urbanSTL

SeattleNative wrote: ↑

Jun 10, 2021

urbanitas wrote:^It's hard to balance a swimming pool on the top of a house of matchsticks, especially in a high seismic zone...

They don’t seem to be having trouble with that in Seattle.

They embed steel framing and/or masonry shear walls in the wood structure to support the pool, and the rent premium apartments command in the Seattle area absorbs the millions in extra cost. Or, they aren't really swimming pools at all, just shallow wading/splash pools.

I haven't seen a real swimming pool built on the roof of any of these ubiquitous 6-8 story all-wood-frame-on-a-podium structures, but if you know of an example, I'd love to see it.

Sent the drone up here to get some photos of the current buildings. I also sent the drone up to 80ft, which would be the view from the penthouse level. Not too bad.

I don't have a problem with this project, but it's too bad the original structure can't somehow be integrated into the new one.  I liked the rehab proposal from a few years back:

Went to the meeting tonight. Most everyone was in favor, but it was a small group fo no more than 16 people. Here are some points made tonight...

• Many commented that they liked the design.
• Only issues raised regarded the alley and public parking components. For the alley, an addition 5ft of width will be added to allow space for moving trucks to pull over, allowing residents that use that alley to get by. Public parking will be on the streets.
• One level of the 150 space parking garage will be fully underground.
• The parking garage's entrance along Lindell is in the same spot as the current garage entrance. This entrance, on the new building, will go to the lower level of the parking garage. The entrance in the alley will go to the ground floor portion of the garage.
• The walk up offices along Taylor total 150sf each for a total of 600sf of office space. A second level of small offices will be on top of those and will be accessed from within the building itself.
• The building will feature an activated outdoor patio space along Lindell where people can sit and socialize.
• A lobby bistro will be open to the public (similar to the Chelsea on Pershing).
• The gym will front Lindell.
• The first floor will be double height, so the building has the height of an 8 story building.
• The top floor units will include access to "mezzanine" levels, which are sort of a penthouse. They'll have a bathroom, bedroom, and closet space as well as a generous sized patio space on the roof. 
• The building's structure will be concrete precast from the basement to the second floor. Floors 3-7 + mezzanine will be wood and metal frame. The metal frame will be around the outer edge of the building to hold up the brick and large glass panels.
• The building's dark gray brick will be similar in shade and type to the building Shake Shack is in at Euclid and West Pine.
• A small argument about the form based code came up and was shut down after a little back and forth since the architect, Joe Klitzing, says he followed all of the rules in the form based code.
• Rents here will go for between $2 and $2.50 per square foot.
• A point was made that the current Optimist Building does not contribute to the tax base. As a result of this development, the new building will contribute between $750,000 and $1 million per year in property taxes.
• A point was made by John Warren of Cushman and Wakefield (listing broker) that no other developers have come forward with the intent to buy and redevelop the building.
• Finally, a letter was read by John Warren from the executive director of Optimist International. The letter detailed the struggles of Optimist in recent years and how the buildings upkeep has become too costly for their organization without tapping into funds that benefit the children. The sale of the building will be a much needed influx of money into the non-profit organization.
[/li]

Another meeting will be held next month at the library at Lindell and Euclid where more people will be able to speak and attend.

^ Thanks for the information Chris, this project sounds like a surefire fit.

Great to see density continue to be added in the CWE and branching off the main drags, lots of great amenities for residents AND public alike it sounds.

CWE continues to be the premier neighborhood for walkability / city life in St. Louis.

npav wrote: ↑

Jun 30, 2021

^ Thanks for the information Chris, this project sounds like a surefire fit.

Great to see density continue to be added in the CWE and branching off the main drags, lots of great amenities for residents AND public alike it sounds.

CWE continues to be the premier neighborhood for walkability / city life in St. Louis.

This corner needs and could support a whole lot more density than another stick-framed cruise ship.

urbanitas wrote: ↑

Jul 01, 2021

npav wrote: ↑

Jun 30, 2021

^ Thanks for the information Chris, this project sounds like a surefire fit.

Great to see density continue to be added in the CWE and branching off the main drags, lots of great amenities for residents AND public alike it sounds.

CWE continues to be the premier neighborhood for walkability / city life in St. Louis.

This corner needs and could support a whole lot more density than another stick-framed cruise ship.

Developer addressed this. He said building any taller would require incentives due to building material cost, which the failure to receive support for them killed the Covington proposal. Building any shorter wasn't an option either since in that case, they could redevelop Optimist, but the numbers didn't work out. So they chose something right in the middle. New building up to 7 floors (8 if you include the penthouse) and built with precast concrete (first two floors + underground parking garage), load bearing metal stud (outer walls to hold the balconies and masonry), and wood framing. 

