urbanSTL

Downtown needs a proper Land Value Tax; let's make it prohibitively expensive to own an empty lot within the region's (should be) prime real estate. We could start by flipping the current real estate tax on its head and gradually phasing out the portion for improvements while increasing levies on the land value portion in a revenue neutral manner. Its ridiculous that our local tax code provides favorable treatment to idle speculators over legitimate owners/developers. 

Of course this would require approval from the MO General Assembly, so it will never happen.

^ This argument that you can make it prohibitively expensive to own empty lot by taxation could very well get you another outcome in low a economic demand environment.  That outcome would be the city owning more no tax generation at all empty lot(s) that still won't be develop because their is no demand..  St. Louis public already owns a wide swath of empty lots not generating any tax dollars at all.

Do you you need better system of incentives? more selective incentives, etc?  Yes, can always can change things for the better and change as you go year to year.  But building something is a very high up front investment which won't see return for years to come.  So the idea that you would tax something to the point that it will be cheaper to build an empty building & still pay taxes lacks any logic in mind.   Another way to put it, I have yet to see an argument that convinces me that land value is driven by taxation instead of demand.   

"St. Louis-based information technology services provider TierPoint said Tuesday it has plans to make an investment of up to $150 million to add a new data center in Downtown West."

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... 2024-08-13

If this is nothing but a data center, it’s a big disappointment. Few permanent jobs, big strain on utility capacity that could go to more productive uses, and in an area with strong residential demand and proximity to the SC stadium.

9 permanent jobs created and 20 Megawatts of power. Agreed, not a good use of the space.

Apparently a “Fortune 100 Company” has signed up to be an anchor tenant, though I don’t think that means much practically.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

data center with single digit permanent employees is kinda like a City SC game that ends in a tie. It’s not a win but definitely not a lose either, it’s +1 point which isn’t going to be enough to make the playoffs without some wins

wow, what a massive waste of this building and location. it looks perfect for a residential conversion.

TP bought the whole building and they’ll spend up to $150,000,000 to turn it into data center as needed, first phase is 23k sq ft out of 138k total

A blast from the past thread regarding 2300 Locust from 2005

national-system-to-move-downtown-renova ... html#p3488

I wonder how many extra years of tax abatement they will request for the 20 or so employees that will work in this building.

This should be the last data center opened in the city of St. Louis or the region for that matter. It’s not worth the strain on the grid or the water system.

While I agree that an apartment conversion would have been preferable, there are already some big apartment plans in this area like the AHM plan that includes the 29 story apartment building. If those all come to fruition, not having this building be an apartment building is not going to be a massive deal.

Describing this as a "tie" is extremely accurate.

@dblnsouthcity that is perfectly said - it is a tie but not a win.

I understand the analogy, but I think calling it a tie is too charitable.

We are talking about the hottest neighborhood in the city, that has momentum but still lacks total connectivity. The demand for residential is there and this building appears to be a fine candidate to add density. Instead, we’ll have a large building that will appear essentially vacant to the passerby.

We have so many other options in other neighborhoods that would be a better candidate for a data center.

This is a loss for DT West. We should demand better.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

Aug 13, 2024

I wonder how many extra years of tax abatement they will request for the 20 or so employees that will work in this building.

This should be the last data center opened in the city of St. Louis or the region for that matter. It’s not worth the strain on the grid or the water system.

I agree. Let Kansas City build them and be proud of them. 

Debaliviere91 wrote: ↑

Aug 14, 2024

I understand the analogy, but I think calling it a tie is too charitable.

We are talking about the hottest neighborhood in the city, that has momentum but still lacks total connectivity. The demand for residential is there and this building appears to be a fine candidate to add density. Instead, we’ll have a large building that will appear essentially vacant to the passerby.

We have so many other options in other neighborhoods that would be a better candidate for a data center.

This is a loss for DT West. We should demand better.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Downtown is about 5 years away from having the ability to reject $150M investment. 

dbInSouthCity wrote:

Debaliviere91 wrote: ↑

Aug 14, 2024

I understand the analogy, but I think calling it a tie is too charitable.

We are talking about the hottest neighborhood in the city, that has momentum but still lacks total connectivity. The demand for residential is there and this building appears to be a fine candidate to add density. Instead, we’ll have a large building that will appear essentially vacant to the passerby.

We have so many other options in other neighborhoods that would be a better candidate for a data center.

This is a loss for DT West. We should demand better.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Downtown is about 5 years away from having the ability to reject $150M investment. 

