urbanSTL

This is really exciting news, and I'm especially interested in the big office tenant.



Anyone else like the proposed location? I've always been a little leery of the whole Chouteau Lake proposal. My fear is that it will end up looking like the office parks at 40 and 270. I had also hoped that the new tower would be located in downtown proper--look how isolated and forlorn the Purina campus looks.



All in all, though, this is really great news. I really hope this goes through. This would generate some MAJOR press for our beloved hometown. Yay St. Louis! B*tch.

Seeing as Choteau Lake may be the most "up in the air" to even happen at all, it makes me a little nervous that this project is attached to it. Maybe it will speed up the gears on the project, I don't know. 85% backing on an 81 story building is pretty unreal.

Wow. Chouteau Lake definitely won't resemble an office park if this thing anchors it. I'm pretty sure there's nothing close to 81 stories at 40 and 270. How's this for speculation... If a new company is moving into it how many jobs will that bring? How much more housing demand would there be downtown? Talk about exciting.

I gues the Mcgowans aren't too worried about this real estate bubble that other developers are apearently worried about on some of the CWE threads...I wonder where along the proposed lake kevin is thinking? this is hard for me to fathom.... What is the building on the new website and why would they have it on there if it wasn't theirs.? Is that tower gonna be built too? What is this about other towers the mcgowans have planned...since when did they become a large enough firm to handle these massive projects?

Well, no, there aren't any towers at 40 & 270. But what I meant was buildings separated by "beautiful" wide green spaces, and pointless unusable "water features."



True, Chouteau Lake could become the crown jewel in downtown St. Louis. It has the potential. Let's just hope that the potential is realized, and not some watered-down version of it.

Who could this mystery tenant be? What local companies could be capable of something like this??? If it is a new company to the area, how has nothing been leaked.?? Could this mystery tenant be Scottrade....? the scottrade arena would be in this buildings shadow? any thoughts?

How tall would an 81 story building be approx.?

As I mentioned in a previous post,



the Chrysler Buidling in New York is only 77 stores tall and is about 1000 feet tall. Chicago's Aon Center is 83 stories and is about 1100 feet tall. Depending on the floor size and whether or not there is spire, this would be in the top 5 or so existing buildings in the United States. (Not counting others under construction.)

Keep in mind that there will be opposition to this tower should it ever be built. It's too tall not to draw out the Arch huggers and those simply worried that the tower will dwarf the rest of the skyline.



I'd say there's quite a battle ahead even with the funding in place--similar to the Opus project in the CWE, but on a much larger scale. We'll have people from all corners of the Metro putting in their two cents.

81 stories is nearly double the tallest storied building in St. Louis. I hope it doesn't look to strange in our skyline.

1100 ft is nearly double met square... woohoo

It'll look great. McGowan also said he's wanting to put more tall office building DT, so hopefully they'd compliment it. It'll draw attention to downtown that even the most ignorant suburbanites won't be able to ignore. If it's 85% financed already what can the arch huggers do to stop it? This is St. Louis, however, and something like this will probably draw the naysayers and 'keep st. louis downers' out but it looks like the snowball's too far down the hill for them to stop downtown from becoming great again.



Hopefully the influx of new people filling the new jobs will add to the positivity that's building in the city.

Matt Drops The H wrote:It's too tall not to draw out the Arch huggers and those simply worried that the tower will dwarf the rest of the skyline.

Something this tall would dwarf the existing skyline even if it were located between Met Square and Att center.... twice the size is just too much to not be over powering. To tie this in (or at least make it look decent), BV would need to be built up with some 40+ story (emphisis on the "+") buildings and some more big/huge buildings to be build adjacent to I-64 (40) near/in cupples station.

One (but more extreme) parallel would be Houston with the Williams Tower (63 storys) seperated by miles from the rest of the buisness district. The next tallest building near the Williams is mid 20 stories, and it looks (in my opinion) horrible, out of place. Unless CL has other buildings 50+ stories - it will look out of place.

And talk about book ends... If this is build and so is the Bottle district, the two tallest buildings would be on opposite sides of the CBD.

tbspqr wrote:If this is build and so is the Bottle district, the two tallest buildings would be on opposite sides of the CBD.

And that would look awesome.

I understand some of the concerns, but as others have said, money generally does the loudest talking. Some will complain - our poor little skyline is going to overwhelmed - your just shuffling office space - the whole thing's too exciting for me to take and I wish that nothing would ever change . . . you know, the usual arguments.



For better and worse when there's a vision and money to support it, a project almost always happens. When a project fails because of financial issues people often say it was mismanaged or that local opposition stopped it - I generally disagree. The bad side of this is 64/55/70 cutting through central StL neighborhoods, but every once in a while something good comes along as a result of money - now let's just hope this is done right.



I have nothing against the idea of putting this south of 40. I hope this will move along development of the lake and break down some of the mental barrier that is 40. Not to mention the site will be very close to Metro!! Anyone want to grab a shovel and see if we can get an official unofficial start on this thing?!

I know it's an unfair comparisson, but when the John Hancock Center was built in Chicago, it was very isolated, but it ended up opening the gates for building more and more highrises north of the loop and filling in the continuity.

I'm sorry...IMHO who gives a crap about the skyline and arch huggers..



1. if located near the CL it won't be in the vicinity of the arch.



2. ok so it looks too tall compared to the rest of the skyline... lets think progressive here. It will fill in at some point.



3. I would be (like we have talked before) way more worried about it drawing tenants away from other buildings or creating dead space around it than the skyline.



4. The question still remains..Would it be better for density of the surrounding areas if 2 or 3 shorter (20-35) story buildings were built instead.



It reminds me of what ward17 said in the mills thread... CWE is striving for a density of 50ppl per acre... I wonder if downtown has a benchmark like that? should get to a certain density before pushing the limits upward before we build this tower? Chicken or the egg?

I don't get the comparison to Houston. This wouldn't be miles from the CBD - it's potential 1 block from the ballpark, about 6 from the arch grounds and Eggleton . . . just south of 40 is/can be part of the CBD. Maybe this will provide a push for Purina and Ameren campuses to become a bit less suburban (kill the surface lots).

wow. This is big news. I still say the best spot for it is the vacabt lot south of the westin and just north of 40. would overlook the ballpark. You could even build it over the metro line and bring the building all the way up to the street

Comparison to Houston was one of the few places were a very tall building stands alone with dwarfed 20 something story buildings surround it. Plus I am from houston and hate it. I DONT WANT STL TO TURN INTO ANOTHER HOUSTON/DALLAS/ATLANTA

bpe235 wrote:
3. I would be (like we have talked before) way more worried about it drawing tenants away from other buildings or creating dead space around it than the skyline.



4. The question still remains..Would it be better for density of the surrounding areas if 2 or 3 shorter (20-35) story buildings were built instead.

If one (new to downtown) company has already signed up, and thus the 85% financial backing, then these points are no longer issues. A company would want continuous office space in the same building. They are good points otherwise, but let's hope we're getting a new company downtown, all the news is good, and this thing happens. I'll grab a shovel if it'll help move it along.

And not to be another St. Louis Centre.... but numerous cities (most noteably Kuala Lumpur) where a huge project jumpstarted or accelerated momentum by drawing attention to the city. If this were to get built, I hope the design wouldn't be Aon Center-ish, but something you would find in the Dubai, UAE.... something worth seeing, mentioning. Also we should have a grand opening for it, the Lake, and any other buildings on the lake, make national news, show the "coasties" that we are back on the map.

tbspqr wrote:

And talk about book ends... If this is build and so is the Bottle district, the two tallest buildings would be on opposite sides of the CBD.

That is actually a pretty good description of the original plan that Eero Saarinen had for the St. Louis skyline. His concept was tall buildings on either end of the city slowly tapering down in a reverse arch to compliment the arch in the middle, almost as thought the whole city where the memorial. If you've ever seen any of his original drawings it looks quite spectacular. If the news of this tower means that this might actually be realized, that would be awesome in my eyes.

I think a more applicable skyline comparison might be Charlotte with the BOA tower that was built when that city had little or no skyline to begin with. It dominated the skyline at first but as you can see Charlotte has filled in the blanks quite a bit with additional scrapers being built and a booming financial industry. I think the skyline is actually quite asthetically pleasing for a new age city.



STL has the advantage of having 2 huge 1 large brokerage firms here and actually I believe the largest privately owned brokerage company in the world (Ed Jones.....am I not positive about the largest part). Perhaps we could be a Midwest hub for full service or internet brokerage companies. Afterall we have Savvis based here which used to be bridge which provides linkage access for brokers. Maybe Scottrade or even better someone like TD waterhouse will move from Omaha or another large brokerage company.