He also said that they wanted the building materials to be higher quality here than they typically do on projects and that what we see is the best iteration of the design (I was told the others and even the architect, Joe Klitzing, agreed that the others were ugly and cheap looking compared to what has been proposed). Real brick will be used along with metal panels similar to those found at Ceylon in Clayton. The developer and architect both agree that the design presented is a step up from other projects proposed and developed by Lux and the hope is this sets a precedent for future investments on their side.

So while I agree that this corner could support a larger apartment building with greater density, getting a project built with 150 units, an activated ground floor space with nice landscaping (according to the developer), higher quality facade materials, and no incentive usage (bringing a property long tax exempt onto the tax rolls again with a contribution of $750,000 to $1 million year) is a win here.

P.S.: I was told that this building won't include as many amenities as Hudson or Chelsea due to the site layout and floor plans. Typical things like a pool deck, fitness center/gym, resident lounge/game room, and package room/market will all be included but things like a "Turkish bath", karaoke suite, spa, and virtual golf room all seem off the table here. The greatest amenity, according to the developer, is the surrounding neighborhood. So things like E-Bikes and Scooters will be available for residents to check out and use to get around the neighborhood.

chriss752 wrote: ↑

Jul 01, 2021

urbanitas wrote: ↑

Jul 01, 2021

This corner needs and could support a whole lot more density than another stick-framed cruise ship.

Developer addressed this. He said building any taller would require incentives due to building material cost, which the failure to receive support for them killed the Covington proposal. 

Hmm. It's almost like there is some sort of relationship between financial incentives to developers and improving urban form and density...    Who woulda thunk?

urbanitas wrote: ↑

Jul 02, 2021

chriss752 wrote: ↑

Jul 01, 2021

urbanitas wrote: ↑

Jul 01, 2021

This corner needs and could support a whole lot more density than another stick-framed cruise ship.

Developer addressed this. He said building any taller would require incentives due to building material cost, which the failure to receive support for them killed the Covington proposal. 

Hmm. It's almost like there is some sort of relationship between financial incentives to developers and improving urban form and density...    Who woulda thunk?

But it's not popular right now for developers to seek incentives to carry out such improvements. What's proposed is a big improvement as-is, but I do wish it was taller. I understand the developer's reasoning though.

I'm curious to hear people's take on the current proposal versus the one from 2014, and whether waiting for a project that did not require tax abatement was the right move.

To summarize the previous 8 pages of the thread for those who weren't here/don't remember, in 2014 there was a proposal for a 12-14 story apartment building with 200+ units. The demolition of the Optimist International building and replacement by the apartment building was supported by Park Central and the alderman at the time, Alderman Roddy, but they declined to support a tax abatement request, and the city was very unlikely to approve tax abatement without the alderman's support. There were several reasons that contributed to the decision re: tax abatement:

1) The existing building was considered to be of architectural significance (one of 42 buildings selected for the "intensive  level property" survey during the recent Mid-Century Modern Architecture survey
2) The existing building was in good shape, recently occupied, and had re-use potential, though was not currently contributing to the tax base from a property tax perspective as it was owned by a non-profit
3) The new proposal was not adding a new amenity to the city/neighborhood (e.g., the way the Orion brought Whole Foods into the city)
4) There was concern that the use of ubiquitous incentive use was distorting the market: when everything is incentivized, nothing is incentivized
5) The decision was also happening in the context of increasing complaints about the use of incentives and abatement in the city at large and the CWE in particular, given all the other development

The plan eventually fell through, possibly due to an inability to make the numbers work without tax abatement. A subsequent office reuse plan by Koman also fell through as they were unable to secure a tenant.

7 years later we have the current plan, 7 stories, ~150 units, no tax abatement. I am wondering if people today (with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight) think it was worthwhile to wait 7 years for a proposal that does not require tax abatement, or if we would have been better off subsidizing a larger development several years ago. Hard to know how that apartment building would have impacted subsequent developments like The Euclid, 100 Above the Park, the new West Pine building, new units on Sarah, Foundy apartment proposal, FPSE apartments going up, etc--delayed any of them due to saturation of the area with units? Sped them up due to increasing demand? Lowered or raised average rents?

I don't think we ever learned exactly what degree of tax abatement the old proposal would have required, so I am not sure how to do an estimate of what the ultimate 20-year revenue to the city would have been, factoring in the tax abatement, number of units, length of time the property went undeveloped, etc., but if anyone has the skills or inclination to do so, I'd like to see the estimates.

