urbanSTL

roger wyoming II wrote:

That looks like the least practical coffee table ever. No place to actually set your coffee without sliding off.

Snapshot of what is going on in downtown Pittsburgh...

Drop in Downtown apartment occupancy, rental rates attributed to building surge, study says

The surge in apartment buildings developed in and near the Golden Triangle appears to be having an impact on occupancy and rental rates, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership has found.

In the PDP’s latest State of Downtown report, released Thursday, apartment occupancy rates in Greater Downtown fell from 95.6 percent at the end of 2013 to 90.8 percent at the end of last year. Rental rates also dropped 2.8 percent, from $1.82 a square foot to $1.77 a square foot....

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/pi ... 1505140296

We don't have regular reports but seems like occupancy "above 90%" usually is what is cited; I'm curious what average rents are but I've never seen a number cited.

What's the building at 6th and Olive in downtown St. Louis?

It's a gorgeous building and I'm 90% sure it's unoccupied. Why is this? It's just blocks from Busch Stadium. There are windows for every room around all four sides of the building. It seems like it would be a prime candidate for residential conversion with ground-level retail. If they could fill it, it'd be a boon for St. Louis' downtown area.

Streetside, there are posters about St. Louis in its windows to make the scene more asthetically pleasing, but the tragedy of it not being occupied has lingered with me following my trip to St. Louis.

Somebody, please tell me about this building.

JNOnSTL wrote:^The Railway Exchange Building

Former home to downtown Macy's, FKA Famous Barr, FKA (can't remember). For a short while (in 1914) the largest office building in the world by square footage. Macy's closed last year, sadly. The building is currently (on some floors, not sure how many) home to T-REX, a technology incubator.

It has its own thread here:

http://urbanstl.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... g&start=15

Also the former headquarters of May Co., which was acquired by Federated. Losing the department store was bad, but losing that corporate HQ was a major blow to downtown.

The building is absolutely magnificent. And yes, it's massive. That's one of the first things I thought of while walking beside it ... "This building has a ton of square footage." It felt like it took up an entire city block.

It sounds like it's going to be a while before anything is done with it. That makes me sad.

In terms of location, I think getting the Jefferson Arms online would provide the biggest boost. That would be a massive density boost to an area that really needs it.

T-Rex moved out of RRX last year and it's now completely vacant.

I agree that because of the scale of RRX, a Jefferson Arms, RRX, Butler Bros. lineup might be the most likely, with the (smaller scale) Alverne and Chemical will come back online before any of them.

Isn't the Alverne already underway?

^That is my understanding as well. Good to hear that in the meantime interior demo and prep continues on the Alverne and it's not just completely mothballed while 720 pushes ahead.

^ Well Railway exchange is challenging like the rest of the big boys it certainly would offer some great opportunities if a way could be found to land some decent leases. It simply offers the most opportunities to a multitude of uses of the space from mid size retail, to data center, to office, to residential, to various hotels and so on. Also, opening up and creating light also knocks out some square footage out of the leasing equation which might help more than hurt.

Of course, the idea of a Charter Tech/IT/Data Center (think how Square essentially positioned its office space above a big data center) would be what it would take to make it happen. Heck, how about Wells Fargo Securities taking on Railway exchange as an IT center or maybe convince their corporate parent to do it.

Here is another example of Cincy priming the residential pump more than we do....

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/n ... get-7.html



Somewhat complicated financing with several parties involved, but essentially the city is granting the developer $3.5 million plus 15 yr. tax abatement while also helping underwrite the associated 500 space public parking garage with 10,000 sq. ft. of commercial space. City's total looks to be $7.3 million for the $52 million project. (Kind of a blah building if you ask me.)

roger wyoming II wrote:Here is another example of Cincy priming the residential pump more than we do....

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/n ... get-7.html



Somewhat complicated financing with several parties involved, but essentially the city is granting the developer $3.5 million plus 15 yr. tax abatement while also helping underwrite the associated 500 space public parking garage with 10,000 sq. ft. of commercial space. City's total looks to be $7.3 million for the $52 million project. (Kind of a blah building if you ask me.)

I still think this is because downtown Cincinnati doesn't have anything like Clayton to compete with. This means that those who want to be in the center of the action in metro Cincinnati have stronger incentives to do a deal with Cincinnati government while Cincinnati government knows that it get more out of developers because there isn't a viable secondary urban center for them to threaten to go to. In the end, There has to be some mutual self-interest for deals to get done.

roger wyoming II wrote:^ I think that is a factor but it also seems to me that developers would find downtown more attractive if they received more financial assistance. I think if we had a downtown TIF fund like Cincy & Indy and longer abatement we'd have more projects. We give TIF to developers on projects like the 700 Market redevelopment for Laclede Gas, but it would be nice to also direct some of that revenue into a fund that could help spur more strategic projects. More incentives plus a more active development role by Downtown Now along the lines of 3CDC would be helpful for greater downtown.

We shouldn't get our hopes up that this would be a game changer given the metro market of St. Louis. Also, I suspect that the finances of the City of Cincinnati are in better shape than those of St. Louis City. This makes it harder to get the support for incentives, though I agree that St. Louis city will only thrive when there is a political majority for broad and sustained investment wherever the money comes from. St. Louis needs a plan for development and entities charged solely with carrying them out. I'm thinking of the 3cdc development corporation in Cincinnati.

roger wyoming II wrote:^ I don't think a downtown TIF fund would be a game-changer as it probably wouldn't be able to change the fortunes of the needed mega-projects like Jefferson Arms and Railway Exchange, but if it could help get smaller projects off the ground like the Chemical and LaSalle then I think that would be huge on its own. One or two decent-sized projects a year and some streetscaping help would go a long way, imo. Agreed on the 3CDC.... similar downtown orgs seem to have more competence and capacity than ours.

While we're on Cincy, btw, the State of Ohio just released the biannual HTC awards... here are the projects for Cincy that will receive HTCs:

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/n ... 7m-in.html



And for Cleveland:

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index ... cart_river

I think the success of 3cdc is largely due to its complete legal and financial independence from any and every other entity in Cincinnati. It's independence allows it to gather funding from many sources including commercial bank loans. If Cincinnati's city council had even the slightest formal role in 3cdc, they would have used it to score political points until it was left a worthless shell. The lesson is that, ironically, St. Louis City government has to be taken entirely out of the equation of developing St. Louis City if it is going to succeed.