The occasional minivan I see on a highway = effective public transportation to the edge of the county?stl07 wrote: ↑Feb 13, 2024Since it is within the VIA metro STL zone I hope transit is incorporated.
This is St. Louis we are talking about. Any transit is a vast improvement from the past in west county.
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Even if they are planning to integrate transit they wouldn't dare mention it in their plans. That would just be feeding red meat to the local NIMBY's that are railing against this
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Dillard's will now be a part of the Downtown Chesterfield development and has dropped their lawsuit....
Dillard’s to stay in ‘downtown’ Chesterfield redevelopment
Dillard’s to stay in ‘downtown’ Chesterfield redevelopment
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-courts/dillard-s-to-stay-in-downtown-chesterfield-redevelopment/article_db29a4be-f8ea-11ee-a40a-77ffa584e591.html#tracking-source=home-top-storyA Dillard’s store in the Chesterfield Mall will no longer be demolished and will instead become a part of the mall’s “downtown” redevelopment.
An attorney for Dillard’s Inc. said the company is preparing to drop a lawsuit that was meant to give its store, closed since 2016, legal protection from demolition or redevelopment. In return, the retailer will keep its existing building to reopen as part of the new, urban downtown concept, which is slated to include thousands of apartments, shops, offices, a hotel, plus public parks and trails.
“Dillard’s has wanted all along to stay a part of the community,” said Brandee Caswell, an attorney for the company. Caswell said the retailer was engaged in “very productive conversations” to finalize an agreement.
Michael Staenberg, president of developer The Staenberg Group, said he was “happy to work with Dillard’s and happy to have them as part of our project.” The project, along with a neighboring housing and retail development called Wildhorse Village, represents more than $2 billion of new development in Chesterfield, a major shopping destination in the St. Louis region and one of the wealthiest suburbs in the state of Missouri. The Chesterfield City Council in 2022 approved $353 million in tax increment financing meant to go toward paying for new infrastructure at the mall site and nearby areas. The city blighted the redevelopment area in order to approve the tax incentives package.
But Dillard’s sued The Staenberg Group and Chesterfield to overturn the TIF, alleging the city violated state law because the redevelopment area and Dillard’s vacant store were not properly determined to be blighted and because Dillard’s was not properly notified of the TIF’s public hearings. The retailer, whose store at the mall shuttered due to flooding, said it had been in talks for years with Staenberg, which bought the mall in 2020, to be included in the redevelopment project.
The retailer’s lawsuit asked a judge to overturn the TIF and bar the city from potentially using eminent domain on the store. The retailer in December amended its lawsuit to add city emails and records it alleged showed officials did not assess buildings individually for blight and knew the mall redevelopment was “certain” without the tax incentives but approved them anyway.
Wildhorse Village has been quietly filling in. Recent google earth aerial of all the activity out there. No movement on office/commercial space yet. But most residential components are going up, with exception of the marquee 10 storey tower. Clearly Wildhorse is turning out a different beast than the initial renders however.
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Walked around here a few weeks ago, urban is not the word I would use to describe what they have built.
Kinda looks like one of those planned suburban walkable communities in Phoenix. I mean it’s better than nothing but since it gives chesterfield a bit of character but was vastly overhyped.GoHarvOrGoHome wrote: ↑Apr 30, 2024Walked around here a few weeks ago, urban is not the word I would use to describe what they have built.
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I can't stand this project. It reminds me of Corporate Woods/College Blvd in Overland Park. This region is not big enough nor thriving enough currently to have three main office nodes - Downtown STL, Clayton and now "Downtown" Chesterfield in amongst all the other big office parks adjacent to major highways in the area. We are crying out for consolidation not continuing to spread things out.
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I don’t think Overland Park is a good comp. This is like the Battery with far less entertainment.
Went there for a walk a few days ago. I think this whole thing was much noise about nothing. It's a bunch of apartments and townhouses around a lake.
I will say there is pretty good pedestrian and bike infrastructure. You can connect to the Ampitheater, library, public pool, valley, AC Marriott hotel/Ruth Chris, and the surrounding offices without a car.
Seemed to have a lot of interns and young professionals spending the summer at RGA, Pfizer, ect. Honestly it's a good use case for that. They can get to work without a car and don't have the ability to afford a SFH that Chesterfield is full off.
This thing isn't shifting anything away from the city. That was just the developer overhyping it. If anything, this will be a net positive as the 23-year-olds coming in from their flagship universities on the coasts will actually have a place to live and won't reject their internship offers for the DC office. They also vastly extended the public park on their own dime which is great for walkers/hikers
I will say there is pretty good pedestrian and bike infrastructure. You can connect to the Ampitheater, library, public pool, valley, AC Marriott hotel/Ruth Chris, and the surrounding offices without a car.
Seemed to have a lot of interns and young professionals spending the summer at RGA, Pfizer, ect. Honestly it's a good use case for that. They can get to work without a car and don't have the ability to afford a SFH that Chesterfield is full off.
