urbanSTL

Seas of parking, barf.
It doesn't look like these site plans are compatible. I presume the one above is phase 1, but if this one reflects all the phases since there's 5 buildings, it doesn't fit.

^The back portion of the project is reportedly different than what's shown in the black and white site plan. There will be 2 buildings back there just in a different layout. Plus, it should be noted the rendering is dates August 12th, 2019

i like the design but the site plan is pretty stupid. all the units plus structured parking would fit on the half of the site closest to Kingshighway, leaving room for more development in the future. there's room for an entire street to be added behind this project between Chippewa and Landsdowne.

Had the same thought. Add a street. Build "city"

^ i don't understand why developers insist on developing the entirety of a large site sparsely rather than developing in stages or subdividing, building more densely, and selling the rest to other developers. iron hill is another example of stupid land use.

This will probably be an unpopular post, but so be it. It’s not the first time I’ve made people angry on here.

The project in its current form is a huge improvement over what’s currently there.

Was anyone ever told not to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Understand this, while there are better ways to go about developing this project, this is pretty solid and a great addition to the area. 333 apartment units is a lot of units for an area that, up until recently, hasn’t seen anything new.

Finally, this is a huge first time development for this John Clancy guy, who is operating under “Cornerstone”. To me, as long as the Kingshighway frontage is adequate, I have no problem with it. There are other opportunities nearby to “build City” in the future. For now, this will do

^ the frontage is great, but it could be even better if the rear building were stacked on top instead awkwardly floating in an oddly-shaped parking sea. i'm not saying it isn't better than what's there, but that's a low bar. i guess what i'm asking is: is there a financial reason these developments are not designed more intelligently, or are the developers just that oblivious?

urban_dilettante wrote:^ the frontage is great, but it could be even better if the rear building were stacked on top instead awkwardly floating in an oddly-shaped parking sea. i'm not saying it isn't better than what's there, but that's a low bar.

Regarding the site plan, it’s not the best although I’d want to see the most up to date site plan to see how everything interacts with each other. Right now, we have two conflicting site plans with the colored one being accurate. The black and white one, can’t be so sure yet.

And since that’s phase 2 and 3, chances are the orientation of the buildings can change

This would be a better site plan, IMO. And there's potential for two north-south streets to connect to Chippewa and Landsdowne and an east-west street from Kingshighway to Ridgewood (Bancroft to Taft) should surrounding properties be redeveloped. Connections!

^I'm not sure I actually think this is an improvement, at least not for the whole site. The armory isn't a terribly large building, but it's handsome and solid. The rec center building behind it that I suppose housed the bowling alley is actually pretty, rather sizable, and should be adaptable. And I rather think there's enough grass and vacant surface parking around there that I just don't see a need to demolish anything at all for some fairly disposable looking apartments. They're not terrible, for what they are, but it looks to be more four story stick nonsense. I'm not altogether opposed to something like that, but when there's so much empty space? . . . Site it better. No need for demo. If you want to add it, fine. But replace existing? I don't buy it. 

This one is gone.

Come on, folks; let's be realistic.  They're  proposing a four-story apartment building, built right up to the sidewalk, way down on South Kingshighway, and you're complaining about the parking lots? The ones that are hidden behind and between the buildings?  Seriously? 

I grew up just a couple of blocks from this site; I spent my first 18 years living right there, and I can't wait to see this thing get built. I hope it leads to much more interest in the old 'hood. 

It is still hard for me to believe the Mary Magdalene Parish center was torn down. Played a lot of volleyball in that gym, played a lot of soccer on those fields.

Ebsy wrote: ↑

Aug 23, 2020

It is still hard for me to believe the Mary Magdalene Parish center was torn down. Played a lot of volleyball in that gym, played a lot of soccer on those fields.

That was our practice field for 7th and 8th grade soccer-  4 classmates and I went to Resurrection but we didnt have enough kids to have a team so we played for Mary Magdalene.  We lost in the CYC title game to St. Pius in 1999.

framer wrote: ↑

Aug 23, 2020

Come on, folks; let's be realistic.  They're  proposing a four-story apartment building, built right up to the sidewalk, way down on South Kingshighway, and you're complaining about the parking lots? The ones that are hidden behind and between the buildings?  Seriously?

yes. it's a bad site plan. again: why? why waste so much space like this? why not design for future growth? more productive land use? is it a cost issue? lack of vision? incognizance? when there are so many examples of good/urban/efficient/productive form, what causes a developer to think that THIS is a good idea?

they could make the street-fronting portion 6 floors at ~twice the depth, include a garage, and still have half of the site left over future development. and way less goddamned concrete.

The reasoning is simple, it’s a car centric site along a high speed major multi-lane roadway. Therefore the development is going to require parking as most of the tenants will have a car or two. Parking Garages are very expensive and don’t pencil out unless you can get a lot more rent which for this submarket isn’t feasible.

As stated above, the Phase I building is being built up onto the road which will feel urban and dense. The rest behind will not be visible to anyone except the apartment tenants.

Lastly, let’s appreciate and applaud the first developer that is taking a huge risk to invest in a ground up apartment development along Kingshighway south of 44 which is the first in a long long time.

urban_dilettante wrote: ↑

Aug 23, 2020

framer wrote: ↑

Aug 23, 2020

Come on, folks; let's be realistic.  They're  proposing a four-story apartment building, built right up to the sidewalk, way down on South Kingshighway, and you're complaining about the parking lots? The ones that are hidden behind and between the buildings?  Seriously?

yes. it's a bad site plan. again: why? why waste so much space like this? why not design for future growth? more productive land use? is it a cost issue? lack of vision? incognizance? when there are so many examples of good/urban/efficient/productive form, what causes a developer to think that THIS is a good idea?

they could make the street-fronting portion 6 floors at ~twice the depth, include a garage, and still have half of the site left over future development. and way less goddamned concrete.

^ the same canned explanation that's offered every time. sorry but i'm just not buying it without seeing the numbers to back it up. how much are they requesting/receiving in tax relief? how much would they save by consolidating all the units into a single building at K'way rather than spreading them out over 3  separate structures each with its own utilities connections, etc. even if structured parking would be infeasible at this stage, that doesn't justify the idiotic layout. without a garage they could still consolidate all the units plus surface parking onto half of the site and leave the rest for future construction that would maximize land value and maybe even make structured parking economically feasible for future phases. but god forbid any foresight sneak into St. Louis development. i think the more likely reason is that the developer lives in St. Charles or something and looks to their development patterns for inspiration. everything has to be a damn self-contained "lifestyle center" now.

^ you couldn’t fit 333 units in a single building on kingshighway without it being a 33 story tower, while that works 4 miles north of there but not at this spot- anything above 3-4 here would look out of place

Agree completely with kbshapiro on this one.  If there was enough demand in this area to support more units or another site plan like urban_dilettante proposed, we'd be seeing more developers proposing projects nearby (or this specific lot developed much quicker than it has). Would I love to see extremely urban designs everywhere?  Absolutely.  But St. Louis has a space problem in that there's too much empty land in proportion to current demand. Not every building needs to have retail, and not every building in the city needs to have the same density as if it were built in the CWE.  I'll gladly accept this site plan at this location if it means that 330+ residents / families stay in the city or move here from somewhere else.  

Aw, Christy claypies on toast! Yeah, I grew up a few blocks over too. And I'm still close enough I'm over there pretty frequently to shop or on my way other palces. Didn't realize they'd already bowled over the gym. It's pretty well tucked away in there. I knew they closed the bowling alley and I wondered why. That's a pile of awful. X( Yeah yeah. It's car centric. It's filled with crap. I'm pretty aware of what's there and what isn't. And what once was.

I still can't get too danged excited about this. I won't say it shouldn't happen. But it's just one more piece of four story stick meh like every other piece of four story stick meh. I doubt it lasts even half as well as the bland but brick apartments from the seventies variously around Morganford and Chippewa a few blocks away. (In one of which a childhood friend lived.) And none of those look particularly prime forty years along. Given the already done demo I'll mostly shut up. But how was that even allowed? It should have been reviewed. It's not the loss of the Southtown Famous, but . . . still. There's less and less worth remembering along there every dang year. We needed preservation review there decades ago.

Can we at least ask for a better facade?

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Aug 24, 2020

^ you couldn’t fit 333 units in a single building on kingshighway without it being a 33 story tower, while that works 4 miles north of there but not at this spot- anything above 3-4 here would look out of place

just by looking at the site plan you can see that if the buildings and parking were rearranged it could all fit on roughly half the site. maybe two thirds. add a couple of floors and it easily fits on half. i think 6 stories would look fine here. not sure why it would look any more out of place than, say, the Soulard Steelyard apartments.

I can't complain about this project too much considering its location. It feels like something you would see in Creve Coeur along the denser sections of Olive. This is something we can realistically replicate in some of our more auto oriented areas.

A quick overlay i did to help me visualize the project better.