Happy Thanksgiving, all! Here's some food for thought.
We've had quite a few large apartment buildings either recently break ground, or are just about to. One in Soulard, one in Lafayette Square, one in Midtown, one in the Central West End, one in The Grove, one on The Hill, and two (three?) in De Baliviere. Is it good to have these spread out over such a large area, or would we be better served if they were consolidated into two or three "hot spots"?
^ Much, much better to have it spread out in many different neighborhoods in my opinion. These apartments will eventually start to feed into other developments...much better to have them all over the city I think.
^ Much, much better to have it spread out in many different neighborhoods in my opinion. These apartments will eventually start to feed into other developments...much better to have them all over the city I think.
And Happy Thanksgiving as well!
I tend to agree with what you said, but cannot help getting a bit "jealous" when I see a large agglomeration of new residential construction as in Indianapolis for ex, which inevitably spurs retail/commercial development.
Cities with these concentrated hotspots of development often have them because they just don’t have the extensive urban fabric and dense neighborhoods that STL and other legacy cities do. We have much more eligible sites for projects like this than cities like Indy, think filling up a tall glass vs filling up a saucepan.
STL needs to focus these projects in areas that can be used to connect existing hotspots IE between Soulard and Downtown, Central Corridor infill, and arterial roads in North and South city.
^ Much, much better to have it spread out in many different neighborhoods in my opinion. These apartments will eventually start to feed into other developments...much better to have them all over the city I think.
And Happy Thanksgiving as well!
I tend to agree with what you said, but cannot help getting a bit "jealous" when I see a large agglomeration of new residential construction as in Indianapolis for ex, which inevitably spurs retail/commercial development.
I would agree with that as well. And while Framer mentioned some of the larger apartment buildings, most all of those areas have several other projects going on. Especially the CWE, the Grove, Skinky D, etc. And of course all of those neighborhoods and more have dozens of small scale rehabs and new builds like around Lafayette Square, Soulard, Midtown Alley, the Gate, etc.
Now we're starting to see more projects and rehabs spread into Bevo, Gravois Park, and parts of North St. Louis too. Spread it around I say.
Happy Thanksgiving, all! Here's some food for thought.
We've had quite a few large apartment buildings either recently break ground, or are just about to. One in Soulard, one in Lafayette Square, one in Midtown, one in the Central West End, one in The Grove, one on The Hill, and two (three?) in De Baliviere. Is it good to have these spread out over such a large area, or would we be better served if they were consolidated into two or three "hot spots"?
Thoughts?
Development/investment anywhere in town is great, but I think the best of both worlds is to have development spread around town but close to and connected by mass transit. We're seeing that with projects in the CWE, Grove, DeBaliviere and Downtown.
I feel like STL is gaining a lot of traction in terms of new proposed multifamily. I am eager to see these scattered projects feed into their respective neighborhoods and each other.
After living in KC for quite some time, it was nice to have a centralized north/south corridor from downtown through the plaza with density.
However after you progressed East/west throughout KC, urbanism was incredibly lacking. If you moved anywhere outside of that small bubble, you didn’t have a ton of options for quality urbanism.
I hope we can connect our neighborhoods better because each of these neighborhoods in STL truly offer some uniqueness, whether that be urbanism, architecture, or atmosphere.
Walked through here ( Sarah) recently and was struck by how well this building embraces the pedestrian experience. Multiple entrances/stoops, bay windows and the feeling of many ‘eyes on the street’ . Then there’s street trees for summer heat, pedestrian lighting as well as street parking to buffer from traffic.
This embodies pretty much everything we need to build safe walkable neighborhoods -atleast from the multi-family standpoint.
Note: no garage entrances or curb cuts. No blank walls.
Wish all new construction was held to this standard. Its not rocket science.
Saudi Arabia is planning a 100-mile-long "linear city". No cars, no roads (all transportation is below ground), and supposedly everything you need is just a five minute walk away.
