urbanSTL

shadrach wrote:I was working downtown (around '94) and went into the Centre over lunch (a regular) and didn't feel safe. Literally. A handful of teenagers - two rival groups I guess - were running through the center shouting obscenities and threatening violence. The chase went down the escalators and out the building, across the street yelling all sorts of things. I think everyone shopping there that day never went back. After that, the mall was dead! I bet every downtown office worker told co-workers and that was it. And I don't blame them.

It's not mega-projects, inspiring design or heavy-handed use of materials or lack or public art.
Cities are still made up of people. Some are good and some aren't. And people contribute more than anything to success or failure.

Pete Parisi goes to St. Louis Centre. Looks like the Ambassador Building had just been torn down, so this would be 1996 or so.

that video just keeps getting better and better. it's blowing my mind. this should be on the news tomorrow.

debaliviere wrote:Pete Parisi goes to St. Louis Centre. Looks like the Ambassador Building had just been torn down, so this would be 1996 or so.

R.I.P. Ambassador Theater! In a city with a lot of senseless demolitions, this one still ranks as the worst in my opinion.

Other signs that this video was shot around 1996: Maroon awnings at Famous-Barr, maroon Missouri license plates on the passing cars, the Bi-State buses with orange and yellow stripes, and Boatmen's Bank at the southeast corner of Sixth and Locust streets. Oh, and one of the upstanding young gentlemen that was escorted out of St. Louis Centre was rocking a St. Louis Rams jacket. Those were some interesting times downtown.

anyone know what happened to Pete?

Unfortunately he died not too many years after that video was shot. I love the paint scheme on those old Bi-State busses!

Completey Off topic, but Count's posted pic convinces me once again that the parking garage anchoring the north end of the Arch grounds is a terrible idea, does little for Arch Grounds or Wash Ave or Laclede's Landing. Why not a nice drop off court with valet service that is open to sidewalk vendors. Create foot traffic by having people park within Laclede's Landing.

steve wrote:

bonwich wrote: St. Louis Centre didn't fail because it was downtown. It didn't fail because its horrid architecture/street context couldn't be "adapted." It failed, in large part, because it was yet another swing-for-the-fences urban planning experiment in the City of St. Louis -- and because it was opened at the same time as several other "retail is our savior" projects that grossly overestimated the concept of critical mass.

There is likely a message in here as related to highly subsidized, non-market-driven projects such as Ballpark Village, but I think many people will ignore it.

Really? It didn't fail because it was downtown? A shopping mall in the middle of downtown, with parking that was perceived to be inconvenient and a core market of shoppers who lived far away from it, and who also had closer malls, none of that contributed to its demise? Or the fact that, frankly, many people in its market were reluctant to go downtown in the first place because of, uh, the "demographics." Or the fact that shopping mall style shopping is not really conducive to attract office worker shoppers, who often shop for specific items, and don't go to "fill up the trunk." It's downtown location had nothing to do with it? Really?

It didn't fail because of its horrid design? Really? How so? How didn't the awful design contribute to its failure?

It failed because it was a "swing for the fences" project? Again, how did that contribute to its failure? How did that contribute to the dwindling demand? Individual shoppers don't care about whether a mall is a "swing for the fences" real estate development or not. They want convenience, safety, and a pleasant shopping experience.

I get you ultimate point. These "mega" projects rarely work out as planned. Rarely do they generate the spillover growth that they were originally trumpeted to do. I know you don't like the "mega projects" and I have been since been converted to your side, but I think you're misanalyzing the reasons for the Centre's failure just so you can again restate your point that "mega projects" rarely work.

I think you removed my comments from the context of Alex's comments. If I read him correctly, he was saying that he was annoyed that people slammed downtown when St. Louis Centre failed because its failure meant that nothing, or virtually nothing, could ever succeed downtown.

You also twisted what I said. Alex said that St. Louis Centre failed because it couldn't adapt. I didn't say it didn't fail because of its horrid design -- I said that the inability of that design to adapt wasn't the reason it failed.

I also don't think that big projects, in and of themselves, were or are bad. But what happened with St. Louis Centre was that the City or the powers that be or whoever tried to slam the 1980s equivalent of >$1B in development -- a whole lot of it retail -- into too small of a time window and too large of a geographic footprint (and with too many public subsidies).

But St. Louis Centre and Union Station (and a few other developments at the same time) were too much too fast -- and meanwhile, the city basically shat upon dozens if not hundreds of small retail and professional business that had managed to maintain a semblance of a real downtown environment in St. Louis.

