urbanSTL

I see that word-twisting is endemic on this board.

Reread Alex's post. He said St. Louis Centre *wasn't* a mega project, then listed projects that were. I merely posted numbers for the projects he listed, plus a couple others. (You will also note that he included the Gateway Mall, which you conveniently ignored.)

Plus, your removal of One City Centre from the St. Louis Centre numbers is pretty disingenuous. Neither would have been built without the other. (Also, for the record, the quoted cost for St. Louis Centre was frequently $177 million, which included $25 million for a hotel atop the Dillard's building. In 1985. No small irony there.)

In any event, St. Louis Centre, $152 million, $224 million in today's dollars. (Let's not forget that St. Louis Centre tore down a bunch of buildings to build a lovely garage as well.) I guess "mega" is the "awesome" of my generation.

(My numbers were from a variety of old P-D articles. I'm not saying they're right or yours are wrong, but please cite your sources.)

Alex Ihnen wrote:^ Pretty sure St. Louis Centre came first. Indy had their Union Station for some time as a successful mall and then Circle Center - pretty sure it was new in the early 90's.

Yes, Wikipedia has these two dates correct. St. Louis Centre opened in 1985, and Circle Centre opened in 1995.

That supports my supposition (which, I admit, is nothing more than that, but I think there's at least some truth to it) that Simon Properties learned from its mistakes in St. Louis and applied what they learned to the design of Circle Centre. Circle Centre made use of historic storefronts (which looks much nicer than STLC ever did and still allows for pedestrian activity between the mall and department store entrances). They also attracted two new department stores to downtown Indianapolis- no small feat since the last of Indy's three major stores, L.S. Ayres, closed their store just a few years before Circle Centre was built. That building became home to Parisian, which is now Carson Pirie Scott, and Nordstrom was built at the mall's southern end. And while I'm not familiar with the other businesses that were in and around the mall in downtown Indy before or immediately after construction, it doesn't seem like Circle Centre siphoned off existing businesses and pedestrian traffic as much as St. Louis Centre did. St. Louis Centre was like a vacuum when it opened, as it took businesses and people off the streets of downtown St. Louis, and made the surrounding blocks seem even more desolate than before.

I don't want to get into the back-and-forth of whether St. Louis Centre was a mega-project, but there were still two blocks of buildings demolished, and while they may not have been deemed historically significant at the time, they were mostly occupied storefronts, including Woolworth's at the northwest corner of Sixth and Locust streets which relocated to the northeast corner in a new parking garage to make way for the mall. And, while I was quite young then, I recall it being billed as a transformative project for downtown St. Louis. It was transformative, and ultimately, it was for all of the wrong reasons, but I don't remember too many naysayers making noise when the mall opened almost 25 years ago either.

Look at all of the light coming through. What beautiful progress. It just brightened my day. Though this crap camera phone picture doesn't quite illustrate it well.

I was very young when STL Centre was open. I remember my mom took me here once, maybe twice. I barely remember it at all though.

Does anyone have some pictures of the stores and the whole mall when it was successful? That I would love to see.

Here's some inside pictures, but they were taken when it was empty (well, it's very dead at that point, but not completely closed).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76944759@N ... 071409861/

Driving to work this morning you can see the cars driving on 70 through the hole from Ely walker! Can't wait until it is open!

On a side note, I was coming into DT yesterday and a man with his suitcases came up the metro stop at convention and was obviously headed west towards his hotel and he just stood they are look puzzeled as to say "how do I get around this?" (The street is closed.

Obivously he needs to walk around the super block but he just stood and looked. I can't wait to put a better (foyer) to our convention district.

MidcoastSTL wrote:Driving to work this morning you can see the cars driving on 70 through the hole from Ely walker! Can't wait until it is open!

On a side note, I was coming into DT yesterday and a man with his suitcases came up the metro stop at convention and was obviously headed west towards his hotel and he just stood they are look puzzeled as to say "how do I get around this?" (The street is closed.

Obivously he needs to walk around the super block but he just stood and looked. I can't wait to put a better (foyer) to our convention district.

Wait! You couldn't possibly be saying that the City failed to post any consideration/detour for pedestrians during the demolition, could you?

Apparently the demolition on Friday made the national news. I don't know which network, but my mom, who lives in Nebraska, mentioned that she saw a story about it over the weekend.

CNN Headline News has been running a little spot about the demolition in their news cycle. Noticed it yesterday and this morning again.

Going, Going . . .



Gone!

I was downtown yesterday at Old Post Office Square Plaza and noticed the skybridge and crane were gone.

Another positive development: They're now demolishing the portion of the mall that hangs over the sidewalk.

Nice. I didn't know that was part of the deal.

debaliviere wrote:Another positive development: They're now demolishing the portion of the mall that hangs over the sidewalk.

As much as I loathe the idea of this building becoming yet another garage, that is an added bonus that will make the block look much better!

So the new windows are going in the Laurel already?

Framer wrote:So the new windows are going in the Laurel already?

Yep, new windows have been installed on a good portion of the fifth floor and sporadically elsewhere in the building.