The State of Downtown

bigmclargehuge · PostMay 21, 2014#1012014-05-21T00:55+00:00

I see the exact same thing. I have a specific place in mind. I use to have to go there at 11 cause if i would go at noon i would never get a table. 3 times in the last month and a half ive gone at 1145 and there was only one or two tables with people. It does worry me because this several others are similar. Could be that there are more options out there. But if all the new residents we add, leave for the county to work at 730 and dont return till 6 then that could be why. . .who knows

bprop · PostMay 21, 2014#1022014-05-21T01:03+00:00

^ A guy I worked with maintained a site with all the restaurants downtown on a map. Coincidentally, he moved about five years ago and the site still reflects the state of downtown restaurants at the end of 2008. Earlier this year, I compared that list to today as best I could (with the 'today' restaurants from memory) and the difference in number was so negligible that I didn't even bother making a comparison - I think it was fewer than five.

Now, some restaurants today might be larger, or more high end than they were in 2008. Then again, some of those have since closed, such as Mosaic. Of course there are differences, but certainly not enough to be considered substantial. I'm not taking BPV into consideration because the plummet has been going on since before it opened.

I only hope that the evening residents patronize their neighborhood businesses. But, I have expressed serious doubt about it in the past, and the impression I got today from the staff did not seem to express much hope in that possibility.

bigmclargehuge · PostMay 21, 2014#1032014-05-21T01:25+00:00

In a sick perverted way im glad we are still seeing this now that its warmer. I was so sick of the "cold winter" bs excuses. Its been slowing down for years. There were beautiful evenings last year Spring/Summer/Fall where i was the only table or just a few sitting outside Side bar, Rosalitas, etc. Maybe my timing always sucked. Im trying to do my part. I both live and work here and always try to plan afterwork things downtown. Hope everyone else is doing the same

Knowitall · PostMay 21, 2014#1042014-05-21T01:29+00:00

Guys it's ok, mayor slay said it himself about all the jobs moving out of downtown it's fine since they are staying in the "region". What a joke he is

bigmclargehuge · PostMay 21, 2014#1052014-05-21T01:37+00:00

Knowitall wrote:Guys it's ok, mayor slay said it himself about all the jobs moving out of downtown it's fine since they are staying in the "region".

Ok great im so relieved then

jstriebel · PostMay 21, 2014#1062014-05-21T01:40+00:00

This is all anecdotal, but I went to the OPOP today where there were a few food trucks and live music, and it was great. Lots of people there enjoying the weather, music, and food.

With fewer workers downtown, I think it's only natural that it would have less going on during the day, but I'm not sure "dead" is totally fair. Although there are surely blocks that are better and worse than others.

roger wyoming II · PostMay 21, 2014#1072014-05-21T01:49+00:00

bigmclargehuge wrote:

How the heck did you get a gif of my kiddo?

More seriously, I think there are a number of ways to judge the state of downtown compared to previous decades. You can look at the growth of the number of housing units and residents and be positive. You can look at the number of restored historic buildings and, while lamenting those that have been lost, feel good about the many that have been re-purposed. You can look at the recent and upcoming projects such as Ballpark Village, Blues Museum and Arch grounds and feel hopeful.

But to me the most important function of a downtown is its role as the region's Central Business District... and on that score its been horrifying. Let's hope projects such as the Arcade-Wright and Chemical buildings bring tipping point activity in terms of not only shoring up existing businesses but also create new retail. But even then, we still need to grow downtown office jobs. We need downtown to be more than just a neighborhood that is adding several thousand people, we need it to be a jobs draw that helps re-center the region towards the city. If people work downtown, they are more likely to live in the city, but when Acme Corp. moves out to Chesterfield, so will its workers.

bigmclargehuge · PostMay 21, 2014#1082014-05-21T01:58+00:00

roger wyoming II wrote: How the heck did you get a gif of my kiddo?

I was peeking in your window of course

goat314 · PostMay 21, 2014#1092014-05-21T02:01+00:00

Before we get all panicky, just keep in mind that downtown is still by far the largest business district in St. Louis and one of the largest in the Midwest. That's not going to change. What will change is the nature of job growth. Not only do big companies like large sprawling campuses, but many jobs are becoming work from home positions (welcome to the service economy). I think we better just get used to the idea of downtown being a mixed use residential neighborhood that will likely lose more jobs in the future. The storefront activity will come with more residents, that is inevitable. I think we all must keep in mind that downtown's redevelopment is still in its infancy. Other cities have been transitioning their CBDs for years, some since the 70s and 80s, downtown St. Louis started in the early 2000s late 90s. We are at least a two decades behind places like Seattle, Portland, Denver, much less Chicago, San Francisco, New York. I've always believed that downtown will likely have to fill all of its vacant buildings before we see new high rise construction on a consistent basis. We've literally added thousands of units in the past 5-10 years with great absorption rates, a good demographic wants to live downtown. If we didn't have this great stock of historic buildings, downtown would look like a crane circus, but I think we are about a decade off from that, maybe about 2020. Downtown could use some major infrastructure investment in streetscapes, I think that keeps people off the streets. Hopefully this form based code and a new park plan will also help downtown in a real way.

bigmclargehuge · PostMay 21, 2014#1102014-05-21T02:20+00:00

goat314 wrote: A good demographic wants to live downtown.

