urbanSTL

PEL is the pre EIS process, so not exactly ASAP, 7-8 years before you can walk across it if a project comes out of it as a preferred alternative

Is the armory family/kid friendly?

moorlander wrote: ↑

Dec 17, 2022

Is the armory family/kid friendly?

Well it apparently has everything but stripper poles so I’d say yes it is.

Monday – Friday: All guests must be 21+.
Saturday and Sunday: Anyone under the age of 21 is permitted with a legal guardian until 6P.

I went here last night. Pretty neat place. The second level was closed for half of the evening for a private event which caused more people to congregate at the main level bars and lead to some backups for orders. The "dining facility" also had a long line and it made me thought that this place should have a second food stall. I imagine once the basement and rooftop open there will be more food stalls to handle the crowd.

Overall, I had fun. This definitely gives me a college activity vibe. I'm hopeful this does well, and I assume the Foundry and Amory will feed off of each other once that pedestrian bridge is built linking the two.

I went there last night and we had a lot of fun! I thought it was going to be a huge place with no distinction or uniqueness but I was super wrong!

I’ll recommend this place if you like playing indoor games, eating descent food and watching sport on a huge screen.

I think once they do the bridge between Foundry and the ARMORY midtown is going to take off and I’m not even including Top Golf and the Target. SLU students are in the middle of the action.


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I'm hoping continued development in Midtown makes St. Louis more "sticky" for recent college grads. I remember when I went to Florida State how many people were still there 5-10 years after I graduated. I think one of the areas SLU and to a lesser extent Wash U failed is creating environments around the campus that were genuinely attractive to younger people and recent college graduates. I'm glad in the last couple of years, somebody most have gotten the memo. Much of the success of places like Austin, Nashville, etc. was keeping their young people stuck right out of college, which creates a young and vibrant vibe around the universities and creates demqnd for more housing, services, etc. I hope our major corporations and civic leaders are taking notes.

Passed by this on Grand on Saturday and the place looked like a mad house.  School buses, lines out the door.

It's not my cup of tea but everyone I bring this up to sound super jazzed for it.  Glad it has mass appeal.

bwcrow1s wrote: ↑

Dec 19, 2022

Passed by this on Grand on Saturday and the place looked like a mad house.  School buses, lines out the door.

It's not my cup of tea but everyone I bring this up to sound super jazzed for it.  Glad it has mass appeal.

I think they were on the 12 Bars of Charity event that also included Soulard. 

goat314 wrote:I'm hoping continued development in Midtown makes St. Louis more "sticky" for recent college grads. I remember when I went to Florida State how many people were still there 5-10 years after I graduated. I think one of the areas SLU and to a lesser extent Wash U failed is creating environments around the campus that were genuinely attractive to younger people and recent college graduates. I'm glad in the last couple of years, somebody most have gotten the memo. Much of the success of places like Austin, Nashville, etc. was keeping their young people stuck right out of college, which creates a young and vibrant vibe around the universities and creates demqnd for more housing, services, etc. I hope our major corporations and civic leaders are taking notes.

Yep. My daughter graduated from Tufts University in Boston in 2019 and chose to find a job and live there. We need to be a place where college students choose to find a job after graduation and live here.


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Yeah we do a good job in holding on to physicians who completed residency or fellowship here (thanks to Wash U/BJC) but we do seem to lag behind in holding on to those completing four year degrees in STL. 

I sound like a broken record, but it's all perception, and the constant negativity needs to go away from local leadership.  Nashville and Austin physically offer nothing over STL, I can make the point STL offers way more than either of those cities, however no one questions if they are "cool" cities.  

People want to be where other people want to be.  I honestly don't believe STL has to change/add anything other than the way it presents itself.  Momentum will feed on itself, people will want to stay.  It IS a cool city with an incredible amount of diverse amenities/attractions/scenes, however it's not always projected that way and your average outsider (and many locals) will not take the time to dig deeper.

Anecdotally, nearly all of our social circle are transplants.  About half ended up here for one reason or another and made the choice to stay here because they liked it (as we did), the others are a mix of finding jobs/spouses, but they still stayed here.  We have neighbors who are natives returning from having lived in other cities as well.  

^^ I don't know if I would agree that we do such a great job retaining physicians at WUSTL/BJC. There certainly are some that stick around after their residencies or postdoc appointments, but I (anecdotally working at WUSM) see lots of kids passing through and getting out ASAP to go to the Coasts or one of the "cool" midwestern cities. And it's not because BJC/WUSTL are lacking in opportunities, funding, or have subpar facilities. As mentioned by others, I think a lot of it has to do with the negative reputation that the city has (crime, decay, lack of "cool" things to do, stupid Missouri politics even though they are moving to places like Texas and Tennessee, etc.) compared to our geographic peers. These young people can stomach spending a few years here to obtain a world class education or invaluable experience for their chosen field and will then reap the benefits elsewhere.

