urbanSTL

Hahaha I saw that twitter comment too, facepalm!!

From Scott Ogilvie:

Construction moving along on re-opening Lucas Ave. at Memorial Dr. to re-connect to 2nd St. for better access to Laclede’s Landing. #healthegrid

Aerial of the new street:

-RBB

Lmao I just went down this afternoon to get a photo for you guys and Scott Ogilvie stole my thunder 

In other Landing news I saw that the old Elsher's building is getting some interior work done, anybody know what for? Plus the grassy lot next door has now been paved over for a surface parking lot. I would assume for the Peper Lofts. 

^^ Thanks RBB for posting

Man would a nice Drury structure or two on the surface lots really do the trick.   Of course, still waiting for the day that light bulb goes on, planets align and powers to be from state on down do away with raised section of freeway for a short stretch of tree lined at grade boulevard. 

dredger wrote:Man would a nice Drury structure or two on the surface lots really do the trick.   Of course, still waiting for the day that light bulb goes on, planets align and powers to be from state on down do away with raised section of freeway for a short stretch of tree lined at grade boulevard. 

I think that now since the new street divides the lots some, it makes development more favorable. I could see Drury revealing a residential tower here in the near future if Peper Lofts and the Greeley and Hoffman renovations to office and residential go well. Because residential wasn't tried prior on the landing, they may have been skeptical to do their own without someone else trying. Advantes Group appears to have succeeded in their venture with the Peper Lofts but now they have Greeley and Hoffman coming up. If those go well, I could definitely see Drury unveiling their project because of the success of the other three by a different developer. In my opinion, the lot closest to the Eads Bridge will be built on first with the other lot being built later on down the road. Who knows, maybe they will add office into their plans if the Witte Building renovation goes better than anticipated. 

If the highway were to become a Boulevard, which I don't see happening in the near future, the Landing will boom more for sure. It is on a steady come back and there are tons of sites to develop there but ultimately, Advantes and Drury will use the Landing to their advantage for now. With that being said, I just hope they both leave a positive and lasting effect that will benefit the Landing continuously decades down the line.

^ Tough to have faith in Drury in doing anything outside of their cookie cutter chain freeway hotels these days.   Got the impression that they were going to get out of their comfort zone with some of their purchases within the city along Kingshighway for FPSE twin tower hotel and their land banking in Laclede's Landing but awfully quiet from a national hotel based in the region.     

Heck, you got a Iowa hotel developer proposing to break ground on downtown surface lot and a few other hotels & proposals whether it be the old Harry's site and Mid town connection from developers that I suspect don't have the financial resources of Drury.  Probably good chance I got it all wrong and maybe we will see something sooner than later with Arch grounds rebuild essentially complete, CVC on track for convention expansion, strong possibility of MLS downtown and movement in positive side for downtown office lease and jobs 

Chris, which lot are you talking about, closest to Eads? At the Southwest corner of Lucas and 1st? Because I thought GRG was turning the southeast corner next to the Eads into another park.

Here are a couple of shots that show what GRG envisions for this part of the riverfront (in the longterm), from their 2017 Master Plan. The new park everyone is talking about is referred to as "Metro Plaza" in the below images. However, in the initial phase, the Metro Plaza only extends between Commercial St. and 1st St.

I think the Landing has the potential to become one of the coolest neighborhoods in the entire city, with some of the most interesting architecture. 

I'd love to see some crazy, modern structures go into the neighborhood. You could end up with a 50/50 split on old & new.

KansasCitian wrote:I think the Landing has the potential to become one of the coolest neighborhoods in the entire city, with some of the most interesting architecture. 

I'd love to see some crazy, modern structures go into the neighborhood. You could end up with a 50/50 split on old & new.

Yes please. The worst thing they could do is try to do some historic looking new construction. New construction that stands next to historic buildings creates such an interesting juxtaposition.


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I actually think the Landing could be 60-65% new and 35-40% old. You could dramatically change the feel of the neighborhood. 

Bring the old riverfront district into the new age. Connect the Landing to the Arch grounds and to an epic riverfront trail, and I think you could change the face of St. Louis from that typical postcard vantage point on the Illinois riverfront. 

bwcrow1s wrote:Chris, which lot are you talking about, closest to Eads? At the Southwest corner of Lucas and 1st? Because I thought GRG was turning the southeast corner next to the Eads into another park.