I hope this stays true. CWE, Midtown and even Clayton are proposing a lot more living options so we will be competing even more with them in the coming years. I hope that in some way helps downtown not hurts it

roger wyoming II · PostMay 21, 2014#1112014-05-21T02:31+00:00

bigmclargehuge wrote:
roger wyoming II wrote: How the heck did you get a gif of my kiddo?
I was peeking in your window of course

ha!

dweebe · PostMay 21, 2014#1122014-05-21T02:32+00:00

bprop wrote:I beg to differ. In fact, I logged into this very thread to relay a story from lunchtime today.

I mentioned a few pages back (or maybe it was another thread) about how lunch crowds seemed to be way, way down. That was my perception. I still eat out every day as I have for over 15 years in my various jobs downtown, and unless there's a big convention in town - and most of the time even then - you can now walk right into any restaurant between 11am and 1pm and it will be at most...to be optimistic..."half full."

I went to a restaurant today. I am not going to say which one because I don't think it's my business to divulge. But suffice to say it has been downtown for over 10 years and is of consistent high quality. Five years ago, at noon on any given day, the place would have had a line out the front door. Today, at noon, they were less than 1/3 full. A staff member said they were embarking on some social media advertising to try to bring in more people, and that several other restaurants in the vicinity were using the same agency for the same reason.

Now, those who live downtown might be able to say that business in the evening is as good as ever, and can make up for this dramatic loss during the day. But it was alarming to me to hear that such a mainstay is going through this kind of trouble. But I have a very, very hard time believing that there is true residential growth downtown. Something is not adding up.

Anyone who used to work downtown in the 90's and early 00's remember how things used to be?
-Long lines at fast food places. Some restaurants always game your stuff "to go" as there'd not always be a place to sit.
-The old Wendy's (now a Hardees) had separate kitchens and lines. You'd always gamble as to which one to go to. Even then the lines would be out the door on "normal" day.
-Sit down restaurants were very often full.
-Fridays were always the worst. If you worked by the time clock and had a hard 45 minute lunch, you'd be gambling.

Now I never sweat going to lunch. I know there will almost never be a line unless there's a day ballgame or a large convention.

roger wyoming II · PostMay 21, 2014#1132014-05-21T02:39+00:00

goat314 wrote:Before we get all panicky, just keep in mind that downtown is still by far the largest business district in St. Louis and one of the largest in the Midwest. That's not going to change. What will change is the nature of job growth. Not only do big companies like large sprawling campuses, but many jobs are becoming work from home positions (welcome to the service economy). I think we better just get used to the idea of downtown being a mixed use residential neighborhood that will likely lose more jobs in the future.

Cities like Minneapolis and Pittsburgh aren't complacent in any way and have a very strong downtown office market and employment base. Sure the dynamics of what companies seek in office space change, but that is no excuse for downtown to not be the place for location. The Saint Louis region has had plenty of new office jobs in new office buildings; they just aren't downtown. But in a growing number of cities elsewhere, "Back to the City" isn't just limited to residential living... it also is happening for downtown office employment.

bigmclargehuge · PostMay 21, 2014#1142014-05-21T03:14+00:00

Im sure this article was posted a while back about jobs moving from STL to Minneapolis. Is this article an isolated incident or do we have to worry that if the downtown startups grow they might bail?

http://www.stltoday.com/business/column ... 61f54.html

vollum · PostMay 21, 2014#1152014-05-21T04:07+00:00

"The Saint Louis region has had plenty of new office jobs in new office buildings"

Sadly this is not true in the big picture of things. The Saint Louis metropolitan area is not growing. It is stagnant and has been for decades. There has been very little net growth (population or jobs). The private and public sector people (movers and shakers) who run this region do not appear to get the fact that we are one place. They do not make public and private investment decisions that foster growth of the region. The place/region, as a whole, needs grow. If it does not, we all (downtown, the city, the suburbs, the exurbs) will remain stagnant. All that is left is a continuation of the cannibalistic behavior the region has been experiencing for the past 50 years.....moving existing places that basically constitute/support the existing level of economic development from one place to another within the region. Kind of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. A rising tide lifts all boats. Without a rising tide every part of this region will, in the long run, continue to stagnate.

roger wyoming II · PostMay 21, 2014#1162014-05-21T12:30+00:00

^ True we are stagnating on jobs.... I probably should have said "The Saint Louis Regions has had plenty of office jobs move to new office buildings. They're just not downtown." Many of those would have been built downtown if we were among our peers.

robertn42 · PostMay 21, 2014#1172014-05-21T13:00+00:00

^does anyone have the inside scoop on what actually happened to cause the Centene deal to fall apart. What a catalyst that would have been for downtown had a corporation moved their headquarters there in the late 2000s.

