urbanSTL

Over the past 5 months, particularly in the wake of the Rams settlement food fight with the Board of Alders, a recurring concern among downtown stakeholders has been the growing loss of confidence in Greater St. Louis, Inc. This unease is driven by the absence of a clearly communicated public plan and a perceived lack of broader involvement in shaping its private plans it’s shopping around with some stakeholders.

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... uture.html

Another day, another hit piece on downtown. Notably missing is any national context, any information about the reality of declining crime, or any discussion of the complete lack of state investment in downtown.

My favorite quote: "We were more victimized by [downtown] than we were a driving force of it."

Other cities' Downtown Vacancy: (CBRE)
-St. Louis: 29.1%
-Kansas City: 24.1%
-Minneapolis: 28.4%
-St. Paul: 34.7%
-Indianapolis: 19.4%
-Milwaukee: 19.2%/20%
-Denver: 36.8%
-Cleveland: 20%
-Columbus: 21.7%
-Cincinnati: 23.3%
-Louisville: 26.1%
-Des Moines: 26.9%
-Chicago: 25.5%
-Detroit: 17.2%
-Pittsburgh: 19.5%

Back in December I asked Vince about examples of type of crimes his employees have been a victim off, he said he couldn’t come up with any but feelings

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Aug 06, 2025

Back in December I asked Vince about examples of type of crimes his employees have been a victim off, he said he couldn’t come up with any but feelings

...JESUS.....lol...that is SO St Louis. 

Cowards will run, anyway we are going to be just fine; big weekend coming up and especially Saturday

First of I want to thank DB for keeping balance in the Downtown narrative.  But, having worked downtown in three separate stints over the last 20 years, I think the thing that gets to people is the ground floor vacancies, Not just vacant spaces, but signage that hasn't changed in over a decade in some cases.  It does wear on you, walking downtown. I did a thought exercise a few months back and came up with over 25 restaurants that are gone and the spaces remain vacant (or without an active street facing use).  This impacts the feel of Downtown.  I am open to corrections to this list if a space has been filled recently (also, might have missed some)...

Wasabi
St. Louis Bread Co
Lions Choice
Hardees
Caleco’s
Baily’s Range
Flannery’s
Food Trucks (multiple and consistent)
Bamboo Bistro
Tortilla Grill
Mr. Curry
Quizno’s
Anthony’s
Tony’s
Sansai
Copia Wine Bar
Lucas Park Grill
Dooley’s
Subway (Famous Barr Garage)
Swifty’s
The Edible Difference
TGIFriday’s
Blondies
Wave Taco
Gioa’s Deli
Tanner B’s
Maurizio’s
Hot Dog Cart Guy at 6^th and Olive
Pita Pit

On the other side. 30 Restaurants that opened since 2020 or on the way

Cobblestone
Katie’s pizza and pasta
Salt and Smoke
Fielders Choice
Clark and Bourbon
Koibito Poke
Condado Tacos
Amaizing Arepa Bar
Buddy’s Wine Bar
Hot Pizza Cold Beer
Idol Wolf
Good Press
Ozzie’s market
Pitch Tavern
Levels
Asian Arch
Ukraft
Pops Kitchen
Travel Lounge
The Bullock
Laneys
The Monikor
Form Sky Bar
6 restaurants coming to Jeff Arms
Oliver Food Hall

TalkinDev wrote: ↑

Aug 07, 2025

First of I want to thank DB for keeping balance in the Downtown narrative.  But, having worked downtown in three separate stints over the last 20 years, I think the thing that gets to people is the ground floor vacancies, Not just vacant spaces, but signage that hasn't changed in over a decade in some cases.  It does wear on you, walking downtown. I did a thought exercise a few months back and came up with over 25 restaurants that are gone and the spaces remain vacant (or without an active street facing use).  This impacts the feel of Downtown.  I am open to corrections to this list if a space has been filled recently (also, might have missed some)...

Wasabi
St. Louis Bread Co
Lions Choice
Hardees
Caleco’s
Baily’s Range
Flannery’s
Food Trucks (multiple and consistent)
Bamboo Bistro
Tortilla Grill
Mr. Curry
Quizno’s
Anthony’s
Tony’s
Sansai
Copia Wine Bar
Lucas Park Grill
Dooley’s
Subway (Famous Barr Garage)
Swifty’s
The Edible Difference
TGIFriday’s
Blondies
Wave Taco
Gioa’s Deli
Tanner B’s
Maurizio’s
Hot Dog Cart Guy at 6^th and Olive
Pita Pit

I don't know what necessarily needs to be done, but the Kiener garages should not be as vacant as they are. With so much foot traffic that the Arch, Old Courthouse, and Kiener Plaze gets, how fast food restaurants can't even be sustained along here is a mystery to me.

I tend to agree though, the downtown numbers don't look that relatively bad, but our retail is concentrated on certain areas and leaves large swaths empty. One space that is particularly sad to me is where Fifth Third Bank used to be on Olive. The space looks decent, not run down, there is other retail in the immediate vicinity, the building is decently occupied, but for whatever reason they have not gotten another tenant since the bank left like 8 years ago.

A final note I will make on retail is that there is a decent amount that isn't street accessible. Some of it is inside buildings like the Old Post Office and Metropolitan Square building. So it makes the street feel less active even though there are some shops technically there.

