other way? I can't imagine "small-town" as one of the feelings I get walking around Clayton, but maybe I just don't get what people are trying to describe when using the term.

I understand what they mean. The small old commercial buildings that are slowly being demolished and replaced with things like Bemiston Place, Forsyth Point, Residence Inn, AC Hotel, 50 Bemiston and World Newe Site. These are all sites where smaller commercial buildings once stood/still stand. The last few years have seen an uptick in proposals to do away with those small buildings. So in terms of it feeling small town, I think that’s what they mean.

I think one difference with Clayton and for example downtown. Clayton only really has so much footprint to grow "up" it is surrounded by single family homes on all sides and besides the main "downtown" area it isn't going to really spread past FPP/Maryland/170/Hanley (besides the Centene part). 

So even if that area builds up a lot I think it can keep a small town feel (Maybe it does lose some "charm") because its a lot of walking thru neighborhoods with some high rises in the middle. 

I live in Ucity but I will walk into Clayton a fair amount to get dinner or whatever else and I think because for the most part the area is walkable it still feels small town to me. I actually kind of like the dynamic that you can be in neighborhood streets and then there are all these big buildings just a couple streets over. I get the point of some losing charm and if the shops/resturants along Maryland go I would be a little sad but I wouldn't lose sleep over it. 

• Create a coherent master plan with mixed hi/medium rise along Brentwood. This would connect DT Clayton to the Galleria, through to Brentwood/Manchester.
[ul]
• Reimagine land use of major areas to actually build an urban, mid/highrise wall along Brentwood:
[ul]
• Enterprise/Family Courts, so much dead space here. Can easily envision hotels/residential here.
• Galleria Parking Lots: recreate some sense of a street grid between Galleria and BLVD. Build midrise/hi-rise ontop of the lots. Build out the BLVD as originally envisioned, no car washes.
• Brentwood Square. The original Brentwood strip mall. Reclaim the original sin of big box lots in the area. Build midrise that better compliments the towers around it. Mix of office/retail/residential. Provide the urban apartment living that Brentwood Forest / EVO pretend to be. Which brings me to the biggest point:
• Completely reimagine the stretch of big box store developments from Target to Best Buy to Home Depot to Walmart. Keep the shopping. Hell even keep the parking. But literally I don't think you could draw up a worse version. Rebuild the grid, including the industrial court back there. Smartly plan parking garages, underground parking that will serve the area. A wall of office/retail/hotels along the highway. Similar along Hanley Residential towers of high rise along the highway, medrise gradually meeting the houses and yards of Brentwood/Maplewood. 
• Make Brentwood a place, not a place to drive through. Brentwood BLVD and Manchester need serious road reimaginating. No reason those stretches couldn't be built up to look at least like Maplewood. 

SRQ2STL wrote: ↑

Jun 15, 2022

Greetings from the clouds here at Centene floor 26! The core driller is out at Bemiston Place and cladding is well along at Forsyth Point. It's hard to tell here..but also the rooftop HVAC screen structure is being assembled on top of the east tower, bringing this side of the complex to its maximum height.

RuskiSTL wrote: ↑

Jun 15, 2022

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Mar 12, 2022

chriss752 wrote: ↑

Mar 11, 2022

I understand what they mean. The small old commercial buildings that are slowly being demolished and replaced with things like Bemiston Place, Forsyth Point, Residence Inn, AC Hotel, 50 Bemiston and World Newe Site. These are all sites where smaller commercial buildings once stood/still stand. The last few years have seen an uptick in proposals to do away with those small buildings. So in terms of it feeling small town, I think that’s what they mean.

I think one difference with Clayton and for example downtown. Clayton only really has so much footprint to grow "up" it is surrounded by single family homes on all sides and besides the main "downtown" area it isn't going to really spread past FPP/Maryland/170/Hanley (besides the Centene part). 

So even if that area builds up a lot I think it can keep a small town feel (Maybe it does lose some "charm") because its a lot of walking thru neighborhoods with some high rises in the middle. 

I live in Ucity but I will walk into Clayton a fair amount to get dinner or whatever else and I think because for the most part the area is walkable it still feels small town to me. I actually kind of like the dynamic that you can be in neighborhood streets and then there are all these big buildings just a couple streets over. I get the point of some losing charm and if the shops/resturants along Maryland go I would be a little sad but I wouldn't lose sleep over it. 

