urbanSTL

There are several types of "green" carpet. Some are made of recycled fibers and some are made of corn. Even regular wool carpet is considered green.

AvantStL wrote:There are several types of "green" carpet. Some are made of recycled fibers and some are made of corn. Even regular wool carpet is considered green.

There is no such thing as "green" wool. Don't you know that animals are more damaging to the climate than cars?: http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Farm_ ... s_999.html



Save the sheep and us (by killing them to eliminate animal emissions): http://www.savethesheep.com/environment.asp. If we don't want global warming to kill us all, we must kill all livestock, to include the sheep that give us wool.



Al Gore says the human species is in a race for its life. There is no time to hesitate. We must act now by killing all animals! (Just don't tell PETA) http://www.aspendailynews.com/article_20762

Wool carpeting can earn a developer points towards LEED certification. It is considered rapidly renewable (vs. carpet made from petroleum) and should help INDOOR air quality...even if the sheep are emitting tons of methane

Doug wrote:Why are they putting mulch in the lot and not allowing parking? At least use the lot until construction begins.

That lot, once again, has nothing to do with Robert's tower. That lot is the lot on which the OPO Plaza is to be built. Robert's tower is a sliver tower. Its dimmensions are currently marked off by a fence directly south of the Mayfair hotel. That lot IS being used as a parking lot still, quite unfortunately.

Doug wrote:Why are they putting mulch in the lot and not allowing parking? At least use the lot until construction begins.

It is my understanding that the corner on 9th is to have a park on it. I would hope the mulch is for that. As a resident a block away with dogs, that park can't come soon enough!

Doug wrote:Whatever. It is all one chained off parcel of land. I don't care who owns it. We shouldn't be using it as a mulch dumping area. No wonder people thing we are hoosiers.

Of course if I had the means to own and develop this property, I probably wouldn't be in a chat room on a gorgeous friday afternoon b*tching about how someone else is developing their property.



Is anyone else pissed they opened 9th back up between locust and olive? What a missed opportunity!! It's been closed for what, two years? Probably gets 10 cars a day. Imagine what the OPO district would be like if they took this one block of useless street and turned it into a giant courtyard/patio/park!! But we've GOT to make room for all that traffic. Don't want anyone to have to drive a couple blocks out of the way on their way to the county!!



Good grief. I'm no city planner, and even I could see that missed opportunity from a mile away. Anyone been to Boise? Great downtown... mostly because of the all the outdoor patio areas thanks to the large distances between the curb and the building fronts.



I'm done. Just pissed to be inside with no windows.



Animal

Animal wrote:

Doug wrote:Whatever. It is all one chained off parcel of land. I don't care who owns it. We shouldn't be using it as a mulch dumping area. No wonder people thing we are hoosiers.

Of course if I had the means to own and develop this property, I probably wouldn't be in a chat room on a gorgeous friday afternoon b*tching about how someone else is developing their property.



Is anyone else pissed they opened 9th back up between locust and olive? What a missed opportunity!! It's been closed for what, two years? Probably gets 10 cars a day. Imagine what the OPO district would be like if they took this one block of useless street and turned it into a giant courtyard/patio/park!! But we've GOT to make room for all that traffic. Don't want anyone to have to drive a couple blocks out of the way on their way to the county!!



Good grief. I'm no city planner, and even I could see that missed opportunity from a mile away. Anyone been to Boise? Great downtown... mostly because of the all the outdoor patio areas thanks to the large distances between the curb and the building fronts.



I'm done. Just pissed to be inside with no windows.



Animal

The LAST thing our downtown needs any more of is "Park" space. If they would have blocked off the street and removed the assphalt and replaced it with brick to become a pedestrian only block, that would have been cool. Also would have helped out the retail opportunities. Closing the street to make way for a bircked off area with retail is one thing, but PLEASE, don't ask for anymore park in downtown.

Looks like the website has been slightly updated. It now contains a video - which does have some shots of the materials that should be used in the building. Also states it will be the first new construction residential downtown in 40 years.



One other tidbit I noticed was that units start at $350K - not sure if that was already mentioned.



http://www.robertstower.com

Also would have helped out the retail opportunities. Closing the street to make way for a bircked off area with retail is one thing

This does NOT help retail, but instead, it hurts it. Same with one way streets- NOT good for retail.

Animal wrote:

Doug wrote:Whatever. It is all one chained off parcel of land. I don't care who owns it. We shouldn't be using it as a mulch dumping area. No wonder people thing we are hoosiers.

Of course if I had the means to own and develop this property, I probably wouldn't be in a chat room on a gorgeous friday afternoon b*tching about how someone else is developing their property.



Is anyone else pissed they opened 9th back up between locust and olive? What a missed opportunity!! It's been closed for what, two years? Probably gets 10 cars a day. Imagine what the OPO district would be like if they took this one block of useless street and turned it into a giant courtyard/patio/park!! But we've GOT to make room for all that traffic. Don't want anyone to have to drive a couple blocks out of the way on their way to the county!!



Good grief. I'm no city planner, and even I could see that missed opportunity from a mile away. Anyone been to Boise? Great downtown... mostly because of the all the outdoor patio areas thanks to the large distances between the curb and the building fronts.



