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PostJan 20, 2016#276

^ no....Deli Star is out of Fayetteville and Landshire I believe was based in Caseyville (and still has its production facility there).

This is at least the third metro east company that has set up shop in The Landing the past few years (Think Tank Marketing is another) and then there is the mesothelioma law firm that will be doing the mixed-use rehab on Pine and I recall an accounting firm also setting up a branch downtown. Yeah Metro East!

PostJan 20, 2016#277

I believe a logistics firm from Metro East also set up an office in The Landing a few years back but details r foggy.

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PostJan 20, 2016#278

Interesting........ Great news regarding Deli Star. Baby steps for downtown's office market. :)

In regards to Landshire, it had moved its HQs to LaClede's Landing in 2010 from Belleville. Then parts of the company (namely wholesale and manufacturing) were bought by AdvancePierre Foods based in the Cincy area. And the Caseyville plant is still operational.

Landshire Distribution (also known as Troverco) is still HQ'd in St. Louis on LaClede's Landing.

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PostJan 22, 2016#279

Good to see some marketing for the 1015 Locust Building.... video includes some good drone footage:



Not the slickest piece but good to see. I also look forward to seeing what comes to the street level space.

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PostMar 16, 2016#280

Bunge is moving a test kitchen from Chicago to STL. Bad news...they are moving to Missouri Research Park. The worse place on earth.

Would have been nice if they moved downtown.

http://m.stltoday.com/business/columns/ ... user-share

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PostMar 16, 2016#281

Seems like it would make a great tenant for Cortex - with Solae (a former Bunge joint venture) and AB Mauri right nearby. Too bad. Definitely a missed opportunity.

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PostMar 17, 2016#282

Apparently Peabody will be vacating 60,000 sq. ft.... who knows, maybe another candidate for a partial residential conversion.

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PostMar 17, 2016#283

roger wyoming II wrote:Apparently Peabody will be vacating 60,000 sq. ft.... who knows, maybe another candidate for a partial residential conversion.
That building would never become residential. 60,000 sq ft is not that much to fill in that building.

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PostMar 18, 2016#284

Apparently Peabody will be vacating 60,000 sq. ft.... who knows, maybe another candidate for a partial residential conversion.
Going into Bankruptcy and vacating their building are two different things. I would imagine that the company will try to stay online and reorganize. Yes - possible vacancy or some square footage to be released. But let's not "anticipate" or "speculate" things that have not happened.

"The company said it has held discussions with lenders regarding potential debt-for-equity swaps or new financing."
USAtoday

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PostMar 18, 2016#285

^ Peabody will be keeping space but vacating 60,000 sq. ft. is my understanding..... I believe it currently has 9 of the building's 15 floors under lease... I suppose giving up 60K sq. ft. would be 2 or 3 floors. With the addition of the recent Northwestern Mutual move-out and other vacancies I wouldn't doubt we're looking at an office occupancy rate under 75%.

I don't know at what point it makes sense for property owners to look at the increasingly popular move of converting office towers to residential, but I am a fan of the trend for cities like STL & Kansas City. Personally I think having Gateway One become a mixed-use tower with ground floor retail and mix of office and residential above would be cool.... that would help take excess office space off the rolls and help occupancy and lease rates elsewhere. Win-win! Plus it would give super-prime views for some lucky-ducky residents!

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PostMar 19, 2016#286

roger wyoming II wrote:^ Peabody will be keeping space but vacating 60,000 sq. ft. is my understanding..... I believe it currently has 9 of the building's 15 floors under lease... I suppose giving up 60K sq. ft. would be 2 or 3 floors. With the addition of the recent Northwestern Mutual move-out and other vacancies I wouldn't doubt we're looking at an office occupancy rate under 75%.

I don't know at what point it makes sense for property owners to look at the increasingly popular move of converting office towers to residential, but I am a fan of the trend for cities like STL & Kansas City. Personally I think having Gateway One become a mixed-use tower with ground floor retail and mix of office and residential above would be cool.... that would help take excess office space off the rolls and help occupancy and lease rates elsewhere. Win-win! Plus it would give super-prime views for some lucky-ducky residents!
Even so, that doesn't mean that one of the best available downtown office building should be converted (even a portion) to residential. That's not really how things work. There are better options for residential conversion. And the cost to convert this building would exceed the potential residential rent amount.

Have you been inside Gateway One? It's very corporate. The lobby is not really conducive to residential use. The main reason office buildings convert to residential is because the potential for revenue is greater. But that's not the case with Gateway One - it's office rents are on the high end of downtown. Maybe if the rents decrease to less than $12 per sq ft, then MAYBE a conversion would be in the discussion. But a lot of things in downtown would have to go horribly wrong for rents in that building to decrease to that level.

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PostMar 19, 2016#287

^ I think that is some fair points about the building itself. I would also argue with Jeff Arms, Chemical and Railway Exchange still needing to come back to life & the best possibility of that happening is residential that doing a conversion or even converting part of Gateway One might make other developments little less likely. Another way to put it, would you rather have say the chemical building get developed even though Gateway One might have a vacancy rate little bit higher until another tenant can come along because it might be more suited for office or Peabody gets back on its feet, if it does?

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PostMar 20, 2016#288

Quick question: Other than loopnet.com is there a good way to know what all of the commercial buildings for sale throughout the city are? There's gotta be more out there than just the stuff on there right?

