urbanSTL

^ Condos on top of the parking garage were supposed to be the "Cityside" portion of the Park Pacific project with the historic building the "Parkside" portion.... I don't know for sure but I had also heard that they proceeded with the garage without any consideration for residential above in the future. That is what I had in mind with the Detroit example above where they went ahead and built the garage but now that the market conditions have improved they hope to begin the residential component.

As for Muni Courts, we'll see how that goes, but it looks like Vertical Reality is still actively marketing the building. I'm sure a mixed-use structure is down the road, but I wouldn't completely write it off yet.

We have no where close to 40k in a mile radius.

12K sounds about right... Maybe a little low, but probably not by much. I'd call the epicenter the CBD (Olive somewhere between Broadway and Tucker) you just don't get a whole lot of extra residential beyond the currently dense residential areas (loft district of course, some miscellaneous buildings in or very near the CBD)... You'd get some extra population from Carr Sqaure, maybe some of LaSalle Park, but not a lot else is coming to mind.

Detroit also recently released a comprehensive data update on Greater Downtown, which is 7.2 square miles and hence the 7.2 initiative

http://detroitsevenpointtwo.com/resourc ... _LoRes.pdf

Nice thing about their core downtown/CBD district is that it is very well-defined in term of geography -- about as close to a perfect 1 mile square as you can get. It counts 5,200 people in downtown and 35,000 in Greater Downtown.

There are no data comparisons with Saint Louis, but it has some rather healthy numbers for City-Center Pittsburgh.... 31,000 people in 4.1 square miles. That's far from say Philadelphia, but not too far off from Minneapolis in terms of density. Our Downtown Partnership counts 8,000 in the downtown core (but that is Downtown and Downtown West and is a larger area than Detroit's 1 sq. mile) and 17,000 in Greater Downtown (although that is a smaller area than Detroit's, which would be more of an equivalent of the river to Vandeventer and between Cass and Lafayette/44.)

Anyway, they are making impressive progress in their core, especially in the CBD and Midtown. And we really need to have more of a data driven focus like some of these other cities.

^Were these threads merged? Kind of OT to merge it here, isn't it?

I think we have them beat on residential growth. They have 700 units in the pipe we have 1000.

Common birds bring economic vitality to cities, new study finds
http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/04/ ... udy-finds/

^ I hate the one way streets downtown. They contribute to some blocks being completely desolate while creating traffic jams on others.

Perfect example is the traffic jams created almost every evening on 4th and Broadway because of the way traffic has been rerouted due to the Arch lid, while streets just a block away from these major streets are empty.

I wonder if some of our emptier downtown blocks would be reactivated if they were simply on a 2 way street? I'm sure it's not that easy, but it'd be worth a shot?

Traffic is one thing, but artificially created traffic jams due to poor planning (well in this case, probably no planning) is infuriating

downtown2007 wrote:I think we have them beat on residential growth. They have 700 units in the pipe we have 1000.

Downtown Cincinnati is still very much a business, arts, dining, nightlife center. Some buildings have gone from office to residential and half a dozen unused buildings have been converted to hotel or residential, but it's value to businesses means it doesn't have the underused spaces to turn residential that downtown St. Louis has. Downtown Cincinnati is also geographically tiny in comparison to St. Louis'. The Over the Rhine neighborhood to its north and areas across the Ohio River in Kentucky would certainly be included in the CBD boundaries of most American cities, but in Cincinnati, they aren't. Finally, downtown Cincinnati is adding new corporate office buildings, hotels, etc, but only limited residential. Remember, Cincinnati has nothing remotely equivalent to Clayton to compete with. Downtown Cincy has an importance to Cincinnati's metro that downtown St. Louis does not. Apples and oranges, I'd say.

Mid-tier major? What is this, Atlantic 10 basketball?

You guys bring up good points. Clayton's not a St. Paul but it's not a suburban office park either. I believe our sister city-county divider Baltimore has a Clayton called Towson. The Cleve kind of has Akron, but that's more it's own thing. I don't think P'burgh and Cincinnasti have anything close - which (at least anecdotally) seem to confirm the theory that not having one helps the CBD.

hebeters2 wrote:Common birds bring economic vitality to cities, new study finds
http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/04/ ... udy-finds/

Clicked this half-expecting an article about the Cardinals.

blzhrpmd2 wrote:Those differences are noted, however the problem is there are no other apples then. What mid-tier major city does have a Clayton? We have to compare ourselves to something in order to gauge progress. Clayton is both a blessing and a curse but we shouldn't take ourselves out of the downtown comparison game just because it exists. Downtown will certainly be judged from the outside against other cities' downtowns without giving Clayton a thought. Isn't the importance of downtown on the metro what we are trying to re-establish?

I think a lot of American cities have strong secondary centers. KC's Country Club, Atlanta's Buckhead, Baltimore's Towson, Philly's Midtown and downtown have grown together, and D.C. is ringed by a circle of 'downtown's' that would each rival downtown St. Louis some of which are a good 20 miles from central D.C. Chicago's interestingly did not develop secondary centers to rival the Loop. So, St. Louis isn't unique in it's patterns, even if the relative balance of those patterns is skewed more toward secondary centers than in most U.S. metros.

Big robotics competition/convention this weekend. I hope things go well.

Ebsy wrote:Big robotics competition/convention this weekend. I hope things go well.

Agreed. Hopefully there are no Skynet situations.

^Metrolink won't be operating at or through Forest Park all weekend. That won't leave a very good impression.