urbanSTL

^ Ha!

BUT WHERE WOULD THE RESIDENTS PARK???

It would seem that mixed use residential apartments, with good views of the Arch, access to Metrolink, and City Garden would be a no brainers, but hey! We live in St. Louis, where the obvious is never so obvious.

roger wyoming II wrote:My apologies for posting the wrong pic on what the owners plan to do with the Keiner garages.... here is the correct one!

Before


After

This really makes me want to cry. I stare at these eyesore garages every day from my terminal at work. What an awful way to frame Keiner Plaza/Arch/Courthouse/City Garden. These garages are never full--nobody parks on the top floor at least. This is possibly the best property for residential in the entirety of downtown--but as bad as these garages are currently, if this new "renovation" means their life will be extended any more than it currently is, just let them be.

Anybody with even the slightest bit of imagination could see that these need to be torn down and replaced with residential/first floor retail--at least on the Plaza/Broadway-side of the block. If you still need parking, build a new garage on the Pine side with the current first-floor retail, but make the siding look less like it was designed for Kim Jong-Un's North Korea.

I took a picture of those garages the other day. Just as a reminder of how poor some of STL's planning has been. You go to the 360 bar and that thing sticks out like a sore thumb.

Our leaders completely lack imagination creativity the ability to want something bold in downtown. While other downtowns are moving forward being proactive about tearing down garages replacing them with unique modern architecture & high-rises sadly our leaders are too stuck in the 19th century. I don't understand the redundancy of keeping this garage along with several others throughout downtown. With each garage you tear down you can replace with a modest modern residential building. This is why Saint.Louis is where it is & other cities such as Austin Portland Kansas City Minneapolis Indianapolis are where they are. Our leaders are too set in their ways to want to see STL become something bigger than what it already is. Sadly we're on par with Peoria & Lubbock TX. Hell even Memphis is fairing far better than us with One Beale Place set to start construction soon. The future is now our leaders need to realize that.

I guess I'm the only one that prefers the sleek refreshed concept of the existing garages over those cheap-ass infill renderings. The office towers downtown need adjacent parking whether you want to admit it or not. Sure, perhaps something like centenes garage covering would look better or huge screens like Times Square but those aren't cheap. This can be a nice short term improvement but parking is still needed near the heart of the CBD. Tenants now are condensing people in their spaces and need upwards of 6/1,000 parking today. Most building garages downtown offer 1/1,000. Clayton is 3/1,000. Yes, I wish everyone rode mass transit like NYC and Chicago but here it's 2-3% of people, sadly. Again, I like the rendering. A HUGE improvement. Now the western garage might have a more grandiose plan....

jcity wrote:I guess I'm the only one that prefers the sleek refreshed concept of the existing garages over those cheap-ass infill renderings. The office towers downtown need adjacent parking whether you want to admit it or not. Sure, perhaps something like centenes garage covering would look better or huge screens like Times Square but those aren't cheap. This can be a nice short term improvement but parking is still needed near the heart of the CBD. Tenants now are condensing people in their spaces and need upwards of 6/1,000 parking today. Most building garages downtown offer 1/1,000. Clayton is 3/1,000. Yes, I wish everyone rode mass transit like NYC and Chicago but here it's 2-3% of people, sadly. Again, I like the rendering. A HUGE improvement. Now the western garage might have a more grandiose plan....

I agree, a lot of the recent much lauded infill projects look very cheaply done, and could fall apart in 15 years for all we know. The redo of the garage isn't half bad and would be a huge improvement on what's there now. You guys keep saying the City needs to get moving, but sometimes moving is in small steps to make small improvements that build off of each other.

Looks great and will add some activity to OPOP. Something tells me they'll be sticking around a little longer than Shula's did.

I was at Bridge on Friday evening and as I was walking there I saw a group of people outside the old Left Bank books looking across the street discussing the buildings. Later passing by Tiny Bar I saw two of the folks at the bar with blueprints spread out. Wish I had more insight but I didn't have time to inquire about details. Seems positive at the very least.

St.Louis area firms got $300Million in New Market Tax Credits (doesnt mean they have to use it all here) but most do...hopefully this revives the Jefferson Arms plan from last year when it fell through when US Bank didnt get an NMTCs to fill in the gap. US Bank got $55M this round.

^ I also got the impression that Jeff Arm Teach for Amercia was utterly dependent on getting one tax credit to cover it all which was a hail mary at best from my limited knowledge on how most of these projects come together using the various tax credits, funding source intermixed with private equity

Thinking of Arcade and some of the great explanations of the complexity involved in just getting that financing place/project off the ground.

roger wyoming II wrote:^ I do recall they were hoping to get a quite large HTC commitment.... but you'd also think that they'd bring federal and state Historic Tax Credits to the table. It would be interesting to see if the income levels of the TFA members or young teachers would qualify for LIHTCs. (State of Missouri also is moving towards making it more difficult to do large unit LIHTC projects so we'll see how that may impact downtown redevelopment.)

They were hoping for a large NMTC commitment. HTC is a given.

Feast Mag is reporting the Giolia's may open in old Sauce on the Side spot.

http://m.feastmagazine.com/the-feed/art ... touch=true

^ That would be great! I was pretty confident that space would be taken relatively soon and I hope this works out.

Also, it looks like Tim Horton's is scouting for more Central Corridor locations, including downtown.
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news ... nfare.html

Renderings of Sugarfire. Looks sweet.

http://www.vthreestudios.com/sugarfire