From The STL Business Journal



Alberici to start work on Ninth St. Garage in February

Alberici Constructors will begin work on the $33 million Ninth Street Garage in February after getting the go ahead from the Missouri Development Finance Board, the garage's owner.



The 1,065-space garage will be on the site of the Century Building at Olive and Ninth streets downtown. It will serve the $77 million Old Post Office redevelopment, as well as neighboring office, residential and retail properties.



Several lawsuits were filed in opposition to demolishing the Century Building.



The garage, which was designed by Trivers Associates and developed by NSG Developers, is expected to be completed in September 2006.



St. Louis-based Alberici Constructors is a privately held general contracting firm.

does anyone know whether the garage replacing the century might have street level retail? It seems like the least it could add to the area would be some street level bustle.

yes, it does have street level retail.

Not to mention that the retail bays will be a plain 'white box' similar to the new garage a couple of blocks away which houses the not so bustling 'retail' space known as the parking enforcement office.

I think the bus station was scrapped when Metro built their new transfer station at 14th and Clark, so it should be all retail, not that makes up for the Century

^You're right. It's all ground level retail now.

This will be great! I can't wait to take a leisurely stroll down Olive Street gazing into the windows of all the new retail outlets.....



BOOOM! Oh damn, I didn't see that car exiting the parking garage right in middle of the block. And I don't think he saw me either! Oh well, maybe there's some pedestrian-friendly downtowns in Heaven!



No excuse. Call me bitter, call me a whiner, tell me to get over it-- there is no excuse for what is happening at 9th & Olive. The Century Building should have been and would have been a residential building by now if the right plan for the district had been embraced instead of the current fallacy that has butchered one of the most interesting blocks in downtown Saint Louis.

Here are some renderings that I pulled from the old forum...

1.)Haven't we learned that renderings mean zilch? Their main use is to look good for the inversters and secondarily they put a good initial spin on the project. Just look at them closely- you never see garbage cans or power lines just pretty pictures (and usually those stupid spotlights out of the top). They are PR puff and nothing more. They get to much play on this board and in general for that matter.



2.)The retail component of the Century Garage doesn't make this a good project. The old building wasn't torn down to build retail, it was demolished for a parking garage. That's the bottom line. If retail was so needed the market would respond by putting other nearby storefronts to better use. Just look at the garage at 7th and Pine. It has two occupants- a dry cleaner and a City office (parking tickets)- the other two bays are empty. I think it is naive to say that retail make this garage OK. It's just the sugar coating of the poisin pill. Another thing, you never hear of the retailer they have lined up to go into these spaces in the garage, just that the OPO won't work without the parking.

Hopefully the renderings in this case will pan out. These ones alone are both different, so who knows. As for retail, I expect that these spaces will fill, because of the hundreds of new residential and office units being built currently. Not that the garage needed to be built, but at least it will have a good design (no hubcaps) and retail. We could have been stuck with a normal garage. Sometimes we do need to count our blessings. Again, not that the Century should have been torn down.



The bright side, for me at least, is that this will be easy for me to tear down in the future so I can build a large condo or office tower on the site.

It is not horrible, but I would rather have the Century, this could have easily gone 1 block over to the Northwest,

I was downtown for lunch yesterday (and stopped to make some purchases at City Grocers, by the way), and the demolition crews were in the process of demolishing the Century. I have no idea how the residents of the 10th Street Lofts and the Bell Lofts are able to sleep at night - there was so much noise, it was ridiculous. And of course, office workers are having meetings, trying to get work done, etc. in the immediate area.



I wish there was a quicker way of getting the building down; it just makes me sick to my stomach every time I see it.

Just to let everyone here know I'm not being "fooled" ...

I know it is a garage.

I loved the Century Building and wish it would have remained.

I now have to gut the fact that the Century is GONE... almost at least.

