The 31 story Laclede Gas building was built in 1969 and at 400ft stood as the tallest building in St. Louis for the next 10 years. It stood as the HQ for the Laclede Gas company for 45 years but in 2013 Laclede Gas announced it would be vacating the building and vacating approx. 120,000 sq feet.  Will the owner, Hertz Invenstment Group, be able to find tenants for the soon to be vacated space or will they sell the building (likely at a highly discounted rate) and pass that responsibility on the to the new owners. Well they may have other ideas in mind....

"David Kelpe, senior vice president and principal of office brokerage at Cassidy Turley, said Hertz has been approached by potential residential developers interested in repositioning the building as a residential property."

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/prin ... m&page=all

I was literally just talking to someone last night about how awesome it would be if there were apartments in this building.

While I love that Downtown is getting so many new apartments, I wonder if we're getting ahead of ourselves. Is it smart to just turn every vacant office around into an apartment? What if we become overbuilt? Is it really so hard to try and lure some new office tenants Downtown? CORTEX is able to attract tenants from all over the world...Downtown should be able to as well.

This could satisfy some of the demand for high rise condo's in place of the opportunity that Ballpark Village is avoiding.

I know this hasn't panned out yet, but it also remains true that the more people who live downtown that need white collar jobs, the more likely employers of white collar jobs will be to relocate there.

That effect takes time, but maybe eventually we'll see it happen.

Agree. The job sprawl didn't start until people started moving into the hinterlands.

I'd rather see the Millennium be redeveloped as residential first. If LGL stays vacant for a long time, then look at that option.

One of the big problems in filling buildings with corporate customers is that many companies are transitioning from large office complexes to letting their employees work from home. With the advent of the reduced prices of technology many corporations are seeing as much as 25% of their workforce working from home and reducing the need for large concentration of employees. Do present day companies want to be in large skyscrapers with many floors or in flatter buildings with much larger footprints. I know I believe that floors tend to prevent collaboration and would prefer larger footprints and less floors. The city might be better off with infill that provide 5-8 story city block size footprints than with 40 story 20,000 sq ft per floor floor plates? It might be very difficult to fill AT&T, Met Sq, etc in the future? I think we have a better chance with Railroad exchange because they have 55,000 sq ft floor plates.

A huge part of the appeal of choosing suburban locations (that just so happen to be in short buildings most of the time) is that they're close to the work force, which lives in the suburbs. The height of the building isn't too relevant.

Hopefully offices will move to areas that have growing residential populations, just like in the last century with the suburbs. In this case, we're looking at job growth Downtown. I would blow my load if Edward Jones, Boeing, or Scottrade moved a bunch of suburban offices to Downtown!

I would go into a coma if Boeing Ed Jones Scottrade Express Scripts worldwide Tech Charter just to name a few moved some offfices into downtown.. I wonder if theres secret plans in putting a replacement department store downtown such as target ...I think downtown residents would support it whole heartedly ...

johnnyqnola wrote:I'd rather see the Millennium be redeveloped as residential first. If LGL stays vacant for a long time, then look at that option.

I like the thought of mixed-use towers.... first floor retail, some office floors, others residential, some hotel. Rooftop beer garden.

Central Corridor Apartment Projects:

-LaClede Lofts Apartments, Universatile/Rothschild Development, 50-luxury units (under construction)
-West End City Apartments, Village Green Properties, 88-units (under construction)
-City Walk Apartments, Mills Properties, 177-units (under construction)
-Lindell @ Euclid, Opus Group, 217-units (spring groundbreaking)
-Aventura @ Forest Park, MLP, 200-units (Phase II under construction)
-North Sarah Apartments, McCormack Baron Salazar, 223-units (Phase II under construction)
-West Pine Lofts, Hallmark Communities, 260-units (proposed)
-The Lofts of Washington University, Delmar Loop, 265-units (under construction)
-Cortona @ Forest Park, Balke-Brown Transwestern, 276-units (under construction)
-A proposed $9-million, low-rise apartment building, The Grove/Manchester strip, 55 units (proposed)
-Missouri Theatre Building being redeveloped into apartments, Grand Center, 108 units (proposed)
-Arcade Building, Downtown, 250 units (under renovation)
-Chemical Building, Downtown, 120 units (2014 renovation)
-Roberts Tower, Downtown, 132 units (opening spring 2014)
-Millenium Center, Downtown, 102 units, (proposed)
-Alverne, Downtown, 81 apartments (proposed)
-Butler Bros. Building, Downtown, 342 units (proposed)
-Crossing in Clayton, 255 luxury apartments, (spring 2014)
-Intrada Lofts, Downtown West, 57 units (proposed)
-The Standard, Midtown, 164 units (spring)
-Gerhart Block, Midtown, 17 units (spring)
-Beaumont Telephone Building, Midtown, 70 units (fall)

TOTAL: 3,593 units

Unknown # of units:

-Drury Tower, 30 stories, Laclede's Landing (proposed)
-Montgomery Bank Tower, 30 stories, Clayton (proposed)
-Laclede Group Tower, Downtown

Am I missing any? I did not include houses, unless you count a few in the North Sarah Development. It should also be noted that the building proposed for the Grove has been postponed. Let me know if there are any that I failed to include so I can update my list.

With those 3,593 units plus the Montgomery Bank, Laclede and POSSIBLY the Drury Tower...and assuming there's an average of people living in each unit...We're probably looking at Central Corridor population growth of about 8,000 by 2016-17 or so. This does not include existing apartments, for which the market continues to dwindle, and again, does not include houses.

With all of these, the various college expansions, BJC, CORTEX, other employers, tons of new retail/dining/entertainment attracting people from outside the City (such as the Blues Museum, IKEA, etc.), along with the fact that the City's population loss is slowing dramatically, we should expect a booming Central Corridor within just a few short years. This is great, but it's just the seeds being planted for the 2020's, when the real action will begin!

The North Sarah Apartments don't really belong on the list, as far as it's supposed to represent projects in the Central Corridor.

Wouldn't it be more advantageous to try to lure a major tenant to this beautiful building since it is already an office building?

Or would a plan involve both residential and office space on varying floors?

It's a matter of timing. Sure, the owner could try and lure a major commercial tenant to the building, and I'm sure they will. But commercial tenants aren't exactly crashing the gates of downtown right now. How long did the GenAm Building sit empty? How much space is available in 1010 Market and One Met Square? A ton of vacant space will be available in AT&T shortly. While ideally a corporate tenant would swoop in, there's no telling how long that could take, or if one does snoop around downtown that they won't go with a different option. If it goes residential they might have it 90% leased up within 2 years of starting construction. That might be more advantageous.

^ wabash, makes sense to me. The fewer vacant buildings and the more residents the better. More residents will lead to more retail and hopefully more jobs down the line.

If AT&T Tower can't find office tenants to fill ALL the empty space left by AT&T's departure, and only SOME of it is replaced by a new company, what chance is there that the remaining vacant floors could become residential/hotel? Living in that tower would be amazing! I would literally bet money that it could happen.

What is it about gas company buildings...

http://www.thekdgroup.com/NewProjects.aspx

https://www.crainscleveland.com/article ... /130919945

Here is a visual exhibit to see how empty this building will be when they move out: