^^ Agree about the overall C-store situation downtown, but 7-Eleven is headquartered in Dallas. So that could be the reason Dallas gets some special treatment. I'd also imagine Downtown Dallas has quite a bit more activity than downtown St. Louis, regardless of the residential populations.
I don't know about that. Dallas' number of bars downtown doesn't look that high.
We have two sports venues to their zero-ish. Their NBA/NHL arena is a drive-in/drive-out setup just outside of downtown. The one time I went there, I rushed to the light rail after the game, assuming it'd be 100% packed like after Enterprise Center events. It was like half full.
^^ I don't really agree. No, American Airlines Center isn't "technically" in downtown Dallas. It's in Victory Park. But...Enterprise Center isn't in downtown St. Louis either...it's in Downtown West. And size and distance wise, Dallas' downtown, Victory Park, and Uptown are fairly close to what constitutes Downtown and Downtown West in St. Louis.
And you might be able to drive into and out of AAC (and Dallas loves their highways, though so do we)...but this is significantly more dense, populated, and attractive than the area around Enterprise. It's not even a contest.
The interstate there is the boundary between downtown Dallas and Victory Park and part of Uptown. Dallas also has much larger aquarium downtown, and their Museum of Art is there too. More large companies, HQs and jobs too. It's a bigger convention city as well and the Dallas region sees close to 30 million visitors per year...4-5 million more than St. Louis. It's just a bigger and busier downtown.
There are roughly 33,600 residents between these three neighborhoods in Dallas. DowntownSTL estimated in 2018 the combined population between Downtown and Downtown West was 9,609. DowntownSTL maintains the "Greater Downtown" area as having 19,525. And that includes chunks of Lafayette Square, Lasalle Park, the Near North Side and Midtown...and let's be honest...those areas are not downtown.
STL has the crappiest 7/11s. Why can't we have nice things like in Milwuakee?
St. Louis City has some of the crappiest retail districts of any city I've ever seen. Especially for a metro our size. The northside is somewhat understandable, because it is to a large degree hollowed out. I'm talking about Gravois, the non-gentrified areas of South Grand, Jefferson etc. I don't know if it's poor planning or largely just socioeconomic, but they are just crap. Looking at all these different cities rioting, I was struck by how even cities with similar economic situations like St. Louis had many streets that were vibrant with active store fronts. Just driving down a major arterial in most of St. Louis, you would not expect that the residential areas are actually very attractive in much of the city.
To be fair, the area they count as our urban core includes places like Brooklyn and Sauget, Illinois while excluding some of our most vibrant areas including: The Grove, Euclid Corridor, South Grand, Morganford, and The Loop. Having an additional CBD in Clayton certainly doesn't help matters.
I'm not saying that we should be near the top of this list, but it is certainly flawed. The parameters of this study certainly don't benefit STL, especially when the urban walkable area of many of these cities doesn't even extend 3 miles from the core.
It can also be argued that South City and the Central Corridor has done a lot of retail densification since 2016.
To be fair, the area they count as our urban core includes places like Brooklyn and Sauget, Illinois while excluding some of our most vibrant areas including: The Grove, Euclid Corridor, South Grand, Morganford, and The Loop. Having an additional CBD in Clayton certainly doesn't help matters.
I'm not saying that we should be near the top of this list, but it is certainly flawed. The parameters of this study certainly don't benefit STL, especially when the urban walkable area of many of these cities doesn't even extend 3 miles from the core.
It can also be argued that South City and the Central Corridor has done a lot of retail densification since 2016.
Good point, but you have to admit that St. Louis City is under retailed and lacks cohesive urban commercial streets. I think policies that support main street development around the street, better pedestrian infrastructure, form based code, and more support for small business development.
The 7-Eleven was overrun instantaneously and also at the beginning of the vandalism. Culinaria would have also been looted, neighbors be damned, if it happened that quickly.
It's a convenience store, and a sh*tty one at that. A grocery store is a necessity.
There's nothing necessary at 7-Eleven unless you run out of food on Christmas day or something
Neighbors have been trying to get rid of that dump for years in the first place. It's a magnet for lowlifes.
Maybe now I can pass by there without the sight of someone urinating.
That 7-11 was well known as hook up central
Overheard conversations on metro and read social media chatter to meet at that particular 7-11 to hook up (drug deal)
Good riddance to that 7-11!!
To be fair, the area they count as our urban core includes places like Brooklyn and Sauget, Illinois while excluding some of our most vibrant areas including: The Grove, Euclid Corridor, South Grand, Morganford, and The Loop. Having an additional CBD in Clayton certainly doesn't help matters.
I'm not saying that we should be near the top of this list, but it is certainly flawed. The parameters of this study certainly don't benefit STL, especially when the urban walkable area of many of these cities doesn't even extend 3 miles from the core.
It can also be argued that South City and the Central Corridor has done a lot of retail densification since 2016.
True. It's definitely flawed.
They provide a link to all the maps where you can zoom in/out and pan around to see all the red dots outside of the "core" circles (though they don't bother to provide a zoom scale): http://cityobservatory.org/maps/storefronts/#41180
Compare St. Louis (#49 on the list) with Pittsburgh (#24 on the list) and it looks like St. Louis has considerably more retail than Pittsburgh—just not as much concentrated in the "core" circle, apparently.