 All of this to say, I think projects like the Armory, Foundry, BAR K, and Top Golf will definitely help the area be more "sticky" to young people and hopefully start to change the perception of the region.

cteclipse wrote: ↑

Dec 20, 2022

I sound like a broken record, but it's all perception, and the constant negativity needs to go away from local leadership.  Nashville and Austin physically offer nothing over STL, I can make the point STL offers way more than either of those cities, however no one questions if they are "cool" cities.  

People want to be where other people want to be.  I honestly don't believe STL has to change/add anything other than the way it presents itself.  Momentum will feed on itself, people will want to stay.  It IS a cool city with an incredible amount of diverse amenities/attractions/scenes, however it's not always projected that way and your average outsider (and many locals) will not take the time to dig deeper.

Anecdotally, nearly all of our social circle are transplants.  About half ended up here for one reason or another and made the choice to stay here because they liked it (as we did), the others are a mix of finding jobs/spouses, but they still stayed here.  We have neighbors who are natives returning from having lived in other cities as well.  

As an older-guy cynic who mostly lurks, this “St. Louis Needs To Keep Young People” narrative has been going on for literally decades. It’s never been solved…ever.  So, I hope the newly young and refreshingly optimistic can solve it. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
 
Fully agree that STL suffers from poor perceptions, but perception or not, crime and crumbling infrastructure are real.  Also, I stand by this – WEATHER and (a comparative) lack of natural amenities are what hurt us the most.
 
Past brain drain stories.
 
2015: https://nextstl.com/2015/08/st-louis-ar ... pect-more/
2015:
2014: http://frontiersmag.wustl.edu/2014/03/1 ... rain-gain/
2012: https://news.stlpublicradio.org/economy ... r-st-louis
2012: https://www.stltoday.com/business/local ... 0f31a.html
2009: https://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_ ... 8f0cd.html
2006: https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/br ... in-2480037
2004: https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/sto ... rial3.html
 
 

^ there is a guy on Twitter who does threads about stuff like this, ie he will post articles from every decade going back 150 years about “nobody wants to work anymore” or “young people today are lazy”

Interesting antidote but my doctor at BJC moved here from Nashville and said it’s not even a comparison how much better STL is than Nashville. He said we have better institutions, wayyy better parks, and just overall more things to do and a better quality of life. He’s a pretty young guy (30s) so that was pretty cool to hear.


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I've heard numerous people say the same thing about multiple different metros. 

St. Louis is truly a rad place with lots to do. Let's build back the core to the city, as opposed to the demolish-it-all mentality St. Louis has been running for the last seventy years, and I think you're going to see positive changes and growth. 

This isn't going to happen overnight. We're going to have to earn a change to our reputation. 

pattimagee wrote: ↑

Dec 19, 2022

goat314 wrote: ↑

Dec 17, 2022

I'm hoping continued development in Midtown makes St. Louis more "sticky" for recent college grads. I remember when I went to Florida State how many people were still there 5-10 years after I graduated. I think one of the areas SLU and to a lesser extent Wash U failed is creating environments around the campus that were genuinely attractive to younger people and recent college graduates. I'm glad in the last couple of years, somebody most have gotten the memo. Much of the success of places like Austin, Nashville, etc. was keeping their young people stuck right out of college, which creates a young and vibrant vibe around the universities and creates demqnd for more housing, services, etc. I hope our major corporations and civic leaders are taking notes.

^Agreed - a few years ago when Steve Smith was talking about adding 10K residents to midtown I was sitting with someone doing really rough, 'back of the napkin' math and the metro area is roughly 7 to 8% ages 20-24-ish and if you can change the tides on a small portion of that ~200K population (obviously there is nuance here), you can make a pretty big impact in an area like midtown. 

I also think St. Louis does a really poor job retaining black professionals. This is hurting us demographically too. Many of the young black professionals I know jump at the chance to go to DC, Atlanta, Dallas, Charlotte, NYC etc. The perception is that St. Louis is generally just a racist city that is not welcoming to black professionals. Although, many people would like St. Louis to be more like Portland, Denver, Austin, Nashville, etc. The reality is that St. Louis demographically is a major Afro-American hub and whatever the city can do to improve the quality of life of black residents in the metro area, the better the region will do overall. We have a nice sized HBCU in Midtown, that should be a major selling point to attract and retain educated black people to the metro area. I'm very envious of how DC and Atlanta, now Texas and the Carolinas have promoted themselves as meccas for the black middle class, sucking away a lot of black talent from markets like St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, etc. 

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Dec 20, 2022

^ there is a guy on Twitter who does threads about stuff like this, ie he will post articles from every decade going back 150 years about “nobody wants to work anymore” or “young people today are lazy”

big fan of those threads.  always make me LOL.

Suppose my larger point was not that brain drain isn't real - it 100000% is real - just that many many cities have been fighting to keep educated young people for a long long long time and many many cities fail in large part.

^i don’t mind this convo but it is way off topic for this thread. Can it get moved to where it should be.