This thing isn't shifting anything away from the city. That was just the developer overhyping it. If anything, this will be a net positive as the 23-year-olds coming in from their flagship universities on the coasts will actually have a place to live and won't reject their internship offers for the DC office. They also vastly extended the public park on their own dime which is great for walkers/hikers
Remember when Sachs Properties originally started developing Chesterfield Village in the 80s, they showed all sorts of drawings with 30-story towers etc. As STL07 says, most of this is marketing. Just because they call it "downtown" doesn't mean that's what it'll be.
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I think there are many folks (including some regulars here) who don’t understand that Wildhorse Village and Park & Main are distinct developments.
Latest rendering of mall site. Looks like they are making a Tysons, VA. Although I hope our great state and county leaders remember that one of the reasons Tysons grew was because of the Silver Line BRT (now a metro rail) that connected Tysons to other parts of Northern Virginia. I have zero faith.
Maybe Metrolink gets to Chesterfield and/or Westport by 2060. West County does remind me of certain areas of Northern Virginia, without the transit access and mini downtowns of course.stl07 wrote: ↑Nov 20, 2024
Latest rendering of mall site. Looks like they are making a Tysons, VA. Although I hope our great state and county leaders remember that one of the reasons Tysons grew was because of the Silver Line BRT (now a metro rail) that connected Tysons to other parts of Northern Virginia. I have zero faith.
Just because they publish renderings of a bunch of shiny high rises doesn't mean it will happen. Sachs Properties did the same thing some 40 years ago. At this point it's just marketing.
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This is going to end up as your classic lifestyle center, maybe a little bigger when you factor in Wild Horse Village. IMO this will compete more with the St. Louis Premium Outlets and The Streets of St. Charles more than STL City or even Clayton.
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I really don't understand why there is so much hatred towards this project. I get it, I also wish this type of investment was happening in our urban core, and the urban-branding and spin for this project is deceiving. But, one of our most successful suburbs and one of the largest cities in the region is attempting to build a denser, mixed-use center to replace a decaying commercial mall.
There are many people that want this type of development that don't want to live in our true core for many reasons and this provides them an opportunity to live in a walkable area and not need to leave our region to do that. This type of development happens all over the country and we are just finally getting one. This development makes our region more competitive and gets people to experience and get comfortable with denser development who would otherwise not.
It's not perfect, and I wish this could happen in our urban core. But honestly, if we could have this in every of our suburbs and create a more poly-centric region with urban nodes all over, it would help us on so many fronts and make regional transit much more appealing to the average citizen. Just my 2 cents...
There are many people that want this type of development that don't want to live in our true core for many reasons and this provides them an opportunity to live in a walkable area and not need to leave our region to do that. This type of development happens all over the country and we are just finally getting one. This development makes our region more competitive and gets people to experience and get comfortable with denser development who would otherwise not.
It's not perfect, and I wish this could happen in our urban core. But honestly, if we could have this in every of our suburbs and create a more poly-centric region with urban nodes all over, it would help us on so many fronts and make regional transit much more appealing to the average citizen. Just my 2 cents...
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We have investments like this in the urban core, see the BJC $2b-3b in new projects that have been happening and are still on going. There is $5b worth of big projects in the city happening now- $1.2b gateway south, $1b VA hospital, $1.7b NGA and $1b of smaller ones.
My only issue is them calling it “urban” downtown.
My only issue is them calling it “urban” downtown.
I believe the same $2 billion investment would have a transformative impact if directed toward downtown. Investing $2 billion there could fundamentally change how people perceive the city. That is why I am not a massive fan. I would much rather we do things to entice people to live closer to the city center.dblarsen314 wrote: ↑Nov 20, 2024I really don't understand why there is so much hatred towards this project. I get it, I also wish this type of investment was happening in our urban core, and the urban-branding and spin for this project is deceiving. But, one of our most successful suburbs and one of the largest cities in the region is attempting to build a denser, mixed-use center to replace a decaying commercial mall.
There are many people that want this type of development that don't want to live in our true core for many reasons and this provides them an opportunity to live in a walkable area and not need to leave our region to do that. This type of development happens all over the country and we are just finally getting one. This development makes our region more competitive and gets people to experience and get comfortable with denser development who would otherwise not.
It's not perfect, and I wish this could happen in our urban core. But honestly, if we could have this in every of our suburbs and create a more poly-centric region with urban nodes all over, it would help us on so many fronts and make regional transit much more appealing to the average citizen. Just my 2 cents...
The first reason I am opposed to it is largely because it just reaffirms the urbanist and fiscal conservative argument of why suburbanization is a cancer and we need to stop. For years, these total idiots who live in cities like Chesterfield insist that no one wants to live in a "dense" area as to why cities across the country have either shrank or have grown via suburbanization for the most part when in reality it's solely because our government (federal, state, and local) subsidize and undertax that lifestyle. So now, St. Louis County and Chesterfield have both realized that their horrible urban policy that can only work in an infinite growth economy (not dissimilar to how Social Security and Medicare are set up) is in fact terrible like people like me have been saying forever. That's what this project is. It absolutely would not be happening if that wasn't the case. In reality, dense areas generate tax revenue and grow the economy while endless subruban cancer is just a drain on tax revenue and offers very little for the economy. So I have no doubt that "Downtown Chesterfield" would be good for Chesterfield, the arguments I've been making for years to suburbanites would say that, but it's incredibly frustrating that suddenly the exact thing these suburban nothing-cities were built as a rejection to are going to adopt it because they're completely unsustainable.dblarsen314 wrote: ↑Nov 20, 2024I really don't understand why there is so much hatred towards this project. I get it, I also wish this type of investment was happening in our urban core, and the urban-branding and spin for this project is deceiving. But, one of our most successful suburbs and one of the largest cities in the region is attempting to build a denser, mixed-use center to replace a decaying commercial mall.