5 days a week food trucks are back

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Aug 09, 2025

Hotels seem to be fine

Roughly how many hotel rooms are downtown?

8500-9000

Do people in this region just refuse to go downtown for anything? Attendance was lackluster in my opinion for Blues at the Arch. Cool event unique to StL that should draw crowds. Even when people are given opportunities to go downtown (I understand that there’s some holes for the every evening out), people just don’t seem to show up.

3 of the top 5 regions most visited attractions are downtown. (9 of top 10 in the city)

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote: ↑

Aug 11, 2025

Do people in this region just refuse to go downtown for anything? Attendance was lackluster in my opinion for Blues at the Arch. Cool event unique to StL that should draw crowds. Even when people are given opportunities to go downtown (I understand that there’s some holes for the every evening out), people just don’t seem to show up.

At the same time as Blues at the Arch, there was a Cardinals vs Cubs game (40k + anyone at BPV), City SC game (22k), and Shane Gillis show (17k+).

Blues music isn’t also exactly “in” right now. We went on Friday and it was definitely busy despite it being 95 out

Auggie wrote: ↑

Aug 06, 2025

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... uture.html

Another day, another hit piece on downtown. Notably missing is any national context, any information about the reality of declining crime, or any discussion of the complete lack of state investment in downtown.

My favorite quote: "We were more victimized by [downtown] than we were a driving force of it."

Other cities' Downtown Vacancy: (CBRE)
-St. Louis: 29.1%
-Kansas City: 24.1%
-Minneapolis: 28.4%
-St. Paul: 34.7%
-Indianapolis: 19.4%
-Milwaukee: 19.2%/20%
-Denver: 36.8%
-Cleveland: 20%
-Columbus: 21.7%
-Cincinnati: 23.3%
-Louisville: 26.1%
-Des Moines: 26.9%
-Chicago: 25.5%
-Detroit: 17.2%
-Pittsburgh: 19.5%

A city I didn't list on here but is struggling way more than I had originally believed is Austin, TX. Their MSA office vacancy is sitting at 24.8%, significantly higher than St. Louis MSA, and their CBD office vacancy is 28.3%. Additionally, they have over 1.9 million square feet in new office space under construction, with about 1.65 million of that being in the CBD. So vacancy will probably tick up in the coming years before it starts going back down.

Obviously very different situation there vs here in STL, but it's still very interesting that their office vacancy is so high. Likely because lots of new office was built, probably assuming demand would stay high, but the Covid delusion ended and the market realized just how overrated Austin was.

In Q2 2022, Austin's vacancy was about 19% and has since added ~4 million square feet of office space, but has had about -1.2 million sf absorption.

Juxtaposed to Austin, San Francisco is having a sort of resurgence over the last few quarters. Vacancy peaked at about 37% and has now dropped to 34.8% after 3 quarters of positive absorption, with Q2 2025 being the highest absorbtion the city has seen since 2018.

San Francisco's single largest new lease this past quarter was the city leasing 226k square feet of a nearly vacant building to move a bunch of city offices to. I have asked this before, but what exactly is preventing STL City from moving the offices at that horrid 1520 Market building to one of our many struggling office buildings? Something like 1010 Market could very much use a shot in the arm. It would help the property value, it would put employees closer to real downtown, and it would give a much needed boost to office occupancy. I would much prefer my tax dollars going to that than maintaining an ugly building that isn't even taxable.

Dammit. Downtown is losing another "tenant" to Chesterfield.

The Synergism sculpture at 7th and Washington is being relocated. I'm not really sure what the reason is. Very disappointing. 



https://www.westnewsmagazine.com/news/c ... e=hs_email

Scale AI is moving 250 employees to our terrible, rotten, no good Downtown.

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/inn ... enter.html

JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

Aug 20, 2025

Scale AI is moving 250 employees to our terrible, rotten, no good Downtown.

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/inn ... enter.html

It’s just a relocation as they are already downtown, but it should give them room for growth if the opportunity presents itself.

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... hmitt.html

FBI to boost St. Louis personnel, "largest per capita infusions of full time agents and intel personnel in the nation" according to Senator Eric Schmitt, but he could not share exact numbers.

Under normal circumstances, I would welcome this as generally the federal government is a good employer and these are solid jobs. However, obviously we don't live in normal times so this can't really be seen as good. At least the FBI has been one of the lesser Hitlerite law enforcement agencies under this regime.

I am a longtime defender of downtown to all detractors. Lived in an unregulated raw space that had to be seen to be believed two decades ago and lived in a building that tried to make a go of it years ago but that disintegrated into failure. Worked in multiple buildings. All this was way before we were lucky enough to have a guy like DB - downtown expert and the final word on all things downtown.
To me, I'll always defend downtown but privately I'm just like blah, it's fine. It's ok. All the damage was done decades and decades ago. I won't rundown that list right now. I've been to too many places and spent so much time in San Francisco in the last year (mostly in the really "sketchy" areas no less!) that there's just no way downtown St. Louis can satiate my souls desire for urban living. But if you drink enough booze anything is possible. Downtown is fine. It's ok.

In fact, I'm about to go downtown right now. So, hold your belongings tight, grab your children and keep your head on a swivel because - according to this forum- a real monster is about to be in your midst.