^The trouble is most of us form our opinions of development not on complex and arcane economic statistics (which they do call the dismal science for a reason), but rather on our emotional attachment to places and ideas. Is it pretty? Do we like the thing that's there now? Do we dislike it? Why? In Columbia, for instance, the resistance to new housing was (is) coming from folks who have lived there a long long time. People have a strong emotional attachment to a quaint, small college town that is fast disappearing. (Disappeared ten years ago or more, really.) Odd as this may seem, Columbia has long had a core of genuine hippies and peaceniks living alongside the frats and farmers. And those hippies often occupy the quaint, older, slightly run down neighborhoods dotted with converted rental property picked up by the local slumlords renting to students and less well-heeled transients. Because those were the houses they could afford thirty years, forty, or even fifty or more years ago when they arrived. (And I do mean hippies quite literally here. I count some of them personal friends and there's a kind of Rainbow Gathering culture in some areas. Or at least . . . there was. Still was in a few places when I left, though it was fast fading.)
I'll bet money San Francisco saw more or less precisely the same dynamic forty years ago. When I was there in the early 80s it was still seedy and pretty and intriguing. It was a real city, to be sure, but not the monster that it's become. And while the neighborhoods with the hippies and the slumlords surely aren't the only ones getting bought out and torn down they are the ones getting the attention because they're maybe the ones where modest to middle-income folks are finding themselves either pressured into selling or faced with the prospect of living next to developer-contemporary giants with frat parties on the fourth floor balcony maybe threatening to throw their beer at you as you walk past.
The point being this: folks don't care about the statistics. They care about the anecdotes. And the anecdotes about developer contemporary that you hear on the crunchier circuit (which overlaps considerably with the theatre circuit) are pretty universally negative. And let's be really honest for a moment here: do you want to live in (or next to) that cute brick rowhouse with the hostas and hydrangeas or the four story stick giant looming over a narrow concrete strip that maybe might get some mangy junipers if the rendering is to be believed? And the fact that a big building in a mature city can help to drive rents down means nothing in the fight between the angry hippie centenarian and the fifty something slum lord. And the renters, if they do vote at all, probably listen to the hippie who lives next door, not their landlord whom they by and in large hate. Or their banker, whom they also hate. Or the economist preaching out of the paper.
Maybe the dismal scientist is right and the big box buildings can help. But if so, they really need some art to help sell the things. Because right now? They're doing it wrong. They have no stories. No anecdotes. No soul.
^The trouble is most of us form our opinions of development not on complex and arcane economic statistics (which they do call the dismal science for a reason), but rather on our emotional attachment to places and ideas. Is it pretty? Do we like the thing that's there now? Do we dislike it? Why? In Columbia, for instance, the resistance to new housing was (is) coming from folks who have lived there a long long time. People have a strong emotional attachment to a quaint, small college town that is fast disappearing. (Disappeared ten years ago or more, really.) Odd as this may seem, Columbia has long had a core of genuine hippies and peaceniks living alongside the frats and farmers. And those hippies often occupy the quaint, older, slightly run down neighborhoods dotted with converted rental property picked up by the local slumlords renting to students and less well-heeled transients. Because those were the houses they could afford thirty years, forty, or even fifty or more years ago when they arrived. (And I do mean hippies quite literally here. I count some of them personal friends and there's a kind of Rainbow Gathering culture in some areas. Or at least . . . there was. Still was in a few places when I left, though it was fast fading.)
I'll bet money San Francisco saw more or less precisely the same dynamic forty years ago. When I was there in the early 80s it was still seedy and pretty and intriguing. It was a real city, to be sure, but not the monster that it's become. And while the neighborhoods with the hippies and the slumlords surely aren't the only ones getting bought out and torn down they are the ones getting the attention because they're maybe the ones where modest to middle-income folks are finding themselves either pressured into selling or faced with the prospect of living next to developer-contemporary giants with frat parties on the fourth floor balcony maybe threatening to throw their beer at you as you walk past.
The point being this: folks don't care about the statistics. They care about the anecdotes. And the anecdotes about developer contemporary that you hear on the crunchier circuit (which overlaps considerably with the theatre circuit) are pretty universally negative. And let's be really honest for a moment here: do you want to live in (or next to) that cute brick rowhouse with the hostas and hydrangeas or the four story stick giant looming over a narrow concrete strip that maybe might get some mangy junipers if the rendering is to be believed? And the fact that a big building in a mature city can help to drive rents down means nothing in the fight between the angry hippie centenarian and the fifty something slum lord. And the renters, if they do vote at all, probably listen to the hippie who lives next door, not their landlord whom they by and in large hate. Or their banker, whom they also hate. Or the economist preaching out of the paper.
Maybe the dismal scientist is right and the big box buildings can help. But if so, they really need some art to help sell the things. Because right now? They're doing it wrong. They have no stories. No anecdotes. No soul.
