urbanSTL

^I would love to see the banner. But, if it is a lot of trouble, I understand. Do you have a full on pic of the building's back? I would also love to see the lot behind Christ Church Cathedral if anyone has it. Trying to picture the whole thing.

TheWayoftheArch wrote:I have pics if someone can host them...then again it is justa banner...

Here are the photos taken by TheWayoftheArch...

The rooftop deck looks amazing. I'm excited for this project.

Thanks for the banner pic. The banner points out the incredible view from the pool. I would love to spend some time in that pool on a hot St. Louis summer evening. Fantastic project.

I'm blown away by this project. I love the fact that it combines historic renovation with the construction of a major new building on Tucker. This is a milestone for downtown St. Louis.

I completely agree, LouLou. I also take it as a good sign the the UP building is so big, yet they want to add on to it. I think the historic/modern blend looks great... hopefully we'll be seeing alot more of this.

That rooftop area is awesome.

I know I'm not adding anything new to the chorus of praise here, but I am very impressed with the new construction fronting Tucker Boulevard along with the rooftop deck.



I'm glad to see the UP building reused in a relatively short amount of time.

^I still want to see better renderings of the Tucker building.

So is the building between the old one and the new tower a parking garage? If so, I wonder why it couldn't be faced with something other than the standard open-deck appearance of every other parking garage in the city?



I like the treatments that garages get in Country Club Plaza in KC -- other than the entrances -- which are usually small -- you barely know they're there.

There are a lot of things that you can do to dress up a parking garage.



But I think first floor retail is the best solution for a consistent streetscape. All it takes to make a garage acceptable to the neighborhood is to put a little architectural integrity into the project.

And it appears neither has been applied to this parking garage, at least in the renderings.

Why doesn't the city require retail space on the first floor of all new or renovated buildings? They should also give some sort of financial incentive to developers to make building retail space cost effective, at least until the market improves. This would be a no brainer.

The Tucker side of the Park Pacific addition will have retail space at street level. The Olive and Pine sides of the parking-garage middle are across from a bank parking lot/drive-thru (Olive) and wasted green space (Pine). Though it would be nice to have retail around the entire ground floor of the building, I think Tucker is key, while the non-retail (where west of Tucker) side-streets of Olive and Pine are the best locations for garage entrances.



Such configuration keeps the sidewalks along Tucker free of driveways or curb cuts, providing a nice walk south of Washington to Market. Now, if only the bank between Jefferson Arms and the Park Pacific annex could be redeveloped with an infill mid-rise or high-rise.

It's possibly one of the worst developments yet. What a waste of a prime lot if it goes up.



You can't argue with the renovation of the UP building. But a parking garage? Totally undisguised? Facing out toward the one, undevelopable side at a park? Build underground parking for crying out loud! It's a very large, symmetrical lot! And sure, Lawrence Group has done some good loft rehabs, but have you seen everything else they do? The specialize in hospitals and interiors! Not urban condos! If you think those Lofts @ the Highland off I-64 are attractive, I'd like to ask you again in ten years. Even without seeing the main face I can see the orange-y brick that is soooo typical of suburban architecture. In fact, really all the building is, is a manifestation of throw-away, conservative suburban architecture. Get KPF or Cesar Pelli in here to design something sustainable if you want conservative. And the scale is so wrong. Being adjacent to the overpowering and monotonous 210.com building is a difficult prospect, but at the very least developers could have put in something exotic and attractive to take attention away from the 210.com beast or match its scale or, again running with the St. Louis is too conservative/suburban theme, made it taller and grander. But, instead, they went for the subtle, unthreatening look that has killed so many buildings' desirability.



I know well St. Louis is not Dubai, New York, Miami, or even Chicago where billions are invested every year in large projects at such a rate that planners can mold developments around super urban ideals and attract cutting-edge developers and architects effortlessly. But this is truly settling. Turning over a lot with enormous potential to suburban-molded developers and architects to build an icon to how whipped this city is to its suburbs. Back in the late-19th century and early-20th, buildings tried to outdo one another by reaching greater heights or having a more ornate facade. Now, architecture and engineering have advanced to the point of such sustainability (architecturally and environmentally) and sophistication, it's a shame we just don't value it outside our largest metropoli. Portland has been doing it forever and it is smaller than us and Kansas City has even racked up an impressive list of proposals. Milwaukee has made huge strides and gotten a great reputation for being stringent in approving landmarks and we shouldn't even get started on how succesful the likes of Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto in Canada; Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane in Australia have developed because, different country/culture/attitudes aside, they all had and have significant sprawl they have shrewdly begun to deal with over time. There is no excuse for this in St. Louis. It's just a sorely disappointing proposal.

