urbanSTL

Great article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about how they lured the HQ of Norfolk-Southern to their downtown Gulch area. When you read the sophistication of the deal, you realize STL is playing checkers, other cities playing chess. Very eye opening.

dweebe wrote: ↑

Nov 12, 2021

whitherSTL wrote: ↑

Nov 12, 2021

Great article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about how they lured the HQ of Norfolk-Southern to their downtown Gulch area. When you read the sophistication of the deal, you realize STL is playing checkers, other cities playing chess. Very eye opening.

Another big metro area that's also the state capital and doesn't have the rest of the state trying to destroy it.

Well… the rest of the state might be.

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Nov 12, 2021

^Do you have any idea how old that gets? Kansas City is lovely, but give it a blooming rest. Everyone knew exactly what Dweebe meant and people generally only use that saw when either they're ignorant of the state or they want to insult St. Louis.

No insult intended. We are not Missouri's largest city, or even close to it - KC is substantially larger than STL in both population (508K people vs. 302K people) and geographic size (319mi² vs. 66mi²). That's not meant as a knock on St. Louis or as an implication that Kansas City is somehow superior to us, it's just an observation of empirical reality.

dweebe wrote: ↑

Nov 12, 2021

DTGstl314 wrote: ↑

Nov 11, 2021

dweebe wrote: ↑

Oct 18, 2021

St. Louis would be in a hell of a lot better shape if it was the state capital and the state politicians weren't actively seeking to destroy it's biggest city because most of it's residents are the wrong skin color and political party.

I assume you meant "St. Louis would be in a hell of a lot better shape if it was the state capital and the state politicians weren't actively seeking to destroy the central city of it's biggest metropolitan area"?

Missouri's biggest city is 250 miles west of St. Louis.

Sorry my post was so wrong and offensive to you. Thanks for calling me out. I appreciate you showing how dumb I am.

You are absolutely correct that St. Louis is not Missouri’s biggest city. I will never make that error again.

Your post wasn't offensive to me, nor did anything in my response imply that it was. St. Louis isn't Missouri's largest city. That's neither a bad thing nor a good thing, it's just an observable fact. We shouldn't characterize ourselves as the state's largest city when we are very obviously not the state's largest city. I could not care less about KC, I've been there maybe 5 times in my entire life, mostly for concerts. Good BBQ and not a whole lot else that was especially noteworthy to me. But 200,000 more people live in that city, and geographically it is 5 times the size of St. Louis. That doesn't mean I think it is a superior city to St. Louis. But it is unambiguously a larger city than St. Louis. It is what it is, really not that big of a deal.

DTGstl314 wrote: ↑

Nov 12, 2021

dweebe wrote: ↑

Nov 12, 2021

DTGstl314 wrote: ↑

Nov 11, 2021

I assume you meant "St. Louis would be in a hell of a lot better shape if it was the state capital and the state politicians weren't actively seeking to destroy the central city of it's biggest metropolitan area"?

Missouri's biggest city is 250 miles west of St. Louis.

Sorry my post was so wrong and offensive to you. Thanks for calling me out. I appreciate you showing how dumb I am.

You are absolutely correct that St. Louis is not Missouri’s biggest city. I will never make that error again.

Your post wasn't offensive to me, nor did anything in my response imply that it was. St. Louis isn't Missouri's largest city. That's neither a bad thing nor a good thing, it's just an observable fact. We shouldn't characterize ourselves as the state's largest city when we are very obviously not the state's largest city. I could not care less about KC, I've been there maybe 5 times in my entire life, mostly for concerts. Good BBQ and not a whole lot else that was especially noteworthy to me. But 200,000 more people live in that city, and geographically it is 5 times the size of St. Louis. That doesn't mean I think it is a superior city to St. Louis. But it is unambiguously a larger city than St. Louis. It is what it is, really not that big of a deal.

I guess Anchorage is a bigger city than New York. Factual and stupid and inaccurate all to once. Let's move on. State of Downtown. 

dredger wrote: ↑

Nov 09, 2021

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Nov 09, 2021

Checked in with that today and it’s in design.  Still kicking around idea if it should be sports themed or soccer and a name.  I’ve given them a few ideas.

Thanks for asking about it.  Curious on ideas you had passed on.   Union Station/LHM, if I got the correct owner, has enough space and room that they could probably build out the space to do both, straight up sports and soccer, & simply move employees around depending on season/whose playing.    