Northeast corner at Memorial drive and Eads Bridge is what I am talking about. Tim’s post shows this as “Gateway Hotel”.

Those renders look amazing. 

My favorite old and new composition is Gehry's "Fred and Ginger" building in Prague:

That would be incredibly fun for just about anywhere in St. Louis, but definitely on the riverfront. 

The massive yet artistically beautiful 446 MB Mississippi Greenway Park Master Plan can be downloaded here for those that are interested: https://greatriversgreenway.sharefile.c ... cafc14fb59. It's chock full of interesting renderings and analyses of the area.

However, I think we all pretty much agree that the area needs more density before it needs more green/active space, even if it's more usable green/active space than the decrepit empty lots that currently exist. The Chouteau Greenway is almost guaranteed to attract more attention (aka: investment) from GRG given it's location within St. Louis's well-developed (and growing) central corridor, in my opinion.

Nonetheless, the fact that GRG is currently starting to implement some of this plan - even if it's small and on a lot that most here agree would preferably have a building on it - there's at least some movement on their part to start making this plan a reality.

Nice GRG vision there. It really is a shame we lost the Switzer, which was slated for residential before the nasty weather gods hit. But 12 years later we finally have residential a reality and I think the GRG vision is a pretty good model for future... I do like how they knock out the ugly parking garage on LKS and replace with park while infilling the block above on higher ground.  

(I think a good part of that garage may be underwater right now, btw.)

Whatever happened to the $50 million residential development commitment by Pinnacle?  Is GLPI paying the annual non-development penalty?

^ The city allowed those obligations to be satisfied with financial support of other downtown projects... I can't remember what those were except for Blues Museum funding.

urbanitas wrote: Whatever happened to the $50 million residential development commitment by Pinnacle?  Is GLPI paying the annual non-development penalty?

I don't think the city ever held them to it. A $50 million dollar commitment from the casino could be leveraged to do a lot for riverfront development. Something like the Banks in Cincinnati would do well on the landing. I don't think it has to be even a hi-rise development to be successful. Mid-rise mixed-use building would do well there.  

GRG wanted to build that park to give riverfront views.  If they just had the initial western plot, there wouldn't be anyone who would build right next to the trestle because it would essentially void the entire pocket park.  Thus, they just went ahead and plopped another corny concrete pad on valuable real estate.

How does GRG assemble this land in the first place? Don't land owners need to be willing to sell? We have a 40 square block park just on the other side of the Eads.  Why do we need more park land? Leave it to the markets to decide.  I feel like there is some momentum in this area, and hate to be a defeatist, it's probably just going to become another place for people to sleep in.  I do like the rest of the renderings for density, and that Washington is open in them.  I think the parking garage along LKS could be repurposed into some sort of open air food hall and beer hall on the cheap and retain the density.  It'd be a great location.  I think the concept would work better there than at Foundry, at least, just due to tourism traffic.

Oh well, I'm done.

urbanitas wrote: Whatever happened to the $50 million residential development commitment by Pinnacle?  Is GLPI paying the annual non-development penalty?

Here's more info on the settled obligations...
https://www.stltoday.com/business/local ... 09d2d.html

Contributions to National Blues Museum, Arch, a Cass Ave. building (Bissinger's redevelopment?) and parking lot donation.

^Yeah, parking lot donation...they probably included the money spent to demolish the historic buildings on said lots as part of the "donation".

The whole point of the commitment was to provide some momentum to eventually fill in those lots, and extend the Landing over to and around the casino, by encouraging residential to make it more of a 24/7 neighborhood.  As many people said at the time, a toothless commitment is meaningless.

urbanitas wrote: ^Yeah, parking lot donation...they probably included the money spent to demolish the historic buildings on said lots as part of the "donation".

The whole point of the commitment was to provide some momentum to eventually fill in those lots, and extend the Landing over to and around the casino, by encouraging residential to make it more of a 24/7 neighborhood.  As many people said at the time, a toothless commitment is meaningless.

Good assessment. It's also worth noting that the parking lots have been havens for crime. Like most parking lots in urban cores do. Numerous times there has been reports of people blasting loud music late into the night that eventually leads to fights and gunfire. Same things happen on the lots south of I-64. I've noticed that in more developed urban cores it is harder to have larger crowds congregate in dead zones  and to pull drive-bys and get away fast.