I would like to see a Grocery Store...
Trader Joes???
Trader Joes???
I agree. Something like the Cleveland development would be great. Midtown needs to remain a dense urban area with cutting edge architecture and something like this picture would be great for the area.
- 43
I have a paper copy of a PowerPoint from the Grand & Lindell development meeting. It has a rendering of the Sun Theater facade rebuilt on a new building next to Powell.
There is also a rendering of a concept building for the Grand & Lindell corner. I believe this is what GC and Fr. Biondi would like to see there. It's approx. 8 stories (residence or office-looking on the top) and retail on the first two floors. It's fairly modern, but brick and glass mostly. There is a rotunda of sorts (kind of a glass cylinder) on the actual corner. GC is also planning trees and those planters that go in the median on Lindell.
The overall picture looks like a bit of a U-shape construction with the open part facing the other street (Olive?)
Personally, I came up with a lot of ideas for the corner, but never officially proposed them. Basically, retail on floors one and two, and a professional artists-in-residence community featuring ample studio and living spaces to foster the arts core of Grand Center on other floors.
Additionally, floors three and four can be used as classrooms/studios for the SLU Fine and Performing Arts department. This may free up space in Xavier Hall allowing more desperately needed classrooms to be created at little cost. SLU continues to try to attract a larger freshman class each year, but that leads to constant hunger for more classrooms.
SLU should also use the 512 Grand building for a hotel. They do very well with the one they own at 44 and Layfayette. I'd love to see a hip but posh hotel like this on in Portland. http://www.hotellucia.com/
There is also a rendering of a concept building for the Grand & Lindell corner. I believe this is what GC and Fr. Biondi would like to see there. It's approx. 8 stories (residence or office-looking on the top) and retail on the first two floors. It's fairly modern, but brick and glass mostly. There is a rotunda of sorts (kind of a glass cylinder) on the actual corner. GC is also planning trees and those planters that go in the median on Lindell.
The overall picture looks like a bit of a U-shape construction with the open part facing the other street (Olive?)
Personally, I came up with a lot of ideas for the corner, but never officially proposed them. Basically, retail on floors one and two, and a professional artists-in-residence community featuring ample studio and living spaces to foster the arts core of Grand Center on other floors.
Additionally, floors three and four can be used as classrooms/studios for the SLU Fine and Performing Arts department. This may free up space in Xavier Hall allowing more desperately needed classrooms to be created at little cost. SLU continues to try to attract a larger freshman class each year, but that leads to constant hunger for more classrooms.
SLU should also use the 512 Grand building for a hotel. They do very well with the one they own at 44 and Layfayette. I'd love to see a hip but posh hotel like this on in Portland. http://www.hotellucia.com/
Grand Center is missing people - despite having a university in the neighborhood. Housing should be a priority. Because downtown has the loft market, the CWE has the traditional uptown market, and the South & North sides have the row houses and flats, Grand Center needs to provide something no other neighborhood has. My first thought would be ultra-modern mid and high rises. The views from that location are unbeatable and one or two story buildings look awkward in this area. Can anyone think of a type of city housing that is lacking in St. Louis? This might be the place to put it.
I was at the same planning meeting for Grand Center. I thought some of the ideas were great, such as the entry gates that mirrored the large vertical (Marquee? or are marquee's only the horizontal ones?) signs like the Fox, and Powell Hall used to have one that said "St. Louis" (Man, I wish we could recreate all of them.) But the idea of building a green-way or median down Lindell, taking out parking spaces = ONE DUMB ASS IDEA.. It's almost like 1960's thinking, that a quick moving parkway will help the area. If you're thinking, hmm, that could be an improvement, think if they took out all the parking spaces on Delmar in the Loop, built a median and had a neat little "green way"... There goes the pedestrian activity which means NO MORE BUSINESS.. which mean, DESTINATION NO WHERE... you have to keep the parking spaces, which for one, slow down traffic, and enable people to patronize the businesses there. And removing parking spaces WAS part of their plan..
I agree that Opera Theater and the Rep should not be on a campus. Even with MetroLink to UMSL, the problem with entertainment at the Touhill is that it is isolated on a campus.
Grand Center needs lots more residential that will bring people to live there that have a stake in the neighborhood.
Grand Center needs lots more residential that will bring people to live there that have a stake in the neighborhood.
Grand Center needs a reason for people to come to the area besides the Fox. There aren't enough people or theaters to justify the resurants that would make the area a real atraction. Find some smaller offices, banks, advertising, or architecture firms to move in the area and provide people to keep the resurants or bars open and then the area will grow.
I took a long walk with the dog last night around Midtown, admiring all the breathtakingly beautiful buildings along Lindell and Grand. Only a first-class city is capable of building such a magnificent streetscape. Sadly, the absence of people on the streets was depressing. What used to be the busiest section of the city now barely has a pulse. Perhaps midtown is where St. Louis's decline is most apparent. What was once a bustling, vibrant district full of high culture is now almost silent on a Saturday night, save for some loud obnoxious college students from SLU staggering down the sidewalks to their once stately apartment buildings turned frat houses (that is a crime in my opinion).
Still, there's an air of grandeur in Midtown, and I hope some "grand" developments will start rolling soon. It pains me to see Midtown lagging so far behind amidst a stong revival of the rest of the central corridor.
Still, there's an air of grandeur in Midtown, and I hope some "grand" developments will start rolling soon. It pains me to see Midtown lagging so far behind amidst a stong revival of the rest of the central corridor.