I think LHM could embrace a lot more and maybe they are thinking beyond the hotel/theme attractions.    Believe LHM still has Westport.  Would love to see if they could encourage & pull off a WWT downtown campus somewhere in the mix, part of my speculative thought.   

WWT is still working from home and their productivity/earnings are up. They are also projecting another record year next year. So … did they need their Westport building (which is fairly new)?

It's going to be interesting to see longterm what happens here.  Most people I know it tech and many other  industries are still WFH and we're coming up on two years now.  Almost seems like the new normal without much of any end in sight to covid.  How corporate real-estate hasn't completely cratered and spun us into a huge recession I have no idea.  In many ways, it seems the cause-effect relationships of the world are not based much in reality anymore but maybe it's just me.

My doorman says both of the pack pacific restaurant/bar spaces on the western side will be leased soon. Old Note bar and the old frozen yogurt space on the NW side

My wife’s thinks her work is about to tell people to start coming back in. She is guessing Jan 2. She has been in once since last April. Sounds like 3 of 5 days a week.

jshank83 wrote:My wife’s thinks her work is about to tell people to start coming back in. She is guessing Jan 2. She has been in once since last April. Sounds like 3 of 5 days a week.

My office is doing Jan 4th return to office to coincide with the federal vaccine mandate since that applies to us. We are allowed 2 days of WFH a week but it’s fairly flexible due to logistics of children, travel, etc.

OnTheEdge wrote: ↑

Nov 15, 2021

BTW, as far as WWT downtown campus goes, last I heard they still had their spot on Spruce when they bought Asynchrony.  Not sure if most of the people there are WFH or not these days.

They still have that spot.  An agency I work with is in that building.  My neighbor works works for the Asynchrony group.  They are still WFH and will have the option to stay remote or go in, or go hybrid when the office reopens.

listen if im going to go through the trouble of breaking into a car in search of guns the least i would do is take the lotter ticket or the giftcards

Had lunch today with a work colleague who's in town for SC21 at America's Center.  He lived in Quincy, IL in the mid 90's and said he would come to downtown STL now and then for entertainment back then.  He's been staying at the Marriott right next to the convention center the last couple of days.

Without me asking what he thought about downtown and him not knowing my interest in urbanism in STL he went on and on at how unbelievably deserted downtown has been during his stay.  He even used an "I Am Legend" or a reference to some popular movie I've not seen in describing the "bizarreness" of the lack of people.

He's a frequent international traveler for business and has lived in Austin the last 20 or so years.  Though he wasn't comparing it to Austin or a different international city but to his experience in the 90's of visiting downtown.

Completely anecdotal of course, but I found it to be an interesting data point.

I tried to spin it positive, tell him about the covid impact to downtown business worker population, the new soccer stadium being built, but it honestly just felt like I was making excuses.   At least we were lunching in the West End so I could be like "well, this neighborhood has at least been doing well lately"  

It was already empty before Covid. I remember very well the first time I visited St Louis for work back in 2014 or so (before I knew I would end up moving here...). I came for a conference at WashU and was staying in Clayton but decided to take the Metrolink downtown to see the Arch. I was shocked at how deserted it was on a Friday morning.

Again, its literally one of few neighborhoods in the City that's actually growing and  by head and shoulders above next best in % growth and raw number. 
The idea that a place with 11,000 residents in 2 sq miles alone is deserted is dumb.  Go to Sen Thai anytime between 11am and 8pm, its constantly packed.   Go get breakfast at Rooster or Blondies. 

In 2019 before covid it was the most busy I’ve ever seen it and what’s with this bizarre expectation for workers just to be wandering aimlessly around downtown instead of you know working at work

dweebe wrote: ↑

Nov 17, 2021

The parking lots shown in the backdrop of that bit seemed dark/shadowy. I’ve heard multiple times that people have pushed for surface parking lot improvements in Downtown and it’s fallen on deaf ears with the Downtown aldermen. Obviously parking lots suck for cities to begin with. But if they are to be built upon, we can’t have headlines like this.

I’ve said here before: the current Downtown Community Improvement District (CID) Chair is Eddie Pohrer. Pohrer & family own St. Louis Parking, the largest land owner and parking lot owner in Downtown. They also own sex offender hotel Mark Twain Hotel, and lease it to another developer. How can St. Louis’ Downtown CID be led by a surface parking lot operator and we expect the aldermen to pass parking lot improvement ordinances so we can get to safety and then onto building more buildings?