I totally agree with your take. My only point was, most of the buildings mentioned have been vacant for years. It's not like this all happened post-covid. The article almost tries to convince you that the doom loop started post-covid and spiraled from there. The small shops did close post-covid, but the issues pre-date covid. I think the article painted a certain picture unfairly.gone corporate wrote: ↑May 05, 2024Following-up on the Wall Street Journal article about Downtown STL being in a "doom loop"... I'm wondering how much of that article was meant to fit an overall narrative on the decline of Class A office rentals in cities nationwide. We're going to see a lot of major US city office buildings having to take on onerous mortgage refinancing in the near future, as many have 5-year terms and are now due to come up in this high inflation, high interest rate economy. The consequences of not obtaining quality refinancing while recognizing decreased tenancies will be bankruptcies (we've already seen some bankruptcies for office buildings in our Downtown). Perhaps the Journal's trying to further a storyline about how dangerous such refinancing will be and just struck gold on a narrative about Downtown STL? Just a thought, and I'm certainly not saying that story was either a hit piece or that it wasn't deserved.
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The View from Palestinian America
In Kholood Eid’s photographs of Missouri, taken six months into the war in Gaza, the quiet act of documenting life is a kind of protest against erasure.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-view-from-palestinian-america?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
In Kholood Eid’s photographs of Missouri, taken six months into the war in Gaza, the quiet act of documenting life is a kind of protest against erasure.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-view-from-palestinian-america?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
A very good/positive national story on Downtown West.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... lab-design
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... lab-design
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Great read, glad to see something positive on our fair city!
Daily Mail UK has jumped on the doom loop train..and as such, this "influencer" from across the pond decided to *attempt(?) to expand on it with his hot take...
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I don't understand the "Then" and "Now" pictures. Those aren't the same buildings and the "Then" still looks like that now. Also, guy seems like a dipshit who can't spell tricky works like revenue and cities, aside from the inaccuracies in his comment.
HA Mr Cirrone just discovered that there are some empty buildings in the smallish downtown St. Louis?
Ahhh those buildings have been vacant for sometime Mr Cirrone
Where have you been Mr Cirrone? My guess is hes been doing fly overs and rarely if ever does intense investigatory journalism.
Ahhh those buildings have been vacant for sometime Mr Cirrone
Where have you been Mr Cirrone? My guess is hes been doing fly overs and rarely if ever does intense investigatory journalism.
It's the Daily Mail, poorly sourced doom-mongering is what they dohebeters wrote: ↑May 20, 2024HA Mr Cirrone just discovered that there are some empty buildings in the smallish downtown St. Louis?
Ahhh those buildings have been vacant for sometime Mr Cirrone
Where have you been Mr Cirrone? My guess is hes been doing fly overs and rarely if ever does intense investigatory journalism.
Here's a kinda goofy article from a kinda goofy source (Business Insider). A mildly interesting read, anyway:
"A boomer moved from Texas to (St. Louis) for her retirement thinking everything would be cheaper. She was 'so wrong.'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/boomer-moved ... 02932.html
"A boomer moved from Texas to (St. Louis) for her retirement thinking everything would be cheaper. She was 'so wrong.'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/boomer-moved ... 02932.html
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The groceries bit is annoying (we do pay wayyy too much) but I’m not sure why these people thought things would be so much cheaper unless they did zero research, which it sounds like is what happened.
Yeah this is a bad article. It seems like a hit piece on Texas.
Outside of that what is the point here? Talking about her gym being $50 more? I would have thought Texas, outside of boomtown Austin, would be cheaper to live in due to cheap labor from millions of illegals.
Outside of that what is the point here? Talking about her gym being $50 more? I would have thought Texas, outside of boomtown Austin, would be cheaper to live in due to cheap labor from millions of illegals.
The Texas metros are not cheap at all and haven't been for some time now, unless you don't care about your physical safety and well being. I believe St. Louis is a pretty good bargain in terms of cost of living relative to quality of life, but people exaggerate how cheap St. Louis is to live in area that is safe and desirable. It's really not too different from similar sized metros in that regards. What brings down St. Louis' cost averages is that St. Louis has a ridiculous amount or blighted zones for a metro area it's size. Get the Northern zone of the metro area healthier and our metro area prices would more closely resemble Denver or Minneapolis. I think we would start to see regional growth again too.
