Projects like this are going to slowly erode whatever urban/public life there is left in this city. They are going to eat away at this cities individuality. Surely we can do better than Ballwin or Oakville. We are a CITY...We need to start acting like one and have some standards.
Sorry, I have to say this, but are these suppose to make us feel as if we are in Italy? Are people going to sit around and enjoy the streetlife, while avoiding all the cars pulling into those garages?
In the case of this development, however, facing the streets means looking at driveways. Thus, given the developer's bias against alleys, I think we're better off not having the townhomes face Arsenal. Besides, this development very much mirrors its 1980s similarly suburban styled counterpart to the east, Parc Hampton Estates.
I doubt you could get all those curb cuts approved and thats why they dont face Arsenal. It's too bad that some think that any development is good for the ward/ city.
SW City may look like old suburbia, but it has kept our City financially afloat in the days before near-southside and central-corridor developments would take off. Not even five years ago, the 2nd Police District (W of Kingshighway, Lindell to Gravois), for example, had roughly a third of the City's assessed valuation, despite being only one of nine districts (also the safest albeit largest district).
When the City separated from the County in 1876, City fathers thought tripling the size of the City would give ample room to grow, when already by 1900, contiguous development would be spilling into the County around Wellston. But within the southwest portions of the City, large areas of development remained undeveloped as late as the 1960s.
Though the lack of foresight in 1876 ultimately allowed places like Richmond Heights to fall outside of City limits, the suburban pockets of SW City from older Southampton to newer Boulevard Heights allowed the City to capture some of the early to mid-20th century explosion in detached single-family housing.
As a mixed blessing, this area of more suburban character is now part of our greater City. Sure, detached single-family homes built after WWII may not be for everyone, but these old suburban styled homes add to the housing choices available for those seeking common City amenities like neighborhood parks, frequent transit, convenient business districts and walkable streets.
Clearly, if there is a market for New Town in St. Charles, there is a market for developments like Parc Ridge Estates in the City. But just as St. Charles won't suddenly turn entirely into New Town, we can expect that much of our City won't soon look like Parc Ridge Estates. Besides, we value diversity in the City, and thus, housing choices as well.
Thanks for the history lesson. We do value housing diversity in the city, but we shouldn't value poor design nor the notion that 'at least they're building something'. No one is knocking the single family homes of SW city, just this development and others like it.
I think Parc Ridge Estates (PRE) are better designed than the immediately neighboring 1980s Parc Hampton Estates to its east. Plus, PRE uses similar materials and has attached garages like newer developments in Gaslight Square, Botanical Heights or many of the recent Dogtown developments. The only difference is that PRE has its garages facing the street at-grade, when Gaslight Square and Botanical Heights have alleys and Dogtown below-grade garages.
Still, the garages face new streets on a parcel that due to its topography and the area's previous institutional land uses cannot be easily be tied into the street grid. Fortunately then, the garages don't face any existing streets and thereby change the streetscape or character of its surroundings.
PRE's design wouldn't be a good fit for virtually all of the City, even most of Southwest City, which despite its predominant single-family use, mostly enjoys a grid with alleys. But the Truman Restorative Center is a rare site, landlocked from the street grid and surrounded by other superblock or dead-end street developments. Only the former SLPS Greenhouses in Boulevard Heights comes to mind as a comparable site. So, no one needs to panic that this development exhibits the future of City infill.
SHINY SHOVELS: Look for a groundbreaking Monday for Parc Ridge Estates, a development on the site of the former Harry S Truman Restorative Center; the city-owned nursing home closed in 2003. The site will have 36 houses and 22 attached villas. A dozen already have sold, says Carol Savio, a real estate agent who is helping to sell the property.
These homes start in the $290's for this Southwest Garden development on Arsenal. Add the 30-some homes slated to replace St. Aloysius Gonzaga and the scattered home sites nearby, including 3 in a row on Sublette and 2 live-work units on Southwest, and Southwest Garden is really a South St. Louis hot spot for new construction.
(KSDK) - Two major developments are getting underway in St. Louis Monday.