At the time I agreed with the decision to not support tax abatement, mostly because I thought the building had architectural merit and re-use potential, and I did not think it made sense to effectively subsidize demolition of a reusable building. As the subsequent years have shown us, there were plenty of other places to put apartments under the right circumstances. The proposed replacement was better from a land-use and density perspective, but I think tax abatement should be minimized for any proposal that is not a slam dunk improvement over exiting conditions, and there were enough mitigating factors that it seemed reasonable to me to withhold abatement but allow development to occur if the developers could make the numbers work on their own.

For my part, I think the current proposal is also an improvement in land-use and the additional density will be nice, but I think the design is certainly not up to the standard of the current Optimist International building, and is also lower quality than the 2014 replacement. Maybe the renderings are underselling it and it will look better in person, but it appears to be the same 5-over-2 construction that pops up most places. I think it looks fine, a little cookie cutter despite some higher end finished, but nothing remarkable. To me that has been consistent with LuxLiving's other new buildings, though I am curious to see how SOHO in Soulard looks when completed, and how LuxLiving's Hudson compares with Pearl's Expo at Forest Park. The Optimist International building is one of my favorite little buildings in the city, and I will be sad to see it go, but I think the current proposal is an improvement since it will add density. If I had a time machine, though, I think I would push for abatement for the 2014 proposal due to the increased number of units/density, whose benefits will compound over decades to come, while the initial tax abatement "outlay" would probably have disappeared after 10 years.

@rbeedee I think the wait was worth it in a way. Let me explain a bit.

Comparing the Covington proposal to the current Lux proposal, there are some differences beyond the height. 

• Steel level interaction for the Covington proposal seemed poor, but imitated a more "Mid Century" style, which was meaningful but fell short of what it could've been. The Lux proposal includes activation along Lindell and Taylor. 
• The upper floors of the Covington proposal look like they would've been clad in a cheap material (stucco or metal panels). The current proposal is clad in higher quality materials (a majority dark gray and brown brick along with some accent metal panels). The renderings of the current proposal aren't high quality enough to show this, but I imagine as time rolls on, they'll be updated to reflect the materials better.
• The Lux proposal will be built with precast concrete, load bearing metal stud, and wood framing. The Covington proposal, I assume, would've been built with load bearing metal stud or concrete. So while. Covington's would've been built with higher quality structural materials, it would fall short on the facade.
• The parking at Covington's building would've been entirely above ground whereas the LuxLiving includes a level underground and half of the first floor along the alley. The one thing Covington did right here was have the garage entrance in the alley and not along Lindell.
• Covington's proposal was 200 units, which is only 50 less than the current proposal. It's not that big of a change in the grand scheme of things, especially when you consider how much has been built in the neighborhood since Covington's proposal. As for whether or not the previous proposal would be seen other projects downsized or never come to fruition, I doubt that would've happened. 
• When Covington proposed their project, and sought a tax abatement, it sort of made sense back then since new apartment buildings in the neighborhood were proposed, but none were built. Properties were renovated, but new construction didn't really start showing up until the Orion and Citizen Park came into the picture. Today, the neighborhood has shown strong enough demand, and high enough rents, where a project can be done without as tax abatement as long as it remains a certain size. If the Lux proposal was taller, you would most likely see a tax abatement.
• Finally, in why I believe Lux's proposal is better than Covington's comes down to the fact that it didn't seem like Covington was really serious about their project here. As soon as the tax abatement request was denied, without even knowing the percentage, they yanked out of this project, ran to Clayton, and developed the Barton. Lux has shown time and time again that they have the capabilities of carrying a project out in the City of St. Louis. Just in the past 5 years, they've developed the Tribeca, Ice House, Steelyard, Bordeaux, and Chelsea and are presently building SoHo, Hudson, McKenzie, and the West Village Townhomes, and they also have the desire to develop on the former Drury parcels and here at Optimist (along with another site or two in the City). 

So overall, I think the wait was worth it. If approved by Park Central and the City, we'll be getting an additional 150 apartment units (bringing in over 150 new residents to the neighborhood), a higher usage, better urban design building with solid facade materials. Additionally, a property will be brought back on to the property tax rolls after being off of them for decades and Optimist will be able to use the money from the property's sale in their charity work. So, it's a win in my view. 

And while I understand that it's a merit structure, I believe there are better Mid Century designs than Optimist. I wouldn't even call Optimist a true Mid Century building since it's so dark inside (the windows are smaller on the inside than they appear). It seems to be a cross between Brutalist and Mid Century styles. Some true Mid Century examples, to me, are Lindell Terrace, the Arch Diocese office, AAA building, flying saucer del taco, the building at Lindell and Sarah, and the 505 Washington building.