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Yeah commodities, raw material and labor is close to same price or higher. so the only thing "cheaper" than Texas is aging poorly maintained housing in stigmatized neighborhoods and your air conditioning bill.goat314 wrote: ↑May 28, 2024The Texas metros are not cheap at all and haven't been for some time now, unless you don't care about your physical safety and well being. I believe St. Louis is a pretty good bargain in terms of cost of living relative to quality of life, but people exaggerate how cheap St. Louis is to live in area that is safe and desirable. It's really not too different from similar sized metros in that regards. What brings down St. Louis' cost averages is that St. Louis has a ridiculous amount or blighted zones for a metro area it's size. Get the Northern zone of the metro area healthier and our metro area prices would more closely resemble Denver or Minneapolis. I think we would start to see regional growth again too.
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https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/14/business ... index.html
These cities are now so expensive they’re considered ‘impossibly unaffordable’
For those who can’t wait for a change in policy or for demand to fall, the report also identifies the most affordable cities of the 94 surveyed worldwide.
They are Pittsburgh, Rochester and St Louis in the US; Edmonton and Calgary in Canada; Blackpool, Lancashire and Glasgow in the United Kingdom; and Perth and Brisbane in Australia.
As someone from Western NY and with numerous friends in Rochester I can say St. Louis is roughly 1.5-2x the cost of living in Rochester. Sure, the data will say STL is affordable, but I thought it's been realized by now that isn't the case when you want to live somewhere halfway decent. The raw data is misleading with the heavy N. City/N. County housing stock, but as many others found out and the yahoo article shows it can be quite expensive. I was helping someone look at apartments here last week and the prices are steep for anything respectable. I was in Denver at the same time and looked at their prices. New builds here are about what new builds there are renting for. $1600 here I see vs $1700 there for a 1 bed in a newer complex.
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St. Louis 2.5-3X the city that Rochester is, so it sounds like we’re doing OK vis-a-vis cost of living
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CityNerd just posted a video of the top 10 cities where you get good value for your urbanism and STL was number one. It's on Nebula now but YouTube on Wednesday
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Came here to say this very thing! The rubric is a mix of transit, walkability, and bike-ability scores (we do ok) divided by our affordability/cost per sqft rent (still the GOAT)GoHarvOrGoHome wrote: ↑Jun 17, 2024CityNerd just posted a video of the top 10 cities where you get good value for your urbanism and STL was number one. It's on Nebula now but YouTube on Wednesday
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^^^You're trying to make me like City Nerd. I . . . well . . . clickbait. It's clickbait top ten lists and I hate those, but well, maybe he figured out we watch anything that mentions our town, and maybe we're helping his adsense numbers or something like that. And maybe if he keeps putting us in his videos it will raise awareness, and bring more people to our fair city, and drive up his numbers more, so maybe there's a virtuous cycle to be had here. I hope. (Still feels a bit dirty somehow, but I'll watch it.)
^Well, that's not why I want to be mentioned, but sweet Jesus the view! I always did love the view from the top of the old Queeny Tower. I hope there's some public space in this one too.
^Well, that's not why I want to be mentioned, but sweet Jesus the view! I always did love the view from the top of the old Queeny Tower. I hope there's some public space in this one too.
I think he does more thoughtful math, research, and topics than the typical walkethub tripe. I doubt they'd ever do one on most NIMBY cities for example.
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I like CityNerd a lot, his monotone sarcasm is actually quite endearing for me. He is definitely an STL fan too, we are mentioned in a ton of videos. Top 10 is more to give his videos structure instead of clickbait IMO
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Agree with above, while he definitely does juice the algorith with his usual listicle format (give him some credit because he did quit his planner day job to do the lord's work), the videos are well researched and generally have a math based approach. But, if I'm honest, the real reason he stands head and shoulders above the rest is because he doesn't seem slick and optimisitic like most urbanist personalities. He's wry and sarcastic, and that suits me just fine.symphonicpoet wrote: ↑Jun 18, 2024^^^You're trying to make me like City Nerd. I . . . well . . . clickbait. It's clickbait top ten lists and I hate those, but well, maybe he figured out we watch anything that mentions our town, and maybe we're helping his adsense numbers or something like that. And maybe if he keeps putting us in his videos it will raise awareness, and bring more people to our fair city, and drive up his numbers more, so maybe there's a virtuous cycle to be had here. I hope. (Still feels a bit dirty somehow, but I'll watch it.)
^Well, that's not why I want to be mentioned, but sweet Jesus the view! I always did love the view from the top of the old Queeny Tower. I hope there's some public space in this one too.