Ground breaking ceremonies took place in the Southwest Garden and Walnut Park Neighborhoods for upscale housing developments.
The multi-million dollar projects are part of a plan to change and improve the two neighborhoods, but are not without a gamble.
The first groundbreaking took place in the city's Southwest Garden Neighborhood, located across the street from The Hill on Arsenal.
Parc Ridge Estates is a non-anchor development with 46 family homes and 22 attached villas. Construction is on the old site of the Truman Historic Center.
The second groundbreaking took place in the Walnut Park Neighborhood in the 4900 block of Davison.
For the first time in 70 years, a new housing development is underway in a neighborhood which has seen an increase in violent crime in recent weeks.
Both projects are the first steps in revitalizing their neighborhoods.
Thank GOD someone is stepping into Southwest Garden and "revitalizing" it. Arsenal in this area is simply out of control with drugs, prostitution, violent crime and crumbling buildings.
I would assume they are talking about 4900 Davison and not the Southwest Garden hood. Also, a housing development has taken place in the Southwest Garden hood within the last 70 years.
It's Truman Restorative Center, as in nursing home, but maybe the bright folks at KSDK confused "restorative" with historic restoration.
Also, across the street at Arsenal is still Southwest Garden. The boundary for The Hill is Columbia. "The Hill" street pole banners along Southwest Avenue just inside Southwest Garden confuse things, but these banners were a joint effort of Hill 2000, The Hill's neighborhood association, and The Hill Business Association, which also covers the western portion of Southwest Garden (along and west of Kingshighway). You'll notice a landscaped Southwest Garden neighborhood sign at Southwest and Sublette at the edge of the shared business district.
Southwest Garden does actually qualify for a Community Development Corporation (CDC) funded by Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds. Southwest Garden qualifies, since having a majority of moderate income (80% or less of median income) households within its relevant Census tracts corresponding to its neighborhood service area. However, since starting in 1978, the CDBG-funded Southwest Neighborhood Improvement Association (dba Southwest Garden Neighborhood Association) has served an area, in which the level of low to moderate income households has remained fairly constant across the 1980, 1990 and 2000 Censes.
Put more simply, the Southwest Garden neighborhood has always been historically working class, or blue-collar. The area's housing stock comprises mostly early 20th century frame homes west of Kingshighway and masonry multi-family flats east of Kingshighway. Today, much of the scattered infill sites by DiMartino Homes is possible due to tearing down unusually small frame houses on non-tract development blocks just south of The Hill.
However, the selling off of pieces of the State Hospital has provided the much larger infill sites along Arsenal. Years ago, the first sales provided for Sublette Park and the Fire House as the early 20th century working-class neighborhood grew around the once rurally isolated asylum. Then, in the mid-20th century, Truman would be built. By the 1980s, additional land from the Hospital would provide for a senior center, school (today charter), elderly apartments, police station, as well as the suburban-looking subdivisions of single-families (Parc Hampton Estates) and townhomes (Linden Heights) along Arsenal. Most recently, the South City YMCA benefitted from land of the State Hospital's. Now, Parc Ridge Estates will reuse the former Truman Restorative Center site, that was built itself on part of the larger State Hospital complex.
The City's largest pocket of postwar housing not located along River Des Peres of far Northwest City actually covers the Southwest Garden and North Hampton (Tille Park) border. Far southwest and northwest areas of the City were an outgrowth of the City, but this pocket of several blocks about Macklind-Fyler was actually infill between older development in all directions. Much of the area sits on former clay mines in which the ethnic immigrants living to the north in Southwest Garden and The Hill worked.
The Hill itself really has three areas, the older shotgun, mixed use core (which most folks think of) east of Edwards, the postwar suburban infill of tract housing between Edwards and January, then light industrial/commerical west of January to Hampton and along Manchester. Though the reporters inaccurately stated The Hill as across the street, there is little doubt that the attraction of Parc Ridge Estates and future St. Aloysius Gonzaga redevelopment will be those wishing to have suburban hill on the edge of The Hill. Besides, since the closing of St. Al's and Holy Innocents, St. Ambrose -- THE prominent institution of The Hill -- now extends to Fyler in its parish boundaries, covering all of Southwest Garden west of Kingshighway.