We all have to move forward in making this district a viable and wonderful, vibrant and useful downtown residential and retail district from this day forward. There is nothing any of us can do - much less - the Century is gone. I can b**** all I want about that fact, but now I (we) have to move forward for our downtown... we are the vital source in making ALL of downtown a new entity of the city.



As for the renderings... I'm just thankful that the "garage" looks like this:







NOT like this:

Yes - retail on street level. - GOOD

Not sure about condos on top levels - doubt it.

I agreee with Matguy on this one. While the century should not have been torn down, we have to live in the present, not in the past. It's so typical of St. Louisans to only care about what should have been, but not to make the best of what is. The Century is coming down, get over it. And don't say I wanted the Century to come down. I would have been out there on the street protesting too if I could have.



As for condos, everything above the street level retail is parking.

Anonymous wrote:Don't be fooled, Mattguy! It's still a parking garage. There is really no way to be optimistic about the Old Post Office project (IMO). It has permanently blemished the district and has denegraded the majesty of the OPO itself. Ruined.

When people make posts like this, could they at least have the balls to identify themselves. While this quote isn't an attack on anyone, it is a post that is attacking something. I don't care if someone wants to put their 2 cents in saying something is great anonymously, but if you don't like something, take time to log in, register, or at least type a name into the spot were it says name. Maybe I am making more out of this than I should, but this has bothered me a couple of times on this forum.

Thanks





Check out my new OPO / Century Gallery:



http://www.urbanstlouis.com/urbanstl/vi ... .php?t=166

MattnSTL wrote:


The bright side, for me at least, is that this will be easy for me to tear down in the future so I can build a large condo or office tower on the site.

I like your style Matt. You sound like me. I gave a speech in high school where I proposed to build condo towers on the 2 busch stadium garages and knock down the kiener gargers in favor of one office tower and the other a condo tower. Its all about planning for the future. All of these garages that proliferate downtown will make perfect targets for redevelopment in about 10-15 years.



As for the Century I wouldn't look for any retail tenants to be signed until after construction is complete. Many retailers want to actually "see" the space they will move into before signing any commitments. Man do I wish that there was some residential componet to this.

MattnSTL, matguy70, Jay T, et al-



Please, please, please dont paint me with that broad brush. I am not a stuck-in-the-mud fuddy-duddy who thinks that everything new is bad. And I dont care only about what should have been and not what could be.



but,



I do think that we as St Louisians who care about making the city/region better, and who understand some of the complex (even conflicting) issues we're discussing have the responsibility to demand good urban design.



I also dont think that every new development project is good for this city. I think they need to be evaluated, on a case-by-case basis, strickly on their merits. One reason is because developers and politicians fudge sometimes- and not always on purpose. They'll come up with a big project and splash it all over the papers, and then six months laters things change through no fault of their own. Another reason is because developers and politicians are flat out wrong sometimes (again not always on purpose ). Which gets me finally back to the topic of this thread- the OPO



It is IMHO that the OPO is a mistake. Which is to say that the basic assumptions the developers make (a new garage is needed and has to be at this location) are wrong. It's that simple- I dont believe that without this garage OPO would never work. If others do that's fine, but I'm still going to make the argument. I also dont like how this went against the already approved master plan for the area, but we can talk about that later.



sorry for the long post, but I refuse to be pidgeon-holed just because I dont agree on this point.[/u]

I agree with what you said in your post. Developers, politicians, us, all make mistakes, including this one. But there is nothing we can do any more on this particular project. I'm just at the point where I have to make the best of what happened, and hope that proposals like this don't succeed in the future.



As for this case, I think the developers genuinly thought that they needed this garage, and did not come into this with an agenda to destroy the century building, as some people think (not you). They were just misguided, and did not want to back down once they committed to a plan. I think they also truly think that the urban plaza is necassary. I know the Roberts have planned their developments around the plaza. I think the city, and various developers forced the plaza to stay in the plans. The biggest problem was that the city wanted so badly to get this done, that they didn't consider any other proposals, which probably would have got this whole district started and completed a lot sooner.