"Greater Clayton" has tons of room to grow. Fragmentation and lack of vision only stops this. If we didn't have Clayton, Brentwood, Maplewood, Richmond Heights, UCity, and Webster Groves all as separate fiefdoms you could do the following:

• Create a coherent master plan with mixed hi/medium rise along Brentwood. This would connect DT Clayton to the Galleria, through to Brentwood/Manchester.
[ul]
• Reimagine land use of major areas to actually build an urban, mid/highrise wall along Brentwood:
[ul]
• Enterprise/Family Courts, so much dead space here. Can easily envision hotels/residential here.
• Galleria Parking Lots: recreate some sense of a street grid between Galleria and BLVD. Build midrise/hi-rise ontop of the lots. Build out the BLVD as originally envisioned, no car washes.
• Brentwood Square. The original Brentwood strip mall. Reclaim the original sin of big box lots in the area. Build midrise that better compliments the towers around it. Mix of office/retail/residential. Provide the urban apartment living that Brentwood Forest / EVO pretend to be. Which brings me to the biggest point:
• Completely reimagine the stretch of big box store developments from Target to Best Buy to Home Depot to Walmart. Keep the shopping. Hell even keep the parking. But literally I don't think you could draw up a worse version. Rebuild the grid, including the industrial court back there. Smartly plan parking garages, underground parking that will serve the area. A wall of office/retail/hotels along the highway. Similar along Hanley Residential towers of high rise along the highway, medrise gradually meeting the houses and yards of Brentwood/Maplewood. 
• Make Brentwood a place, not a place to drive through. Brentwood BLVD and Manchester need serious road reimaginating. No reason those stretches couldn't be built up to look at least like Maplewood. 

[li]Build a modern streetcar down Brentwood[/li]
[li]Long term goal to connect to Webster in South along Brentwood/Elm, Maplewood in East, UCity in North along N/S[/li]
[/ul]
[/ul]

Group 2 (15).png


Does this get you Manhatten in the burbs? No. But it's a helluva lot better than what's there. And largely consists of rolling back the terrible policies of the last 40 years and getting these inner ring suburbs back to their more urban-ish roots. Plus some modernizing. This literally some of the most valuable land in the region and it's sh*t right now.

alexstl wrote: ↑

Jun 16, 2022

RuskiSTL wrote: ↑

Jun 15, 2022

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Mar 12, 2022

I think one difference with Clayton and for example downtown. Clayton only really has so much footprint to grow "up" it is surrounded by single family homes on all sides and besides the main "downtown" area it isn't going to really spread past FPP/Maryland/170/Hanley (besides the Centene part). 

So even if that area builds up a lot I think it can keep a small town feel (Maybe it does lose some "charm") because its a lot of walking thru neighborhoods with some high rises in the middle. 

I live in Ucity but I will walk into Clayton a fair amount to get dinner or whatever else and I think because for the most part the area is walkable it still feels small town to me. I actually kind of like the dynamic that you can be in neighborhood streets and then there are all these big buildings just a couple streets over. I get the point of some losing charm and if the shops/resturants along Maryland go I would be a little sad but I wouldn't lose sleep over it. 

"Greater Clayton" has tons of room to grow. Fragmentation and lack of vision only stops this. If we didn't have Clayton, Brentwood, Maplewood, Richmond Heights, UCity, and Webster Groves all as separate fiefdoms you could do the following:

• Create a coherent master plan with mixed hi/medium rise along Brentwood. This would connect DT Clayton to the Galleria, through to Brentwood/Manchester.
[ul]
• Reimagine land use of major areas to actually build an urban, mid/highrise wall along Brentwood:
[ul]
• Enterprise/Family Courts, so much dead space here. Can easily envision hotels/residential here.
• Galleria Parking Lots: recreate some sense of a street grid between Galleria and BLVD. Build midrise/hi-rise ontop of the lots. Build out the BLVD as originally envisioned, no car washes.
• Brentwood Square. The original Brentwood strip mall. Reclaim the original sin of big box lots in the area. Build midrise that better compliments the towers around it. Mix of office/retail/residential. Provide the urban apartment living that Brentwood Forest / EVO pretend to be. Which brings me to the biggest point:
• Completely reimagine the stretch of big box store developments from Target to Best Buy to Home Depot to Walmart. Keep the shopping. Hell even keep the parking. But literally I don't think you could draw up a worse version. Rebuild the grid, including the industrial court back there. Smartly plan parking garages, underground parking that will serve the area. A wall of office/retail/hotels along the highway. Similar along Hanley Residential towers of high rise along the highway, medrise gradually meeting the houses and yards of Brentwood/Maplewood. 
• Make Brentwood a place, not a place to drive through. Brentwood BLVD and Manchester need serious road reimaginating. No reason those stretches couldn't be built up to look at least like Maplewood. 

[li]Build a modern streetcar down Brentwood[/li]
[li]Long term goal to connect to Webster in South along Brentwood/Elm, Maplewood in East, UCity in North along N/S[/li]
[/ul]
[/ul]

Group 2 (15).png


Does this get you Manhatten in the burbs? No. But it's a helluva lot better than what's there. And largely consists of rolling back the terrible policies of the last 40 years and getting these inner ring suburbs back to their more urban-ish roots. Plus some modernizing. This literally some of the most valuable land in the region and it's sh*t right now.

I think this would be incredible if it ever happened. I know I've heard of projects reusing dead retail spaces for new development but never projects redoing really active big-box retailers. I don't know logistically however how this would get done. I'd imagine insane pushback from Nimby's complaining about all kinds of things. Although, not to be nimbyish but putting more residential around the whole shopping area would create a ton more traffic than is already there so this would have to be planned and managed really well for it to work out.

• Bemiston Place: 236 - topped out
• 50 Bemiston: 254 - pending start
• Meramec and Pershing: 145 - approved
• 111-121 South Meramec: 298 units - proposed

• Forsythia: 38 - site prep

• 10 South Central: 245 rooms - approved
• AC Hotel: 207 rooms - topped out

SRQ2STL wrote: ↑

Sep 18, 2023

Interesting juxtaposition just a couple blocks from the main development area. This new history marker was just placed near Hanley and Carondelet, right out front of Centene B. 

JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

Jan 13, 2025

An occupancy comparison of recent (other than Clayton on the Park) luxury apartment developments in Clayton and the City:

Clayton

Ceylon - 80%

Two Twelve - 85%

Clayton on the Park - 80% (despite its age, its profile warrants inclusion here).

Barton - 96% (throwing Clayton a bone here; this isn’t a luxury development)

StL

One Cardinal Way - 95%

One Hundred - 90%

The Marlowe - 92%

Euclid - 95%

Citizen Park - 91%

Orion - 98%

Chroma - 94%

The Ceylon’s awful leasing really stands out. I’m pretty surprised the new 5 over 2 went up across the street with Ceylon doing this poorly.

The City needs to stop giving out tax breaks for development in the CWE, Grove, and Midtown/Grand Center (west of Grand and south of Lindell). The concept has been proven.

Edit: The Victor is at 77% after 18 months. This one is a little unique given its gargantuan size. Hopefully it’s able to get closer to 90% number by fall.

JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

Jan 13, 2025

An occupancy comparison of recent (other than Clayton on the Park) luxury apartment developments in Clayton and the City:

Clayton

Ceylon - 80%

Two Twelve - 85%

Clayton on the Park - 80% (despite its age, its profile warrants inclusion here).

Barton - 96% (throwing Clayton a bone here; this isn’t a luxury development)

StL

One Cardinal Way - 95%

One Hundred - 90%

The Marlowe - 92%

Euclid - 95%

Citizen Park - 91%

Orion - 98%

Chroma - 94%

The Ceylon’s awful leasing really stands out. I’m pretty surprised the new 5 over 2 went up across the street with Ceylon doing this poorly.

The City needs to stop giving out tax breaks for development in the CWE, Grove, and Midtown/Grand Center (west of Grand and south of Lindell). The concept has been proven.

Edit: The Victor is at 77% after 18 months. This one is a little unique given its gargantuan size. Hopefully it’s able to get closer to 90% number by fall.