The TIF was approved after negotiations were successfully worked out with $1.8M committed to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund; basically the $$ coming from the sales tax exemption. I would have preferred some of that go directly to SLPS but this is a good step forward.
edit: also adding Steve Smith mentioned again summer start for the Food Hall but still no specific date. iirc for this Phase 2 TIF, the office building should open first sometime in 2024 and residential building in 2025.
Alamo Drafthouse Will Open Five New Theaters in the Next Year
The saga of the Alamo Drafthouse continues. The movie theater chain has received a lot of unwanted attention recently, with both hostile workplace allegations being levied against the company and then an announcement in March that revealed Drafthouse had filed for bankruptcy. But now, things seem to be improving as the Drafthouse has revealed they’ll be opening five new theaters in the coming year.
Just a little under three months since announcing they had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of an asset purchase agreement with Altamont Capital Partners, the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has revealed it is opening five new locations. This announcement effectively marks the end of the Chapter 11 filing and comes on the heels of what Drafthouse says was its biggest box office weekend since the pandemic began.
Other cities listen and then...
St. Louis
Alamo Drafthouse is also headed to the Gateway City with Alamo Drafthouse’s first theater in St. Louis. Located at the upcoming City Foundry STL development in St. Louis’ Midtown district, Alamo Drafthouse St. Louis is a 10-screen theater from franchise partner St. Louis Alamo Movies, LLC and is expected to open in Spring 2022.
I went to City Foundry for the 1st time since it was an active construction site last weekend and it was a great venue.
It was configured as a street market with popup tents selling goods and food, and out on the side facing Vandeventer there was a concert setup with live music for "STL FEST".
Going to be a great place once the brick & mortar clients start moving in and the food hall opens. The fact that the Alamo Drafthouse is still moving forward is awesome news as well, it has sucked that Covid has delayed the opening of City Foundry for so long, but once it's finally rolling people are going to be big fans.
This is a win-win-win in my book. Foundry moves forward, money is going to help northside communities, and Mayor Jones gets to say she's fair, as well as tough, on development incentives.
rheights wrote:Chris, does this encourage you after your pretty open and candid criticism of any push-back on incentive?
I thought I made it clear on this thread before that I’m with this since it benefits both the developer and Northside neighborhoods. I’m fine with this type of reform. But blatantly going out there and pulling the move Tishaura did by using Jesuit Hall as an example and warning to other developers is where my criticism continues to go off of. So there’s a line drawn here.
Related to all of this: Here's a link dedicated to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Coalition, part of the website for the Community Builders Network of Metropolitan St. Louis. Here's what caught my business-minded eyes...
Every $1 the AHTF spends on home construction and major rehab is matched by $17 in public and private funds. Expanding the AHTF means a competitive St. Louis that’s more attractive for outside investment.
Most AHTF loans to developers and homebuyers are repayable, which allows these resources to be reinvested in our community over time.
A purported 17/1 return ratio is incredibly persuasive. Plus, I'm a big fan of Northside Community Housing's work and its immediate neighbor church, Saint Matthew the Apostle, which is one of two Jesuit-operated churches in STL (the other being Saint Francis Xavier College Church). I recognize my biases.
While we can surely talk about how Mayor Jones got the conversation going, she must get credit for delivering on this one.
I've always found the food focus of City Foundry problematic. We're throwing tax $ at a super glorified mall food court. Now, Cherokee is losing a food spot.
Kalbi Taco Shack Closing Cherokee Spot, Moving to City Foundry
The region just can't nor should it continue to subsidize entertainment nor retail. Subsidize job creation instead. How? no idea....above my pay grade. but our slow growth shows that the current retail/entertainment strat just isn't' working. It just leads to a game of musical chairs.
I agree with you that we shouldn’t subsidize restaurants but I’m not so sure about retail. The Metro area as a whole is probably over saturated with retail; however, the City is greatly under-retailed compared to the suburbs. We shouldn’t have to drive to the suburbs to buy a pair of jeans. We don’t even have something basic like an Old Navy.
I agree with you that we shouldn’t subsidize restaurants but I’m not so sure about retail. The Metro area as a whole is probably over saturated with retail; however, the City is greatly under-retailed compared to the suburbs. We shouldn’t have to drive to the suburbs to buy a pair of jeans. We don’t even have something basic like an Old Navy.
Fully agree that the city needs/deserves some retail. The Hampton Target is about all we have. Just don't agree that we need to throw tax money at it.
I agree with you that we shouldn’t subsidize restaurants but I’m not so sure about retail. The Metro area as a whole is probably over saturated with retail; however, the City is greatly under-retailed compared to the suburbs. We shouldn’t have to drive to the suburbs to buy a pair of jeans. We don’t even have something basic like an Old Navy.