Thanks for the always informative history, southslider.
Regardless of the neighborhood's history as being working class/blue collar, Southwest Garden is not in need of "revitalization." I think this term is thrown around too loosely. For one, the neighborhood is an intact and heavily residential neighborhood. When people from farflung suburbia (the same ones who call the entire city "downtown") read about neighborhoods in the City "revitalizing," it almost serves to confirm their blanket statement that the entire City is in need of massive redevelopment.
Yes, it's good that the City developments are garnering Metro-wide attention, but must we submit ourselves to the heuristic that the entire city has failed and is only now starting to "come back"?
In order for something to be revitalized, it needs to have lost its vitality. Southwest Garden, especially west of Kingshighway and closer to this portion of Arsenal, is not really comparable enough to Walnut Park in order to say that residential construction in both neighborhoods constitutes "revitalization."
An improvement (arguably...), but a revitalization? Hmm...
The houses are coming in modular sections on trailers and then lifted into place by crane. Just looking at the way the houses have been built and the actual size, I just can't figure out how these homes are worth a base of $300,000.
As a lifelong suburbanite (Ballwin & Chesterfield) who is thinking of moving in (to save on gas, be closer to cultural offerings, etc.) I am a little taken aback by the passion I find in these posts.
I got here because I am interested in Parc Ridge Estates. While I applaud those with the funds and the will who rehab historic homes, I have neither the funds nor the training, nor the willing husband to spend the next 10 years moving from room to room.
So, if I am not into rehabbing, and I don't want to share all 8 walls of my domocile with others, but I want to live within the city limits, why is this such a bad place to start? No one ripped down an historic home or building to build these. By putting them off Arsenal, doesn't this "hide" exactly what you think is so hideous? I, too, would prefer they be all brick, but then, sometimes, compromise has to be made somewhere.
I guess what I need is the definition of "urban living." I always thought that people make the community, not the buildings.
congrats and good luck on your decision to move into the city! On this message board you'll find that most of us are passionate about the city of St. Louis and city living in general. Many of us (but not all) are like you in that we started off in the suburbs and found our way to the city. This leads us to (a) passionately promote city living and (b) favor a built environment that retains the advantages of city living.
By moving into the city, whether parc ridge estates or Park East tower, you will be more than welcomed by the like minded people on this forum. However, we will still criticize the specific design details of the development if we feel like changes would have brought about an even better outcome. The city is on an upswing, and we just feel that we can start to demand higher quality and better integrated designs.
We see primary advantages of the city being:
Higher density of population and ammenities
Central location
Many cultural resources
Walkable neighborhoods
Diversity of residents
High quality historic architecture
Architecture and city planning with the community as a whole in mind
We believe that many of the above mentioned advantages would be diluted as more "suburban style" developments take place in the city. For example: Spread out houses with big yards and poor relation to the street will result in a less walkable environment, lower density of population and ammenities, more reliance on cars and car-oriented development, etc.
Again, if you decide to buy there or a similar development, I don't think any one will be faulting you at all. We just believe that the developers had an opportunity to build a better overall urban neighborhood to maximize the advantages of city living.
Sorry for going on for so long, but I hope this answers your question!
Please don't take our diatribes too much to heart. As Jeff says, one of the things that draws us to this forum is a passion for the City of St. Louis. Just think of us as one of those obnoxious, overly-demanding parents. We believe our "child" has the greatest potential, and we demand nothing but the best. But when it comes right down to it, we'll always love her, vinyl siding and all.
^I agree with the above, you'll probably never find a board with folks so passionate about living in the City. Interesting thought though Framer, I never thought of it that way. Since I have no kids, watching the City rise again is the next best thing. However, we gotta get the vinyl siding child a makeover because she's still ugly
There are certainly worse developments going on in the area like the St. Aloysius homes. The Parc Ridge development didn't destroy the existing street grid like others. Ssliders post pretty much sums up my thoughts on this project.
Wow!