I don't have a solution, but I think that downtown is still heavily crippled by an oversized geographic footprint. It's simply never going to have enough combination of retail, residential and business growth to repopulate its area.

The concept frequently tossed around on this forum about some new-record skyscraper is not only a pipe dream -- it's possibly dangerous. The city couldn't even, over about a 20-year period, drive enough demand to add the mandated two additional <15-story new buildings along the Gateway Mall. Who's going to move into a couple million feet of new space? (Along the same lines, I think the not-unexpected demise of the Bottle District was actually a blessing, as it would simply have caused additional musical chairs.)

Last note, because this is getting too long: St. Louis Centre was doomed almost from the start in large part because of a failure in leadership. Not that there wasn't any leadership -- they just ignored virtually any input from anyone beside their select counsel. There was considerable screaming from the local design community about the hideous exterior cladding, and the general lack of exterior access (although, in fairness, there was more when it first opened, when there were several street-level restaurants accessible right from the street), and the misdesign of the skywalks. There was also a considerable amount of hubris on the part of the owners, designers, builders and those in the city facilitating their work. I can't say that I've seen a whole lot of change in the way things are still done.

^ While I do agree with your opinion about doing too much too fast. I totally disagree with your logic that Downtown will "never" be able to fill its footprint. That's just overly pessimistic in my opinion. The number of buildings left to rehab gets exponentially smaller every year and its only a matter of time before the focus is new construction. Many said that people would never live downtown again or that the city would never stop bleeding residents. St. Louis has definitely been dragged through the dirt but I seriously believe its a new day. This downtown redevelopment is legit. When St. Louis Centre was built, businesses and people were leaving the city with no end in sight. I believe Downtown is going to grow a lot more in the next decade and 20,000 by 2020 is a conservative estimate. The younger generation wants to live in urban areas.

MattnSTL wrote:Unfortunately he died not too many years after that video was shot. I love the paint scheme on those old Bi-State busses!

If I recall correctly, Mr. Parisi died in 2002. That date stands out for me, because Post-Dispatch columnist Greg Freeman passed away near the end of that year.

So, sadly, within a matter of months in 2002, I'd say that we lost two of St. Louis' greatest storytellers.

MattnSTL wrote:Unfortunately he died not too many years after that video was shot. I love the paint scheme on those old Bi-State busses!

And the bright red Boatmen's Bank sign on the side of the Mercantile Library and the maroon awnings at Famous-Barr. 6th and Locust actually looked like a fairly vibrant corner at that time.

goat314 wrote:^ While I do agree with your opinion about doing too much too fast. I totally disagree with your logic that Downtown will "never" be able to fill its footprint. That's just overly pessimistic in my opinion. The number of buildings left to rehab gets exponentially smaller every year and its only a matter of time before the focus is new construction. Many said that people would never live downtown again or that the city would never stop bleeding residents. St. Louis has definitely been dragged through the dirt but I seriously believe its a new day. This downtown redevelopment is legit. When St. Louis Centre was built, businesses and people were leaving the city with no end in sight. I believe Downtown is going to grow a lot more in the next decade and 20,000 by 2020 is a conservative estimate. The younger generation wants to live in urban areas.

With all due respect, you weren't here in 1985. Your comment about St. Louis Centre and the business/population drain is at best hyperbolic (and the population loss, while real, had almost nothing to do with the reasons for building St. Louis Centre).

One thing that did happen at that time, and has never been rectified, is that smaller, entrepreneurial-size businesses (the source of most real job growth in America) were forced to move out of downtown and/or forced out of business. The Gateway Mall was the worst offender; at least one of the demolished buildings was well-occupied with onesey and twosey attorneys, accountants, etc. Any number of smaller businesses in the St. Louis Centre area were supplanted or put out of business by extensive inaccessibility.

And, jumping to the present, ask some of the regular contributors on this board how easy it is to run a small service/retail business downtown.

Also, in 1985, the northern edge of downtown was much more vibrant -- right around the building I'm in now, you had Sverdrup occupying several buildings with lots of well-paying private sector jobs. The bus station got moved from an easily accessible place to an obscure location well outside of the downtown core; not to mention, on the transportation front (elsewhere in downtown), the train station.

Unfortunately, the number of buildings left to rehab is another case of musical chairs, and past experience on either market-based on government-based planning isn't encouraging. Most recently, you have the Pyramid debacle, where once again the city facilitated the placement of way too much stuff into a single basket.

I'll suggest one other flawed premise that has driven downtown development forever and been repeatedly disproved: "Growth follows development." Until it's recognized to be the other way around, we're going to keep going around in circles. (I'd also suggest that this is why folks on this board shouldn't keep telling posters like Doug to shut up every time he raises issues like the Century Building. "Just move on" is too often a capitulation to "just do things the way we've always done them.")

