urbanSTL

I would love to see St Louis attract a bigger comedy scene. How about a Second City Branch? If Detroit and Cleveland can get one...

The Central Scrutinizer wrote:"Interactive comedy show"?



I give it a year.

Interactive comedy show?, I guess Michael Richards will be headlining

groan...... The guy is old and went nuts for a while. Besides.... Seinfeld DVD sales soared after that. This might have been a publicity stunt (Though even I doubt that).

I was in St. Louis for the holiday and ended up staying at the Hyatt Union Station from Tuesday night to Friday. Here's my perspective on Union Station...



Tuesday night was dead. I walked around and there were very few people in the mall. I ended up at Houlihans for dinner and a couple beers. The old Casa Gallardo space is empty, as is the Hooters space. I guess I could have went to Landry's or Hard Rock, but Houlihans was fine. It too was pretty dead. I also noticed that the mall isn't very well lit - it seems like the owners want to save money on lighting - it would be much more inviting if more lit.



So, I was pretty unimpressed Tuesday. However, suddenly Wednesday and Thursday the place was completely different. There was an event at the Hyatt called Urbana '06 - some sort of religious gathering. Anyway, the next two days the mall was MUCH better - lots of activity and people. It looked like the shops were doing good business. The mall felt much nicer and safer with the added people.



In summary, I think the mall could really boost itself up with a little residential development onsite. I just think it's a no-brainer.

^good analysis, I agree.

It looks like the TCBY/Mrs Fields Cookies is closed. The DAPY store on the lower level looks like they're blowing out merchandise for a closure.



And yes the youth religious conference drew in some great business Wednesday/Thursday/Friday. I had to skip lunch Friday since the lines were too long.

dweebe wrote:


And yes the youth religious conference drew in some great business Wednesday/Thursday/Friday. I had to skip lunch Friday since the lines were too long.

Well, at least someone is enjoying Union Station.

Just finished lunch at the food court and was dreaming about how the Ferry Building Marketplace on the Embarcadero in San Francisco would be a great model for reinvigorating Union Station. FB has it right with it's tenant mix of lots of local food and wine merchants that can cater to residents and tourists.



http://www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com/



http://www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com ... t_list.php



Sorry if this has been mentioned before.

What's nice about the ferry building is that it does, in fact, operate as a ferry building. The amount of people around the ferry plaza is astounding. Last time I was there, they had several street performers and stands around there. Inside the place was packed. Apparently, before the Bay Bridge was built, the Ferry Plaza was one of the busiest places for pedestrian traffic in the world.

What I always wondered was why couldn't Union Station have been converted into a train station AND a mall/hotel? I'm sure something cool could have been done about this.

^ Something to do with trains having to pull in and back out. Seems to me that they should have rotated the platforms so they run east and west like the current tracks to the south. I guess I don't know enough about the stations history.

bpe235 wrote:^ Something to do with trains having to pull in and back out. Seems to me that they should have rotated the platforms so they run east and west like the current tracks to the south. I guess I don't know enough about the stations history.

Union Station was designed as a terminal hub. Thus, trains actually originated or ended their travels here, and having them back in/pull out made the most sense for a densely-used platform.



Of course nowdays St. Louis is not a rail terminal -- it's more like halfway along one spoke. An in-line platform makes more sense since no passenger trains start or end their route here.

Of course nowdays St. Louis is not a rail terminal -- it's more like halfway along one spoke. An in-line platform makes more sense since no passenger trains start or end their route here.

That's incorrect. If you look at the current Amtrak schedule for St. Louis, many -- if not a majority -- of the St. Louis trains begin or end here (to either Chicago or Kansas City).

bonwich wrote:

Of course nowdays St. Louis is not a rail terminal -- it's more like halfway along one spoke. An in-line platform makes more sense since no passenger trains start or end their route here.

That's incorrect. If you look at the current Amtrak schedule for St. Louis, many -- if not a majority -- of the St. Louis trains begin or end here (to either Chicago or Kansas City).

Hmm. Maybe so. But this is still a relatively low number of trains, such that occupying one or two inline tracks won't create a bottleneck in the whole system. The 'terminal' style was designed for an era when there would be 5, 10, or more trains in a station at a time.

Back to the Ferry Building topic, when Union Station first opened the ground floor under the food court was called the Pullman Marketplace. It consisted of multiple stalls rented to local, small business owners who sold a wide variety of quality products (the Fudgery is the only one left). Unfortunately a few years later the owners of the mall decided to expand their offering of national retail chains so they rebuilt the first floor to more closely resembled a shopping mall. I worked in one of the stalls that sold handcrafted chocolates, business was great for us between Valentines and Mothers Days but fell off for our products as we moved into the Summer. Not sure why the Rouse Company moved away for the smaller businesses, but I really loved the concept when it first opened.

Well, Union Station's slow death looks to continue.



The "TCBY/Mrs. Field's Cookies" location in the food court closed a few weeks ago.



The "DRPY" novelties store (a Specer's spinoff) looks like they're getting ready to move out. Everything in the store is half off and they continue to box stuff up.



The "Brookstone" store has a sign saying they'll be closing on January 27th.

Just makes more room for better stores, right?

dweebe wrote:The "Brookstone" store has a sign saying they'll be closing on January 27th.

Out of all the tenants at US, I'm really surprised Brookstone stayed as long as they did.



I agree with southcitygent- I liked the original layout of the lower level at Union Station. And I wonder what it will take to reinvent this space, and who will step up and make it happen. Right now, it's kind of depressing.

I still think some sort of renovation could have been done to make the station different that would have allowed trains to run through it. Maybe an addition or something. Then, when passengers arrive in our beautiful station, they would be treated with a market place/ hotel.

The Brookstone closing really is disheartening.

I hate to see that.

What exactly IS going on over there is the question.

stlmike wrote:I still think some sort of renovation could have been done to make the station different that would have allowed trains to run through it. Maybe an addition or something. Then, when passengers arrive in our beautiful station, they would be treated with a market place/ hotel.

\



Ya that would be tough to do, with the construction of the new intermodal station.

We have hashed this out many many many many many times.



Once again, STL Union Station is a privately owned facility. Amtrak is Gov'nt run and operated.



This said, you can thank the Federal Gov't for not wanting to run Amtrak back into Union Station. Trains would have to back into/out of the station and the Feds don't want to utilize a privately owned station.



The new Gateway Transportation Center is public and financed through tax basis.



There was an article about this subject last year at some time in the PD if anyone can find it.



There are VERY few old Union Stations in the country being run as actual rail centers. With Amtrak the only game across the country... it is bleek.



We are lucky to have the Gateway Transportation Center a few blocks away and walking distance or accessible by Metro. We are also lucky to have Metro serving Union Station.

The death of Union Station continues; two more places are closing. The Claires store and the Italian Charms store will be closing tomorrow.



Great job running the place into the ground.

dweebe wrote:The death of Union Station continues; two more places are closing. The Claires store and the Italian Charms store will be closing tomorrow.



Great job running the place into the ground.

Jeez, that's depressing, especially with St. Louis Centre (hopefully) undergoing redevelopment soon. Can't we just have a healthy retail scene downtown?