I was doing some napkin math based on information I could find. Found that the property at 2106-2114 Washington sold in 2019 for $650k. The lot is .61 acres. The American Planning Association says you can build about 25 rowhouses per acre. So with this lot you could fit roughly 15 rowhouses. That comes out to $43k per lot for the land. Doesn’t seem too expensive to be able to build rowhouses in downtown west and their presence would infuse a lot of energy into downtown. Subsidizing low income units while also having market rate units would be so promising for the area. As someone who wants to live closer to downtown, I would jump at the opportunity for anything under $350k. Park space is a bit of an issue in that area, but a fundamental reimagining of the gateway mall by placing some sports fields/courts in underutilized spaces could help to provide the necessary green space. And the soccer fields down by union station will help too (so long as they are frequently open to the public).
^So many of those maps are arbitrarily drawn with City Hall as the center. Looks like that's what bit us. St. Louis's peculiar geography is both a blessing and a curse. But I wouldn't trade it.
Rowhouse style infill around downtown has been talked about on this forum for a decade, particularly by me. I was always of the belief "if you build it they will come". Not so sure now.
Remember the momentum St. Louis had before Ferguson? Everything was put on pause for a couple years. St. Louis had massive momentum built up again before the virus shutdown and protests. This time around it could be worse.
Can City Foundry even move forward? Is Alamo Draughthouse really going to expand with cinema chains on life support?
Can the Aquarium afford a missed Summer?
The biggest problem might be the wiping out of the tax base with work from home leaning towards going permanent. The City will still get 1% while the offices still have leases and St. Louis is listed as the official address but that won't last in many cases. The daily activity downtown will drop significantly and many of the establishments have no chance to stay open (this is already happening).
Think about every baseball game that is played, the City gets 1% of the players salary as broken down per game. Am I correct about that? That is massive amounts of money. I'm no expert about the City budget but this has got to hurt.
Do people even want to go out anymore?
The pause button this time around could take twice as long as Ferguson.
Rowhouse style infill around downtown has been talked about on this forum for a decade, particularly by me. I was always of the belief "if you build it they will come". Not so sure now.
Remember the momentum St. Louis had before Ferguson? Everything was put on pause for a couple years. St. Louis had massive momentum built up again before the virus shutdown and protests. This time around it could be worse.
Can City Foundry even move forward? Is Alamo Draughthouse really going to expand with cinema chains on life support?
Can the Aquarium afford a missed Summer?
The biggest problem might be the wiping out of the tax base with work from home leaning towards going permanent. The City will still get 1% while the offices still have leases and St. Louis is listed as the official address but that won't last in many cases. The daily activity downtown will drop significantly and many of the establishments have no chance to stay open (this is already happening).
Think about every baseball game that is played, the City gets 1% of the players salary as broken down per game. Am I correct about that? That is massive amounts of money. I'm no expert about the City budget but this has got to hurt.
Do people even want to go out anymore?
The pause button this time around could take twice as long as Ferguson.
Rowhouse style infill around downtown has been talked about on this forum for a decade, particularly by me. I was always of the belief "if you build it they will come". Not so sure now.
Remember the momentum St. Louis had before Ferguson? Everything was put on pause for a couple years. St. Louis had massive momentum built up again before the virus shutdown and protests. This time around it could be worse.
Can City Foundry even move forward? Is Alamo Draughthouse really going to expand with cinema chains on life support?
Can the Aquarium afford a missed Summer?
The biggest problem might be the wiping out of the tax base with work from home leaning towards going permanent. The City will still get 1% while the offices still have leases and St. Louis is listed as the official address but that won't last in many cases. The daily activity downtown will drop significantly and many of the establishments have no chance to stay open (this is already happening).
Think about every baseball game that is played, the City gets 1% of the players salary as broken down per game. Am I correct about that? That is massive amounts of money. I'm no expert about the City budget but this has got to hurt.
Do people even want to go out anymore?
The pause button this time around could take twice as long as Ferguson.
These are definitely real concerns, but I'm still not at all convinced that there will be some massive shift to WFH.
People are going back to old life very, very quickly. Heck, I live in DT Clayton and the nightlife here is more busy than it was pre-pandemic, with all of these patios packed (and I'm fairly certain even the interior of several restaraunts/bars from my last few jaunts around).
More than that, major anchors are going back to work. Boeing is transitioning back, WashU is holding a fall semester (albeit starting 3 weeks later than usual), and the Cortex is still continuing planned development. Even hotel reservations are trending upwards again.
I've long been in the advocate for caution because this Pandemic is dangerous camp, but it also seems apparent (to me) that people are willing to throw caution in the wind to dine outside or hang out with people. There are costs still to WFH too. Communication can be stunted and people lack the personal connection that you get between meetings or at your cube.
From the Post today: 1000 workers moving downtown:
ST. LOUIS — About 1,000 federal employees from the Goodfellow Federal Complex — where concerns about exposure to lead, asbestos, and other hazardous substances were ignored for decades — are moving to new offices downtown.
The move, announced Tuesday, caps years of controversy and complaints from workers who decried the dangers at 4300 Goodfellow Boulevard and the prevailing legacy of inaction to address them. The site employs about 2,000 federal workers overall, with around 1,500 of them serving the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
It is not yet clear exactly where the workers will move nor what will happen to the other 1,000.
Since the on-site hazards were described in a damning federal audit released last year, local officials have sought ways to keep workers from the north side complex in the city.
St. Louis Development Corp. Executive Director Otis Williams said last August that the federal government indicated that a new building is needed by 2024.
The downtown shift was cheered by officials who have advocated for the relocation of Goodfellow employees.
"My goal was to first get these dedicated workers out of harm's way, and then if possible, retain these good federal jobs for St. Louis," said U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-University City. "Today’s announcement by the (federal General Services Administration) achieves both of those goals.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Lots of big news in St. Louis today! I wouldn't think they would build new, plenty of readily available office space downtown. Would love for them to anchor the RX, but that's probably a long shot.