We have such a long list of opportunities lost and could have beens....

roger wyoming II · PostMay 21, 2014#1182014-05-21T13:20+00:00

^ I'm not for sure, but I believe one issue was Centene wanted to own its building while Cordish didn't want to allow that. Would have been nice for Mayor Slay to get the deal done.

Knowitall · PostMay 21, 2014#1192014-05-21T15:19+00:00

Apparently another fed agency is on the chopping block to bolt from the City.....

dweebe · PostMay 21, 2014#1202014-05-21T16:23+00:00

Knowitall wrote:Apparently another fed agency is on the chopping block to bolt from the City.....

And Mayor Slay will barely notice.

shimmy · PostMay 21, 2014#1212014-05-21T21:16+00:00

Has there been any recent demographics on the work population downtown? I know the city is sticking to 90,000, but it hasn't been 90,000 for a long time.

roger wyoming II · PostMay 21, 2014#1222014-05-21T21:51+00:00

^ good question. Here is a pretty decent summary of the issue coming from the P-D on how downtown jobs and retail are related written after the Macy's final depature:

Hard numbers of how many people work in the central business district are surprisingly hard to come by. Neither the Census Bureau nor the Department of Labor tracks employment at that level. City officials and the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis generally cite the 88,000 jobs the Partnership found in a survey in 2006 and 2007. That figure, though, includes big employers on the outer fringes of downtown, such as Wells Fargo Advisors and Ameren Corp., a long walk from Macy’s. And the city as a whole has 17,000 fewer jobs than it did in 2007, according to the Labor Department. Some of those losses were almost certainly downtown.

A number of big names have departed, including law firms Armstrong Teasdale and Husch Blackwell, which both decamped to Clayton. Macy’s axed 850 corporate jobs in 2008 when it closed a regional headquarters here. And downtown’s biggest employer, AT&T, has quietly shed about 3,000 jobs over the last decade; its 44-story building on Chestnut Street today sits half empty, according to appeals its owner made last year for a lower tax bill.

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ ... 6011a.html

The piece does mention some of the more quiet gains like Stifel additions and Purina taking up space in the core CBD, but all of that is going to be wiped out by the GA's decision to move out the VA's 900 downtown employees.

Edit: I'm sure the city leadership isn't too keen on updating their survey either as the numbers won't be so nice.

dweebe · PostMay 21, 2014#1232014-05-21T22:14+00:00

roger wyoming II wrote:^ good question. Here is a pretty decent summary of the issue coming from the P-D on how downtown jobs and retail are related written after the Macy's final depature:

Hard numbers of how many people work in the central business district are surprisingly hard to come by. Neither the Census Bureau nor the Department of Labor tracks employment at that level. City officials and the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis generally cite the 88,000 jobs the Partnership found in a survey in 2006 and 2007. That figure, though, includes big employers on the outer fringes of downtown, such as Wells Fargo Advisors and Ameren Corp., a long walk from Macy’s. And the city as a whole has 17,000 fewer jobs than it did in 2007, according to the Labor Department. Some of those losses were almost certainly downtown.

A number of big names have departed, including law firms Armstrong Teasdale and Husch Blackwell, which both decamped to Clayton. Macy’s axed 850 corporate jobs in 2008 when it closed a regional headquarters here. And downtown’s biggest employer, AT&T, has quietly shed about 3,000 jobs over the last decade; its 44-story building on Chestnut Street today sits half empty, according to appeals its owner made last year for a lower tax bill.

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ ... 6011a.html

The piece does mention some of the more quiet gains like Stifel additions and Purina taking up space in the core CBD, but all of that is going to be wiped out by the GA's decision to move out the VA's 900 downtown employees.

Edit: I'm sure the city leadership isn't too keen on updating their survey either as the numbers won't be so nice.

Downtown is fine. Everything is great. No problems at all. Stop being so negative. [/sarcasm]

Gateway City · PostMay 21, 2014#1242014-05-21T22:19+00:00

We DO need to attract more offices DT. But there are some types of jobs coming. Retail/dining/entertainment are something. Better than nothing. The growing DT student body is also going to be a big help. If Webster brings 500 or so students DT, that's similar to a company doing the same thing. It really grinds my gears, however, that every time it seems DT is actually going to get ahead, someone leaves and then all the new "gain" is nothing more than filling that hole...Bringing us back to where we started.

roger wyoming II · PostMay 21, 2014#1252014-05-21T22:23+00:00

We need well-paying, family-supporting office jobs. Minimum wage (or better if your at Pi) isn't going to do a whole lot for the economy and 500 office workers are going to be spending a lot more than 500 students. But yes, we need more students (man it would be great if we'd have that many Gorlocks downtown on any given weekday) and more retail on top of office.

The State of Downtown

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