How much city resident sales tax money is going to Brentwood, Maplewood and Richmond Heights? The complete insanity that is the Brentwood Promenade speaks to how those suburbs are sucking away city revenue.
I've always found the food focus of City Foundry problematic. We're throwing tax $ at a super glorified mall food court.
That seems like an oversimplification of what City Foundry is. It's bringing a new movie theater chain to the region (Alamo), a new grocery store to the neighborhood (Fresh Thyme), a new restaurant/entertainment concept (Punch Bowl), and is already planning an office and residential component. While Kalbi is an instance of musical chairs, it seems the project as a whole is consistent with a strategy for job creation in the City.
I've always found the food focus of City Foundry problematic. We're throwing tax $ at a super glorified mall food court.
That seems like an oversimplification of what City Foundry is. It's bringing a new movie theater chain to the region (Alamo), a new grocery store to the neighborhood (Fresh Thyme), a new restaurant/entertainment concept (Punch Bowl), and is already planning an office and residential component. While Kalbi is an instance of musical chairs, it seems the project as a whole is consistent with a strategy for job creation in the City.
Call it a food/entertainment/retail focus then. That's my foundational point. We're throwing tax money at the wrong stuff.
I don't think subsidizing a movie theater (a seemingly dying industry) with tax money is a good strategy.
TBD on retail grocery.
I'll be optimistic and concede your point on office space for now, but hope that whatever tenants they attract aren't pulled from other office space in the city.
I've always found the food focus of City Foundry problematic. We're throwing tax $ at a super glorified mall food court.
That seems like an oversimplification of what City Foundry is. It's bringing a new movie theater chain to the region (Alamo), a new grocery store to the neighborhood (Fresh Thyme), a new restaurant/entertainment concept (Punch Bowl), and is already planning an office and residential component. While Kalbi is an instance of musical chairs, it seems the project as a whole is consistent with a strategy for job creation in the City.
Call it a food/entertainment/retail focus then. That's my foundational point. We're throwing tax money at the wrong stuff.
I don't think subsidizing a movie theater (a seemingly dying industry) with tax money is a good strategy.
TBD on retail grocery.
I'll be optimistic and concede your point on office space for now, but hope that whatever tenants they attract aren't pulled from other office space in the city.
Wait, you don't revitalizing old and polluted industrial eye-sore into a mixed use development is a good use of subsidies? Have you forgotten what this site looked like 5 years ago?
^Agree 100%. The old site was an industrial quagmire that had sat empty for decades with no hope for any real redevelopment. They couldn't even get retail developments that would have just demo'd the entire site to build some mid-box stores. Now, we have a full mixed use site coming online that'll include the desperately needed retail; unique entertainment (ALAMO!!!); professional office space that's I believe already fully occupied; a - believe it or not - grocery on top of a hazmat graveyard; high-rise residential; and spots for small, local restaurants. AFAIK, the restaurants themselves are NOT subsidized, in that the restauranteurs are not being paid to relocate; the developers only made new spots for restaurants to operate. I don't see how any development like this could ever have come together without having some place where people can get something to eat or drink, so recognizing that the total site development includes small spots build for some small restaurants to set up small operations seems proper and essential. Or, what's going on here is not the same as when the County municipalities were throwing out TIFs at Target to relocate their stores across a muni border. And let's remember that, long-term, this is meant to further the growth of the Cortex area for businesses to choose to locate operations. Also, to give foundational strength to this stretch of the Brickline Greenway. Benefits such as a unique local restaurant area will benefit such growth considerably...
OK, say the Soulard Farmers Market received a grant of some sort to build up their space, say a couple new, enclosed booths for a boutique shop or even a small venue for a restaurant doing walk-ups. After this build-up gets going, some small restaurant moves there full-time from someplace else in the City. I'm not going to look at that such event being the end-result of a proactive plan to specifically move restaurants from one part of the City to another. It's just a business move that happens when a site gets redeveloped into something better as a whole. If a local & independent retailer selling, I don't know, purses, or clothing, or skin cream, whatever, moves its operations from, I dunno, SoHa or Clifton Heights or the Hill, to City Foundry, I couldn't say that City Foundry's proactively taking from other parts of the City and therefore its public subsidies are fully detrimental to the local economy. That's too far a reach.
I think we can all agree that we don't want to have individual businesses, such as independent restaurants, directly and proactively being subsidized to relocate to a more "hip" part of town. That would be awful. Thing is, that's not happening here. And as pointed out by BellaVilla, the old place was just awful, and we have to remember that. That this redevelopment has taken place itself is a great victory for the City, that people will invest hundreds of millions of dollars here in a wildly speculative manner, putting food and people (families!) and capital into an until-now unsalvageable derelict brownfield wasteland.
