urbanSTL

^ Love it!

Auggie wrote: ↑

Jul 10, 2025

It would be so easy for the state to actually boost downtown STL and create a real ripple effect and it starts with not moving the state offices out of downtown and making it easier for developers to build, in particular, redeveloping massive office buildings.

This will probably just funnel more money to City's Finest, which is fine, but it's mostly just virtue signaling.

Exactly.  They had this exact opportunity.

dbInSouthCity wrote:Proposals for Wainwright re-development were do last Friday. GSL is reviewing them now

SLDC told me there should be some movement soon on the demo of the railway garage

GSL needs to keep the news coming. I hope they don’t sit on the proposal for too long. They should be trying to have a major update to one of the buildings every month, at least.

July: Millennium
August: Garage coming down
September: wainwright
October: 25,000 jobs from 25 companies announced by Bob C.

Interesting that St Louisans  consider downtown St Louis crime ridden, a dangerous downtown of  chaos  etc.  Yet 50,000 out of towners come here for a convention and I have yet to read any evidence of a rash of criminality being committed against these visitors

chris fuller wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2025

Interesting that St Louisans  consider downtown St Louis crime ridden, a dangerous downtown of  chaos  etc.  Yet 50,000 out of towners come here for a convention and I have yet to read any evidence of a rash of criminality being committed against these visitors

It's the same reason that we endlessly hear about how great downtown was back in the 80s, back when all you had to worry about were car bombings from mob wars.

Reddit thread regarding what many of us already know: 
Channel 4 (and other local media outlets) uses inaccurate click bait titles to push narrative of unsafe downtown

https://old.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1m2b3ev/channel_4_uses_inaccurate_click_bait_titles_to/

The Business Journal does the same.  Contrast two articles about office buildings trading at steep discounts.  Today's article about Novus buying a west county office building for $6.78M from $36M in 2015:

The vacancy rate in the Chesterfield submarket for Class A office space, the highest-quality space such as Nova40, was 30.65% as of the second quarter, just over the regional rate of 26.94%, according to data from commercial real estate firm Colliers. Within the submarket, companies in the second quarter leased 45,258 more square feet than they vacated, according to the figures. Asking rental rates per square foot for Class A space were $17, which is lower than the regional average of $23.72 per square foot.

Vs the article about the Bank of America Building:

The downtown office submarket had average occupancy of 74.7% in the first quarter of 2025, down from 76% in the year-ago period, according to research from CBRE. It has the highest vacancy of any submarket in the region. Class A asking rates in the downtown submarket in the first quarter were $22.78, with only the North County submarket having a lower average for Class A space.

The Wall Street Journal last April profiled downtown as an example of a “doom loop” with “abandoned buildings, vacant offices and shuttered shops and restaurants." Officials have since moved to try and solve some of downtown's biggest vacancies. That includes the Millennium Hotel, with developer Cordish Cos. in February selected as the site’s redeveloper by the Gateway Arch Park Foundation, and the Railway Exchange Building, which the city of St. Louis is attempting to acquire through eminent domain.

Two very similar articles, one with a nice positive spin on it, one with a very decidedly negative tone.

It's weird to me that the Business Journal has adopted this spin, while St. Louis Magazine has increasingly become a go to for regional development and business news with a balance, not negative approach.

Seriously, STL Mag has been killing it lately.

STL Magazine and even the Post-Dispatch have articles that actually raise questions and go deeper into issues than the BJ does. I think STL Mag goes in a more positive/correct critique of things while the P-D generally is more reactionary.

The BJ is still really good for straight up development news, but they actively are telling an anti-downtown story, never raise any potential solutions or insights into why things are the way they are, and will never fail to remind about other bad news- even in a "good" news article. I still think I prefer the BJ over the P-D, but STL Mag has definitely been very solid in recent months. They, for example, had the best coverage of the Mayoral election and 8th Ward election in my opinion.

BJ and P-D are still way better than any of the TV news.

Anyone got a pulse on how all of these Savannah Banana tourists are liking town?

You have to put yourself in a raffle to win tickets, so I’d say a strong portion on the crowds are from outside the immediate area

Between the arch, city museum and union station, I actually think we have more family stuff than most downtowns but then we sometimes don’t get great reviews because of everything (or the lack thereof) in between so curious how these families feel about it

I find the ribbon cutting and celebration of the 7th street bike lane and sidewalk improvements a bit amateurish. A major city like St. Louis should be executing a street improvement on this level every year. It shouldn’t be every five/ten years and it shouldn’t be significant enough to attract a press conference.

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jul 20, 2025

I find the ribbon cutting and celebration of the 7th street bike lane and sidewalk improvements a bit amateurish. A major city like St. Louis should be executing a street improvement on this level every year. It shouldn’t be every five/ten years and it shouldn’t be significant enough to attract a press conference.

Not to mention how this is the culmination of like 8 years of waiting.....and isn't 4th Street supposed to be the same type of deal? Are they gonna have a ribbon cutting for that?

I have to bet it's because it was partially privately funded so the business owners wanted their chance in the spotlight.

Come on, guys. Something nice is happening Downtown; let's celebrate it. The more publicity the better. 

I agree the more new ribbon cuttings the better!!

framer wrote: ↑

Jul 20, 2025

Come on, guys. Something nice is happening Downtown; let's celebrate it. The more publicity the better. 

The point is that this shouldn't be worthy of a ribbon cutting because it should be something that happens everytime a street gets repaved (and it sorta is starting to).

Yeah honestly its kind of pathetic. St. Louis won't become a good city for cyclists through adding a few blocks of isolated protected bike lanes every couple of years. And just for some paint?! This isn't even an expensive thing...

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote: ↑

Jul 19, 2025

Anyone got a pulse on how all of these Savannah Banana tourists are liking town?

You have to put yourself in a raffle to win tickets, so I’d say a strong portion on the crowds are from outside the immediate area

Between the arch, city museum and union station, I actually think we have more family stuff than most downtowns but then we sometimes don’t get great reviews because of everything (or the lack thereof) in between so curious how these families feel about it

This is anecdotal for sure, but from my social media feed, it seems that the Bananas game was heavily attended by STL locals.  It seems everyone went and I was the only one that didn't take the family to the game.  Would be interested to hear from anyone that went how the restaurants/bars were doing.

Wonder why there is not an Aldi's in the downtown/downtown west area?

MRNHS wrote: ↑

Jul 21, 2025

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote: ↑

Jul 19, 2025

Anyone got a pulse on how all of these Savannah Banana tourists are liking town?

You have to put yourself in a raffle to win tickets, so I’d say a strong portion on the crowds are from outside the immediate area

Between the arch, city museum and union station, I actually think we have more family stuff than most downtowns but then we sometimes don’t get great reviews because of everything (or the lack thereof) in between so curious how these families feel about it

This is anecdotal for sure, but from my social media feed, it seems that the Bananas game was heavily attended by STL locals.  It seems everyone went and I was the only one that didn't take the family to the game.  Would be interested to hear from anyone that went how the restaurants/bars were doing.

There were still a lot of out-of-towners. The most predominant group I saw were people from Indiana.

Hell, I’d take a Save-a-lot downtown