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PostMar 21, 2016#289

I'm not sure if this has already been posted, but someone I know that works for Nestle Purina said 400 of their employees will be moving into 100 N. Broadway. It sounded like its pretty full at the HQ building, hence the additional space.

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PostMar 21, 2016#290

^ that's pretty awesome.... I believe someone had mentioned some folks would be going in but I hadn't heard the count. Of course Nestle Purina workers at the HQ are counted in the downtown employee count, but it's great to bump up the CBD.

Having said that, it would be great if eventually N-P infills some quality buildings on their surface lots on Chouteau and 7th (who knows, maybe with ground floor pet cafes... one for cats and another for dogs where you can drop in and hang out. Maybe for the dogs a rooftop run where they jump into a pool after a toy toss. But hopefully they don't jump too far.)

As for 100 N. Broadway, it would be great if they could do something to take advantage of the great location/view from the two-story area where I think a ban branch used to be... maybe build out a nice bar/restaurant space while carving out a spectacular patio area to take in the Old Court House & Arch view.

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PostMar 21, 2016#291

I just left NPPC... like 2 weeks ago. :) But on top of this, the Blanke ownership just demo'd the building right next to the Blanke building. I wouldn't be surprised if Purina bought that property soon... especially since they've been wanting to move their engineers back on campus from the Bank of America Building.

PostMar 21, 2016#292

Just chatted with my sister who works with someone in the Business Solutions Group (dept that's moving). She says its max 200 people, but definitely over 100.

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PostMar 22, 2016#293

^ 400 sounded too good to be true but even 100-200 will be nice. You've confused me with your post above that though; are you thinking Purina might have an interest in building on that Blanke property in order to bring workers back from the CBD?

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PostMar 22, 2016#294

I worked there for 9.5 years and they really don't like the idea of having people off campus, so I would imagine this would be a temporary move. We (Purina) used to take up a few floors in the Blanke Building and spent a bunch of money fixing up the building until they raised the rent and we moved out. We then moved a bunch of those engineers over to the BOA building about 4-5 years ago - that group has been growing over time (maybe 50+). Then the Business Solutions group outgrew their space, and now they are moving over there. The new Admin building we just built has been a huge hit, but HR was moved from all over campus into that building... They've been hiring a lot of people for the Checkmark (Ad Agency) team lately also, which is also a capacity building... I guess I just see some writing on the wall since that building next to the Blanke building was demo'd last month.

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PostMar 22, 2016#295

So the good news either way seems to be the existing HQ location seems to be filled to the gills. Nice! (btw, it was interesting to read that back in the day Purina had a signficant amount of office in The Landing.)

I'm also curious about Wells-Fargo Advisors.... I believe they are doing pretty well, too, and recall them building out a significant amount of more space in the complex. But I wonder if they are getting to the point where they may need to think about leasing nearby (maybe they already do?) or perhaps even building new construction.

PostMar 22, 2016#296

dredger wrote: Another way to put it, would you rather have say the chemical building get developed even though Gateway One might have a vacancy rate little bit higher until another tenant can come along because it might be more suited for office or Peabody gets back on its feet, if it does?
That's a great question.... if there existed only a set amount of latent residential demand of course I'd prefer the Chemical or Jeff Arms or whatnot to be rehabbed. However, I'm a pretty firm believer that this is not the case and that projects like the Millennium Center and 720 Olive partial conversions of formerly all-office towers has been a good thing for downtown. They have helped create more interest from potential developers both within and outside the region and I believe make it more likely that our remaining historics will get rehabbed.

Again I don't know when/if it might make sense for the owners of this particular property to consider a partial conversion and hopefully the vacated spaces are leased up quickly, but if office occupancy is high for several years I wouldn't mind at all if it happens.

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PostMar 22, 2016#297

RW, My wish list for Purina/Nestle and Wells Fargo Securities going forward.

Purina builds out more of its campus on the street facing surface lots along 7th and contribute to streetscaping improvements back north to the metrolink station/future greenway. In other words, take ownership of 7th street scape from stadium to Broadway (Soulard) & Chouteau street scape from Tucker to Broadway for civic pride sake. Purina is ideally situated between Lafayette Square, Soulard and Downtown Loft District

Wells Fargo Securities becomes anchor tenant for new tower that bookend west end of Gateway Mall with a rebuilt 22nd street interchange/west downtown street grid. Wells keep existing campus and maybe St. Louis even sees some IT/tech move in from Wells Fargo Bank itself.

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PostMar 22, 2016#298

^ ditto.... I'd love to see Purina/Nestle help anchor a coherent "Downtown South/Chouteu's Lake" district and WFA the Midtown/Downtown West area... 2 rather sad places right now. And a signature tower that would compliment the Arch would be terrific on the west end of the Mall. A man's gotta dream, right? (btw, I believe one of the two new Wells Fargo towers in Minneapolis opened earlier this year and the other one soon... not terribly tall though, iirc.)

PostMar 22, 2016#299

Here's the two Wells Fargo buildings opening up in Minneapolis that are helping to anchor the Downtown East district by the new stadium


http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/n ... n.html#g11

nothing too great but I could see something like this working in a 22nd St. interchange district.

PostMar 22, 2016#300

Welp, the dream of a Bunge HQ downtown died today.

Bunge plans headquarters move to Chesterfield
http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ ... 12c21.html


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