There are many people that want this type of development that don't want to live in our true core for many reasons and this provides them an opportunity to live in a walkable area and not need to leave our region to do that. This type of development happens all over the country and we are just finally getting one. This development makes our region more competitive and gets people to experience and get comfortable with denser development who would otherwise not.
It's not perfect, and I wish this could happen in our urban core. But honestly, if we could have this in every of our suburbs and create a more poly-centric region with urban nodes all over, it would help us on so many fronts and make regional transit much more appealing to the average citizen. Just my 2 cents...
Now, if this was the only reason I had, then I actually wouldn't oppose it.
The second reason I oppose it is because St. Louis simply doesn't have demand for this. If we were growing at a rate like Indianapolis or Nashville or even Kansas City, that would be one thing, but we aren't. We certainly aren't shrinking nearly as much as we are made out to be, but we aren't growing either. With that being said, I think this would end up getting filled up simply due to it killing some other part of St. Louis. That's all this region ever does. Any new retail, office, or residential added to this development will just be taking away from other places. Maybe Clayton, maybe Brentwood, maybe St. Charles, and most definitely the most urban part of the region- St. Louis, the one city that gets screwed by everything always because it gets sattled with the most difficult challenges while all the fiefdoms picked who would live there in the first place and to this day remain largely class segregated. If we were growing at a 2-5% rate per decade, if our "premier" and insulated office market (Clayton) didn't have a vacancy rate of nearly 20%, if this project was being used to get a major relocation like Bunge or building a new HQ for RGA. I wouldn't be opposed. But both RGA and Bunge have less than 10 year old HQs and they aren't gonna build a new tower in this development....they aren't gonna fill out the office space. It's gonna be companies moving from our already existing and struggling markets to this new faux urban one so their scared employees can feel better.
So no I'm not happy about it nor am I hoping it succeeds because its success just means downtown will be worse off, Clayton will be worse off, Brentwood will be worse off, etc etc etc.
This type of money pumped into downtown STL, downtown St. Charles, downtown Kirkwood (and plenty of other places) could do so much more for the betterment of the region than what they've planned.
Hense the problem. I actually don't have an issue with the edge city model that we see in places like Virginia. These suburbs we have need a city/mini downtown. While this finally gives chesterfield that mini-downtown, it doesn't connect all the cities via a BRT and instead continues the same problem- car dependency. It's a good start but won't mean anything unless we connect it to Westport, Clayton, and Brentwood with a BRT/rail.goat314 wrote: ↑Nov 20, 2024Maybe Metrolink gets to Chesterfield and/or Westport by 2060. West County does remind me of certain areas of Northern Virginia, without the transit access and mini downtowns of course.stl07 wrote: ↑Nov 20, 2024
Latest rendering of mall site. Looks like they are making a Tysons, VA. Although I hope our great state and county leaders remember that one of the reasons Tysons grew was because of the Silver Line BRT (now a metro rail) that connected Tysons to other parts of Northern Virginia. I have zero faith.
Speaking of which, isn't there a railroad that goes right through Wildhorse village? A commuter train there could be very impactful
That's another true point. I actually agree that West County has Northern VA vibes, especially along 64, the reason northern VA is how it is is because of DC's metro system. Chesterfield people think public transit is bad. So good luck.stl07 wrote: ↑Nov 21, 2024Hense the problem. I actually don't have an issue with the edge city model that we see in places like Virginia. These suburbs we have need a city/mini downtown. While this finally gives chesterfield that mini-downtown, it doesn't connect all the cities via a BRT and instead continues the same problem- car dependency. It's a good start but won't mean anything unless we connect it to Westport, Clayton, and Brentwood with a BRT/rail.goat314 wrote: ↑Nov 20, 2024Maybe Metrolink gets to Chesterfield and/or Westport by 2060. West County does remind me of certain areas of Northern Virginia, without the transit access and mini downtowns of course.stl07 wrote: ↑Nov 20, 2024
Latest rendering of mall site. Looks like they are making a Tysons, VA. Although I hope our great state and county leaders remember that one of the reasons Tysons grew was because of the Silver Line BRT (now a metro rail) that connected Tysons to other parts of Northern Virginia. I have zero faith.
Pretty sure it's owned by a class 3 railroad. It's the same one that goes through north city. 99% of it is single tracked.
It would maybe be a good option to buy and partially use for MetroLink, but the tracks themselves are not passenger grade and the route is extremely inefficient.
So no.