I do think it's sort of suspicious that the rendering shows the Pacific, which of course is beautiful, but they don't show the front of the new building.

^I don't think the angle of the rendering is suspicious as it's the best angle to see the front of the old Missouri Pacific building, while still getting a teasing (this is publicity afterall) glimpse of the new annex on Tucker. And since the "old" along N. 13th is more certain, why not use such angle?



As for underground parking, I assume others mean under the new structure, as it would be rather hard to build under the Missouri Pacific tower. But add up all the new units within the existing tower, plus added units in the new addition, and multiple levels of a garage are likely needed to have ample on-site, structured parking. Perhaps, even if just serving the old tower, parking needs would push the design to multiple levels, which is hard to put entirely underground, but then add the new tower as well, and I think you're really talking about way too many levels to dig down, if it were to all be underground.



As a general rule, two levels below grade are usually the norm, since any deeper usually adds signficantly more to excavation costs. That's partly because two shorter parking levels roughly equal a taller commercial basement. Only in extremely high-priced land markets does the return on highly prized air space offset the costs of going deeper than two levels of underground parking.

My two initial complaints are that they didn't attempt to disguise the garage in initial renderings. Second, they didn't try to come up with any innovative way to shield the parking garage by the building. It's been done before. That's if it were above ground.



Lindell Condiminiums which has 200+ condos and a 1.5 resident/parking space ratio, so 300ish spaces, yet only one floor is above ground. At a little over 150 condos, at that ratio or less (which is should be but never would) would mean parking for between 200 and 250 spaces. With relatively similar lot sizes (as far as I can tell) and by just counting the cars parked in the vacant lot on google earth (and yes, I'm aware that not nearly that many cars would fit on one level of parking underground with the core and walls), even two floors underground would help alleviate the problem of yet another above ground garage.



Point being, they took the easy way out and just plopped in a parking garage and spread a "community space" across the top for residents and to disguise it for visitors flying into St. Louis. It would be idealistic to say parking garages should be obsolete and therefore not built or heavily minimalized. I would see it difficult to defend any garage making such simple aesthetic mistakes.

^ I can't really disagree, based on the renderings we've seen. It does look like it would be easy at the very least to shield this south-facing facade from the park. As far as the more adventerous urban architecture, remember it wasn't too long ago that just building a new residential highrise in downtown was unthinkable, I can't really blame the developers therefore for erring on the side of being conservative. Anytime you compare development in St. Louis to some of the progressive urban architecture in the cities you mention above, you're going to be disappointed, I just don't do it anymore. Realize that St. Louis is taking baby steps in the right direction, and as momentum increases downtown we'll see better design/less parking garages (or at least less obvious).

I've begun to accept that as I've settled here. But I think other proposals, even though many have few discernable details, give an overall better impression of being conservative but tasteful, urban, and classy. Particularly renderings of Ballpark Village and various renderings of the ever-changing Bottle District high rises, as well as the rendering on this site of the Mayfair addition, which I think is a wonderful simple step in the direction of what St. Louis needs. Lindell Condominiums proposal is starting to look okay and the Park East Tower isn't horrible, though I see that fakey beige color they're dousing the non-glass exterior with and cringe a little.



But judging from the design of *Lofts @ the Highlands (thanks for the correction urbanstl)* and Lawrence Group's other projects, they seem to see no line as to what is appropriate for urban space and what belongs in the suburb. I'm serious when I say that orange-y brick is just the kiss of death for an building architecturally. These days brick is questionably tasteful enough, let alone the violent orange color this developer seems to love. The green windows, too, are always great splashes of smooth color for any city (see Vancouver, BC) but coupled with brick it becomes gaudy and tacky. Whilst Chicago, New York might have a large edge in finances, both Toronto and, particularly, Vancouver caught on with very progressive planners and, before long, had huge districts of attractive residence towers that have faded little in their architecture integrity since many were constructed in the early 90's. To survive ten years and still look good by contemporary standards is worth a gold medal in architecture and both cities tapped into that. The city that has actually quite recently started to put up numerous towers in the Vancouverian green-glass-and-balcony towers is Portland. None of them are particularly large (all except a few under construction now are less than 20 stories), are incredibly sustainable, and look great. Go to emporis.com and check out any building in that city completed 1999 or later. That's what we need.

Swuss wrote:
Point being, they took the easy way out and just plopped in a parking garage and spread a "community space" across the top for residents and to disguise it for visitors flying into St. Louis.

I seriously doubt the developers are worried about disguising it for people flying over.