urbanSTL

You’ll see 75-80% come back to offices by mid year. Basically any progress and growth in the downtown workforce from now forward is going to be back filling that 25-20% that isn’t coming back.

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Mar 10, 2021

You’ll see 75-80% come back to offices by mid year.   Basically any progress and growth in the downtown workforce from now forward is going to be back filling that 25-20% that isn’t coming back.

75-80% is really optimistic.

you got to realize that a large cut of the workforce down here isnt someone sitting in an office at a desk.  You have bunch of hotels that have laid off 100's each, Busch stadium, dome, enterprise, stifle theater, city museum, union station, restaurants etc that will staff back up as things open up more. 

The city desperately needs to incentivize townhome construction in downtown south and downtown west to get more families within a short walk of downtown.


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Non sequitur, random shot of 13th & Pine: 

The old Boom Boom space is being taken over by a steak and seafood joint


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I just got back yesterday after being in Philly pretty much since 2/21 (minus 4 weekdays here) and I was surprised how packed downtown was yesterday when I got home around 5 from the airport.

City Museum has been so busy they’ve moved to 7 days a week open from 3 and they’ve had to cap ticket sales on the weekends to 3,000 a day because it’s just been none stop busy. This could be a huge summer for downtown if covid stays at bay

With as many places that have closed, the remaining businesses are doing great with the reduced competition. Sliced Pint has done more business since reopening a month ago than March-Dec 2020 combined.

Pure insanity outside of the St. Louis City Justice Center. Inmates are breaking windows — @alexiszotos
is closer where a fire is burning on the exterior roof. Lots of people out watching the chaos @KMOV “We’ve had people locked up for well over half of the year without a preliminary hearing,” https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/tony-messenger/messenger-jail-eruption-tied-to-delays-in-justice-in-st-louis-say-citys-public-defenders/article_98961da5-8668-52cf-bb62-dc43cd6ef77a.amp.html

^ that happened in early February. the article is dated Feb. 10th.

urban_dilettante wrote:^ that happened in early February. the article is dated Feb. 10th.

It happened again tonight


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^ yikes. has it not made the news yet?

nevermind. here it is: https://www.stltoday.com/broken-windows-chanting-continued-uprising-at-st-louis-jail/article_cd695f7e-9867-504c-ba32-5995629148e3.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

I was one of the first there as the windows started to break and uploaded 20+ videos through the 2 hour ordeal. Everyone thought it was over around 10:45 but then I got a tip that a 2nd riot would breakout on the otherwise and sure enough at 10;55 windows started to break on the south end.

Do they not have locks in that place? I mean, it's a jail, for god's sake. 

The Mayor spoke on STL on the Air after the first riot. Apparently the prisoners have figured out how to reliably jimmy the locks in the cells and once one person figured it out word spread to the rest of the population. It's quite expensive to replace the locks but they said that it was a priority.

Well, you can't continue to operate this facility until new locks are installed, can you?

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Apr 05, 2021

Their only demand is that they want court dates,  none have been convicted of anything

If I heard correctly on KWMU this morning, the average wait for a trial is 340 days.  Jeeze, imagine being locked up for nearly a year only to be found  not guilty.

After Pandemic, Shrinking Need for Office Space Could Crush Landlords
Some big employers are giving up square footage as they juggle remote work. That could devastate building owners and cities.
As office vacancies climb to their highest levels in decades with businesses giving up office space and embracing remote work, the real estate industry in many American cities faces a potentially grave threat.
Businesses have discovered during the pandemic that they could function with nearly all of their workers out of the office, an arrangement many intend to continue in some form. That could wallop the big property companies that build and own office buildings — and lead to a sharp pullback in construction, steep drops in office rents, fewer people frequenting restaurants and stores, and potentially perilous declines in the tax revenue of city governments and school districts.
In only a year, the market value of office towers in Manhattan, home to the country’s two largest central business districts, has plummeted 25 percent, according to city projections released on Wednesday, contributing to an estimated $1 billion drop-off in property tax revenue.
JPMorgan Chase, Ford Motor, Salesforce, Target and more are giving up expensive office space and others are considering doing so.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/business/economy/office-buildings-remote-work.html

I'm not looking forward to all these barriers being removed and whatever the streets department's idea of normal is.

There have been a bunch of vague stories lately on the future of the barriers. Any ideas what the long-term plans are?

“All the stuff we have out, we know it’s ugly,” Waelterman said. “We’re looking at more of a gating system…we’re a very fluid operation and we’re ready to pull them all when the time comes.”
...different story
“We're not saying we're stuck and we're going to do this forever. We know this needs to be a liquid situation, have to react and get back to normal...how soon that happens we don't know,” added Waelterman.

https://fox2now.com/news/concrete-barri ... good-soon/
https://www.kmov.com/news/st-louis-view ... 4e4b3.html

^ well Todd ain’t gonna be the one deciding it in the future, the new mayor (starting April 20th) has posted his Director of Operations position for applications

https://www.tishaura4mayor.com/jobs

(Btw those are all mayoral appointment positions, she didn’t have to take apps or even post the jobs, could have named anyone to them, so it’s great to see that the Mayor-elect is casting a wide net for important jobs in her admin)