All of this is in no way a statement that we should be doing nothing, or that we should simply give up on downtown. I do, however, think we should be concentrating much more on organic growth than on a continuation of pie-in-the-sky fence-swinging.

bonwich wrote:I think you removed my comments from the context of Alex's comments. If I read him correctly.....

Points taken.

I didn't have the best vantage point, but here's what it looked like from where I was.

Alex Ihnen wrote:I don't think that St. Louis Centre was a "mega project" anyway - the Arch? Sure. Pruitt-Igoe? Of course. The Gateway Mall? Yep. Now St. Louis Centre is being reinvented. That's just fine, the only problem I see is that it took so long for whatever was 'next' for St. Louis Centre.

(Numbers in parens are GNP deflator estimates for dollar values in given years, 2000 = 1.000)
Pruitt-Igoe, $14 million, 1954 (.1846)
Gateway Arch, $13 million, 1965 (.1928)
Busch II, $28 million, 1966 (.1974)
Union Station, $135 million, 1985 (.6781)
St. Louis Centre (including One City Centre), $152 million, 1985 (.6781)
Gateway One, $70 million. Add $10M for the adjacent blocks. Gateway Mall, $80 million, 1986 (.6947)
Busch III, $365 million, 2006 (1.1643)

Perhaps this will reframe your perception of "mega projects" in town.

threeonefour wrote:

Alex Ihnen wrote:
Whenever I think of St. Louis Centre, I also think of Circle Centre in Indianapolis. I have been there a few times, and while I'm no expert on what makes the place tick, it seems like Simon Properties took everything they learned from the mistakes of St. Louis Centre and got it right with Circle Centre.

Didn't Circle Centre come first? I recall Simon telling us how St. Louis Centre will transform downtown St. Louis back in 1985, the way Indy was transformed. But downtown Indy is the centre of the metro area there with close in suburbs and no major river limiting access. And it is the center of the state, so the metro area gets plenty of support from the state.

St. Louis Centre was crowded the first several years, but after Galleria upgraded in response, St. Louis Centre started to decline slowly. I still think it is because downtown St. Louis is not the center of the metro area -- Clayton is. So it needed some really unique draws to get people to drive past Galleria, and it never acquired them. I loved going there, but I'm probably not typical of most shoppers who were happy to go to the closer Galleria mall.

West County Mall succeeds today because it is near the metro crossroads ( I-270 and I-64). And it has some unique draws, like an Apple store. And updscale shoppers live nearby. St. Louis Centre never had all of these. If the downtown population ever grew to 50,000, a downtown mall like St. Louis Centre could survive. But Downtown can attract the metro fringe by having the best restaurants, entertainment, sports, and unique city attractions. It doesn't need a mall -- the suburbs already have all of those that they need.

I would still like to see a Boston Quincy Market style attraction somewhere downtown for indoor / outdoor dining and people watching on a grand scale. A Grants Farm style Bauernhof in a Kiener Plaza redo?

CC Mall Opened 1995 per Wikipedia

Doug, I can whoelheartedly agree with you on two points. Getting 50,000 residents downtown is a goal and answer to sustainability. It also supports the fact that development follows growth which I agree is the correct way to look at things. I give credit to the Downtown NEXT plan for stating goals that create demand. More people will require more services, etc. The second point I agree is downtown can't try to compete with surburanite shopping nor should it. Except for some unique retail stores or even an Ikea, its those businesses that cater to downtown residents, office workers, hotel and event/sporting crowds that succeed. Heck, suburanite shopping such as Galleria and West County Mall did or does as much damage to Northwest Plaza and Crestwood Mall as it did to downtown.

The one item I completely disagree is your comment that raising parking fees or additional taxing of parking spaces will convince people or businesses to move and build downtown. That is utter nonsense for the demographics and size of the region and a argument I had with Steve Patterson on his blog. We simply don't have the population, gdp or even the physical restraints of a Chicago, San Fran, Manhatten, LA. In other words, why pay more when you could simply move outside of the city or even another part of city and not pay anything? Such as Central West End. Why would taxing empty lots convince investors to speculate and build without a market present? Why doesn't a developer build somewhere else? Drive westbound on I-64 and look at the numerous free standing office buildings built on relatively cheap available land that offered plenty of space to build a surface lot.

shadrach wrote:anyone attending today's demolition party?

I was there. I posted some pictures. I almost forgot about it after work and had to rush to get there.

http://urbanstl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=7929