There are times that we have to lose some to gain some. This is exactly the case here. Ultimately, we know this will go before the Preservation Board and we know that it's early on. There's a long road ahead for this project but if all goes well, work could start by the end of the year. 

Interesting thoughts Chris, thanks. I agree that the prior developers did not seem entirely committed to the site, they dropped it pretty quickly, and in one of the contemporaneous articles they said they needed the tax incentives in order to be competitive with other developments that received them, which to me is not the same thing as saying that the project cannot work without them.

I'll be interested to see the material quality as the new renderings come out, I remain a little skeptical on the facade, but time will tell, and you probably have a better sense for that sort of thing than I do. I also remain skeptical on how much activation we will get along Lindell/Taylor, but you are right that the Covington proposal was 0%, so the LuxLiving proposal already has a head-start. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on quality of the Optimist building design! Overall, though, it will be nice to see more life at this corner, even if the Optimist building has to go to provide it.

On the incentive question, it does seem necessary to "test the waters" with tax incentive packages sometimes to see what the market will actually bear. If no proposal ever fails because the tax incentives were insufficient, then we are probably consistently erring on overgenerous incentives. I don't know what the right failure rate is, but I don't think it is zero, at least in the Central Corridor. I have also been wondering if there should be some kind of clawback or profit-sharing agreement with tax incentives, where the developer submits their projections justifying tax abatement (e.g., projected rents, sales, jobs, taxes, etc.), then if the development is more successful/generates more profit for the developers than anticipated, the city gets to recoup some of that excess (25%? 50%?) in the form of earlier incentive termination or some sort of developer fee. Everybody wins! Maybe that sort of thing already exists and I don't know about it, or maybe it is too complicated to execute.

Public meeting to be held. July 21st at 6PM - Schlafly Library.

Did anyone go to the public meeting?

I get that the CRO staff is just following through on what they're paid to do... but, come on.  Hopefully this is approved by the Preservation Board and the CWE and city can keep the momentum moving on adding more density & residents.

quincunx wrote: ↑

Jul 24, 2021

CRO staff recommend withholding approval of demo.

Optimist Replacement Goes Before Preservation Board
https://nextstl.com/2021/07/optimist-re ... ion-board/

Hopefully this take a similar path as Citizen Park and a few alterations to materials and proportions result in approval and construction. Although I suppose it helped in that instance that the Heart Association building had no merit. 

^Their recommendation makes sense and I can see where the owners could really work on a better site plan, potentially incorporating portions of the existing structure into the plan. Maybe keep the front facade and lobby of the west structure, demolish the parking podium behind both, and build a new L shaped tower a few stories taller on the rear portion of the site. Push the amenity deck to the roof of the remaining part of the west building and convert the east building. Maybe poke more windows into the west side of the east tower if you're using it for residential. Something like that? I don't hate their plan, but the recommendations do seem to be spot on.

I don't think the CRO's job is to weigh the pros and cons of a development, they are (should be) an expertise-based agency that evaluates the significance of the existing structure and compliance with relevant codes. The Preservation Board has the more political job of weighing the pros and cons of demolition/redevelopment, benefits of allowing variances from zoning and codes, etc. Sort of an adversarial judicial process where the prosecutor and defense both make their strongest case, and the judge or jury weighs the evidence and makes a ruling.

I think the CRO director has overstepped his bounds making political judgements in the past, even when I agreed with them. I think it is pretty common for the CRO to make a recommendation that is overruled by the Preservation Board if they feel the deviations are justified. As I have said before, I will miss the Optimist building, but I do think this is a higher use of the land that justifies the demolition and replacement, even though the replacement renderings look pretty bland/cookie-cutter to me. I would guess the Preservation Board will feel similarly absent a big public outcry and this will get approved. Reading through the PB Agenda, it also seems like some of the materials presented by LuxLiving were not as detailed as the CRO wanted, which may not have helped their case.

^My point is that CRO's reading of the relevant ordinances seemed reasonable to me. They evaluated the significance of the existing structure and the compliance with the relevant codes and found that the development did not comply. On that bases they issued a recommendation against demolition and suggested some ways to comply. I think that's precisely their job as I understand it. The recommendation felt fairly apolitical to me.
Strictly fact-based stuff. The Preservation Board can now, if they feel it reasonable, overrule that. I'm willing to listen. I'm sure the preservation board will be as well.

NextSTL - The Optimist Building: A letter to the Preservation Board by Michael Allen

 https://nextstl.com/2021/07/the-optimis ... ion-board/