New plans afoot for old Foodland site
The long-empty Foodland building on S. Jefferson Ave. may soon get new life.

Developer Green Street Properties has filed plans with the City of St. Louis to rehab the empty 47,000 supermarket, and hopes to fill it with a smaller grocery store and other retailers. It has a contract to buy the building and hopes to start a $6.6 million first phase in the spring, with a second phase potentially to come later.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/business/column ... z1dtH1bgeB

Great news! "Something" in that space, is long overdue. Let's hope this development is nice and not a strip mall filled with a bunch of junk such as payday loan, pay as you go cell phone stores or a liquor store. I hope some quality stores go in, so the people living in the Square and the surrounding areas, have somewhere to shop.

This is long overdue. I agree I hope that it's quality grocery store, maybe even a chain restaurant such as chipotle but hope we can avoid the above mentioned retail. If done right it could invite further development across the street.

jmmnq6 wrote:

New plans afoot for old Foodland site
The long-empty Foodland building on S. Jefferson Ave. may soon get new life.

Developer Green Street Properties has filed plans with the City of St. Louis to rehab the empty 47,000 supermarket, and hopes to fill it with a smaller grocery store and other retailers. It has a contract to buy the building and hopes to start a $6.6 million first phase in the spring, with a second phase potentially to come later.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/business/column ... z1dtH1bgeB

Green Street Properties has been putting together a pretty good track record in the city with a mix of unique projects/rehab. Not huge development projects with very little chance of succeeding let alone securing financing but solid and well planned projects of existing structures. Hope this one works out for them also. Maybe Biondi should call them!

Glad to see something happening there - it's pretty ugly as it is now. I walked through Lafayette Square a few days ago and was struck by the empty site (I'd seen it before going down Jefferson, but hadn't made the connection with it being right next to Lafayette Square.)

It's amazing sometimes how frequently beauty and ugliness are juxtaposed in the St. Louis area.

dredger wrote:Green Street Properties has been putting together a pretty good track record in the city with a mix of unique projects/rehab. Not huge development projects with very little chance of succeeding let alone securing financing but solid and well planned projects of existing structures. Hope this one works out for them also. Maybe Biondi should call them!

With all the work they do in the city, it's too bad they're not located in the city (they're in Clayton).

I'd like to see an urban, mixed use development on this site. A rehabbed suburban-style big box store would be a missed opportunity.

Thanks for the info, really thought they were in the city.

Would have to agree it would be nice to see more out of the project, maybe with Hanley Station as a rough model (thinking of the holiday inn express next door to the old Foodland site and how out of place it seems considering the empty buildings around it). At the same something happening with the old food land building seems to be plus.

Another thought, will this be competing with the grocery store proposal on the east side of Lafayette square? Will it be one of those who can build theirs first.

I agree with Trader Joes. Would this space be big enough for an Ikea?

I dont know the ideal demo for a Trader Joes, but does anyone know if this location would work for them?

Right now it's "ruin porn" in the middle of a "food desert" but I'm holding out for a Trader Joes. That would be huuuuuuuuge. You've got to wonder how much time TJs would allocate to talking about shoplifting and other petty annoyances before they just say screw it. Simple demographics are always a concern in St. Louis. They aren't going to put a store there just to be nice.

Honestly, do you think a Trader Joes's could succeed here? I do.

Would there be enough support for a 'high end' grocer like TJ's in that area? From my experience, I doubt it. I know you have L-Square, C-Heights and Soulard, but you also have a ton of lower income areas. I think TJ's would be constantly targeted by shop-lifters and thieves. I just don't know if they'd take a chance, when Foodland failed there. I would LOVE to see a TJ's take a chance there. That would be a bold statement and show confidence in that area. I would not have been surprised to see higher end tenants in that spot 7-10 years ago, but now, with things being so slow economically and in the real estate market, it seems like a long shot. I hope it happens, but I also dread the thought of the site being anchored by ultra low end tenants. Guess we will see.

TIF was approved so this site will hopefully move forward and get redeveloped. The alderwoman Kacie is stating the existing building will get retrofitted to a new grocery store and possible a hardware store and gym as well. Same developer who did the green project at Chouteau and Jefferson with the wind turbines on the roof.

Supposedly the plan is to update the exterior of the building to be more modern and install some green features (whatever that means) into the project. No announcement on the grocery chain but Kacie says it will be an urban design.

Good news it seems, but I'll reserve final judgement once the site plan is released and the tenants are announced.

metzgda wrote:Supposedly the plan is to update the exterior of the building to be more modern and install some green features (whatever that means) into the project. No announcement on the grocery chain but Kacie says it will be an urban design.

I won't count on anything "green" or "urban" if the developer is re-purposing the existing building, but like you, I'll reserve final judgment until I see the site plan.

threeonefour wrote:

metzgda wrote:Supposedly the plan is to update the exterior of the building to be more modern and install some green features (whatever that means) into the project. No announcement on the grocery chain but Kacie says it will be an urban design.

I won't count on anything "green" or "urban" if the developer is re-purposing the existing building, but like you, I'll reserve final judgment until I see the site plan.

How is this hard to believe? Just go look at the recently completed Chouteau Crossing project (2301 Chouetau Ave) the Building/Site is tracking for LEED PLATINUM - that's no easy task to achieve. There's more 'green' features than just wind turbines - rainwater collection/irrigation system, green roof, light colored pavement (reduces Urban Heat Island Effect), cutoff light fixtures, louvers (to reduce daylight/temperature summer months), etc.

And the 'Urban' aesthetic of the building - I'll let the picture speak for itself:








Copy the building aesthetic and 'green' features to Foodland Site - that's a HUGE WIN for the neighborhood and on-going STL revitalization/development.

^You beat me to it. Green Street has a history of sustainable and creative redevelopment. The only reservation I have is that most of their projects have been in industrial areas or business parks, it will be interesting to see what their plan is for a property on a commercial strip adjacent to a historic neighborhood.

I don't know if this is the place but you just gotta see this spoof blog on Dwell mag and other modern architecture mags/blogs (which I love) but this is sooooooooo funny.

http://unhappyhipsters.com/

geoffksu wrote:

threeonefour wrote:

metzgda wrote:Supposedly the plan is to update the exterior of the building to be more modern and install some green features (whatever that means) into the project. No announcement on the grocery chain but Kacie says it will be an urban design.

I won't count on anything "green" or "urban" if the developer is re-purposing the existing building, but like you, I'll reserve final judgment until I see the site plan.

How is this hard to believe?

Alex hit the nail on the head. Reusing the existing building is the green way to go.

But I'm skeptical anytime a developer- or even worse, an alderman- throws out the terms "green" and "urban" unless I glean more specific information about the project(s) to which they are referring. Those terms have simply been misapplied to projects many times before. This happens in part because some aldermen have a warped idea of what those words mean, and also because they want to mollify those of us that expect higher standards than plopping something more appropriate for Oakville or Chesterfield onto a prominent intersection like Grand and Gravois.

You have to remember that the Archdiocese of Saint Louis insists the parking lot that replaced the former Deville Motor Hotel/San Luis Building is a green parking lot, I suppose because it has trees in medians. Yes, the leaves are green, but there's obviously nothing green about the acres of tarmac that replaced a building that could have been reused (in an urban and green context, of course). That is perhaps the most delusional example out there!

As I said before, I'll reserve final judgment until I see more specific details about the project. Perhaps even a skeptic like me will be pleasantly surprised by the finished product.