If we are 5 years away, then I would call supporting this project short sighted.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is absolutely positively a fricking win!!!   Sorry,  St Louis is a low growth economic environment with a massive amount of empty space from 909 Chestnut to Railway Exchnange to an empty hotel tower near the Arch with even more empty lots everywhere.   We haven't gotten into the fact that St Louis continues to shrink in taxable properties, shrinks in assesses value and grows with non taxable public owned property    Add the fact that St. Louis like a lot of cities once home to multiple regional companies HQ like Famous Barr (think Railway Exchange) nd Missouri Pacific or even Southwest Bell (think 909 Chestnut).   These regional HQs are a thing of a past decades ago.  The latest hit is WFH/shared office space and AI which will further shrink white office workforce and anyone pays attention not everyone wants to live downtown.    

So how did you get downtown property filled, try and thus shrink supply and thus increase property values/generate more tax/generate more demand  in a new world that doesn't require a lot of white collar downtown office space?   Residential, hotel rooms and yes a certain amount on new uses such as Data Centers, vertical farming and any other way you can rent space.   What is even more ironic and what people seem to forget that a lot of old buildings downtown once upon a time , especially on Wash Ave or say Cupple warehouses, were built as warehouses with a relative small workforce for the space built to begin with.   Data Centers can be today's warehouses!!  I think everyone needs to get over the fact it would take decades to jam pack every building with people & that is even a big if.   Long story this is a win because St. Louis needs these can of deals 

dredger wrote:This is absolutely positively a fricking win!!!   Sorry,  St Louis is a low growth economic environment with a massive amount of empty space from 909 Chestnut to Railway Exchnange to an empty hotel tower near the Arch with even more empty lots everywhere.   We haven't gotten into the fact that St Louis continues to shrink in taxable properties, shrinks in assesses value and grows with non taxable public owned property    Add the fact that St. Louis like a lot of cities once home to multiple regional companies HQ like Famous Barr (think Railway Exchange) nd Missouri Pacific or even Southwest Bell (think 909 Chestnut).   These regional HQs are a thing of a past decades ago.  The latest hit is WFH/shared office space and AI which will further shrink white office workforce and anyone pays attention not everyone wants to live downtown.    

So how did you get downtown property filled, try and thus shrink supply and thus increase property values/generate more tax/generate more demand  in a new world that doesn't require a lot of white collar downtown office space?   Residential, hotel rooms and yes a certain amount on new uses such as Data Centers, vertical farming and any other way you can rent space.   What is even more ironic and what people seem to forget that a lot of old buildings downtown once upon a time , especially on Wash Ave or say Cupple warehouses, were built as warehouses with a relative small workforce for the space built to begin with.   Data Centers can be today's warehouses!!  I think everyone needs to get over the fact it would take decades to jam pack every building with people & that is even a big if.   Long story this is a win because St. Louis needs these can of deals 

This is a win in many parts of the city. It’s not a win in DT West, 2 blocks from the soccer stadium. We don’t need warehouses/data centers in the epicenter of current development in our city. The current state of St Louis’s low growth economic environment doesn’t apply evenly to every neighborhood in the city.

I think this is a small win even if it's downtown west for a few reasons:

• Even though the employee count is low, the investment is high.
• There's no shortage of empty lots, even in downtown-West, so anything that prevents a property from being vacant is a win.
• Builds on the momentum of downtown-west that could help spread the momentum to nearby areas.

I agree this is not as good as if a company would bring hundreds of employees or if there was a new apartment complex however, we have to take in consideration that building housing won't bring population by itself. We already have several projects underway and I strongly believe that the decrease of vacant lots would increase the appeal of the area for additional residential development. We can't bet on office jobs returns to the area, we need a combination of several developments.

Doing nothing would be negative for me as that would be a vacant property. That's why I see this as a small positive.

Everyone keeps referring to the $150M investment from this project as a reason it’s a positive. What does that investment actually bring to DT West? An investment is meaningless if there is no return on it.

We are getting 9 employees and undetermined addition to the tax rolls (assuming they don’t get subsidies). That’s simply not good enough.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

^ The return for downtown, downtown west is filling empty space and putting a property back on the trajectory of increasing value for the sake of city tax rolls/assessments & other nearby properties.  Finding a demand and use of property increases land values.  Demand, land values and lack of space will drive and accelerate further development of the surrounding properties and empty lots.   

So while my wife's ATT job has been consolidated to Dallas, TX  like a few St. Louis downtown ATT jobs we now of as well, state bailing on downtown and downtown takes few other hits on top of the a few million square feet of empty space I find it amusing that the urban crowd on this thread believes that a $150 million downtown data center investment isn't simply good enough.     

Seriously, I would say the city & developers should double down and run with more data center investment.  You could easily stabilize and give some reasonable rent income/reverse decreasing tax assessments, keep the lights on for some of the larger empty downtown building by filling in a few floors with data centers.  The sooner 909 Chestnut and Railway Exchange have rent income and empty space taken off the market the easier it will be to develop other properties and empty lots.        

I don't dream of a downtown filled with data centers, but if it fills an otherwise empty building it's probably good for now and data centers are one of the easier uses to move should economics make it advantageous. It may not be the end goal but it's a decent placeholder use.