I'm done. Just pissed to be inside with no windows.



Animal

I respectfully disagree. I think that would have been awful.





I think the Roberts have a ton to prove when it comes to real estate, but I really like this website.

metzgda wrote:Looks like the website has been slightly updated. It now contains a video - which does have some shots of the materials that should be used in the building. Also states it will be the first new construction residential downtown in 40 years.



One other tidbit I noticed was that units start at $350K - not sure if that was already mentioned.



http://www.robertstower.com

I believe this is the same video that plays in the sales office and on the TV's on Pine (?) in between the 9th street garage and the sales center. Can anyone confirm? If so, this has been around for quite some time, although still new to the site. And they could add some features as opposed to "undefined" .

I don't think its the same one, but very similar. Maybe someone else is more sure.

newstl2020 wrote:
If they would have blocked off the street and removed the assphalt and replaced it with brick to become a pedestrian only block, that would have been cool. Also would have helped out the retail opportunities.

That is exactly what I was talking about.

newstl2020 wrote:
The LAST thing our downtown needs any more of is "Park" space.

If I had to choose between park space and a bunch of empty parking lots, I would choose park space every day of the week and twice on Sunday. This isn't Seoul or London. Let's fill the buildings we've got before we start building new on every square inch. If we put a usable public space there today can we put a big assed glass skyscraper crammed with high density housing mixed with commercial and retail there tomorrow? Yes.

newstl2020 wrote:
Closing the street to make way for a bircked off area with retail is one thing, but PLEASE, don't ask for anymore park in downtown.

You're right. That vacant parking lot is awesome. I love walking past it every day.

bpe235 wrote:
I think the Roberts have a ton to prove when it comes to real estate.

The point of my post was that we can b**** all we want about how developers and land owners are using their property. But until we come up with the money and wherewithall to do it ourselves, it just that... b*tching. Now if the city is squandering their resources and not providing the infrastructure for a nieghborhood and centeral business district, we CAN do something about that. It's just my opinion that 9th St between Olive and Locust could have been a cheap and easy way for our government to foster retail development in the OPO District.

Unfortunately, as we've all learned, pedestrian plazas in America tend not to work. I don't think a pedestrian street will make one bit of difference in whether retail works in this location, especially if Schnuck's takes a large portion of the garage. I personally would like my streets to connect once in a while downtown and throughout the rest of the city.

MattnSTL wrote:Unfortunately, as we've all learned, pedestrian plazas in America tend not to work. I don't think a pedestrian street will make one bit of difference in whether retail works in this location, especially if Schnuck's takes a large portion of the garage. I personally would like my streets to connect once in a while downtown and throughout the rest of the city.

Maybe I'm not using the right term when I say retail... I was picturing sort of an outdoor cafe area like I recently saw workng so well in Boise.

I definitely favor urban plaza to surface parking lot.

Animal wrote:

MattnSTL wrote:Unfortunately, as we've all learned, pedestrian plazas in America tend not to work. I don't think a pedestrian street will make one bit of difference in whether retail works in this location, especially if Schnuck's takes a large portion of the garage. I personally would like my streets to connect once in a while downtown and throughout the rest of the city.

Maybe I'm not using the right term when I say retail... I was picturing sort of an outdoor cafe area like I recently saw workng so well in Boise.

I just hate the idea of blocking off streets DT. I guess in theory it could work, but they don't work in real life.

That's why it's still a theory, it often doesn't work. I would personally rather have wide sidewalks for cafe's to have outdoor seating. Preserves the street, gives room for retail to flow out, and it likely slows traffic instead of the traffic never even seeing the places.

^ I believe that is the case given for making the giant sidewalks in the "east loop" area. Seemed to work pretty well there.

MattnSTL wrote:That's why it's still a theory, it often doesn't work. I would personally rather have wide sidewalks for cafe's to have outdoor seating. Preserves the street, gives room for retail to flow out, and it likely slows traffic instead of the traffic never even seeing the places.

That would work just fine. No need to have four lanes of street in front of the Schnucks and OPO when it doesn't get that much traffic. Maybe two lanes with much wider sidewalks. Boise's downtown followed this model. They had super wide sidewalks everywhere and a few blocks with no streets where there were outdoor markets and things. It's really a thriving downtown.

Keep in mind Boise has only half the population of St. Louis city and Boise's metro is only 500 odd thousand compared to stl's 3 mil. We need our streets here. I'm in favor of keeping all the streets we can as wide as we can. There's no telling what will happen to traffic if downtown actually really completes a turn-around and starts gaining population. Something that often happens at a fairly good rate once it gets going.

Animal wrote:

MattnSTL wrote:That's why it's still a theory, it often doesn't work. I would personally rather have wide sidewalks for cafe's to have outdoor seating. Preserves the street, gives room for retail to flow out, and it likely slows traffic instead of the traffic never even seeing the places.

That would work just fine. No need to have four lanes of street in front of the Schnucks and OPO when it doesn't get that much traffic. Maybe two lanes with much wider sidewalks.

Sounds good, but when schnucks moves in, I suspect the traffic will pick up significantly.