Walkable environs still seeing investment
The economy tanked and work stopped. New strip centers on the suburban fringe are not getting built and many that exist are quite vacant. But in older established areas we are seeing individual buildings and spaces within buildings get renovated.
It has been a joy watching crews working to renovate the interior and exterior of this building on Washington Ave. The detailing around the openings on the ground level had been badly damaged over the years but they are repairing it. The big projects are on hold but the small projects are so much more exciting to me.
– Steve Patterson
I tell you…people always talk about the jobs we've lost, while opportunities sit staring us right in the face. What a way to revise trades of artisans of the past. Lots of resorations skills to be learned which, unless passed on to future generations will be forever lost. Time for folks to get in the business of plastering, casting, and whatever else would be related to renovating olod buildins and restoring older homes. See the glass half full vs half empty!
Unfortunatly the new EPA rules are going to make it difficult to do that. Many developers and contractors wont be able to take the financial risk to work on an old building given the draconian fines and penalties that the EPA has dreamed up.
It really is great to watch the small projects take the lead and reinvigorate downtown. It seems the day of the quick-fix mega projects are past.
What's better is that even people who aren't obsessed with urbanism are starting to join the conversation, check out the developments and talk to others about it. Two years ago, my downtown soap-boxing was met by deaf ears, but now friends, family and barstool strangers all have something positive to add when the conversation turns toward downtown's revival.
Agreed, I think not having the big ticket projects moving forward allows everyone to focus on more meaningful long-term change for the better.
Very exciting to see our project here! the craftsmen resculpting the facade are just amazing! we're so lucky to have people like them here in St. Louis!
Show me the money. With banks reluctant to lend, it takes more than a burning desire to do good, it takes deep pockets and/or willing investors. Fortunately, walkable areas seem to be holding their values better than the suburban fringes.
The money? The projects are all around. Is it enough to get everyone working again? No. Are the banks reluctant? Sure. Are projects being financed after the collapse? Yes.
I'd take it one step further and say that walkable areas are not just holding their values, but increasing them, while suburban complexes are losing theirs.
Not to sound revolutionary, but it seems we may have reached the point where the seemingly endless suburban sprawl can't sprawl anymore and businesses, individuals, families, etc. are doubling back toward the center which they thinned out in the first place.
Is this Patricia Stevens rebranding itself an “institute” to appear a little classier?
Will, I'm glad you asked. Stevens Institute of Business & Arts is definitely the new name of Patricia Stevens College, but we aren't trying to be classier–we like to think we are pretty classy already.
The reason for the name change is that the college's programs have evolved in it's 64 year history, from modeling and “finishing” classes in the 1940's and 1950's, to the Bachelor's and Associate's degrees offered now. The students, faculty and administration thought it was an excellent time to make a name change to coincide with our new location, and to choose a name that more accurately reflects what we are doing in 2010. And frankly, the “Patricia” evokes in people's minds the modeling and finishing school that we were back in the day rather than the degree-granting institution we are now.
“Stevens College” would have made a lot of sense if it were not for the existence of the esteemed Stephens College. Thus, after much debate and discussion, we settled on Stevens Institute of Business & Arts, and are very excited about the new name and our beautiful new building.
Thank you to Steve Patterson and everyone else who has shown interest in our renovation project. It hasn't been an easy road, but we are very proud to be part of the renewal of Washington Avenue.
Cynthia Musterman
President
Patricia Stevens College (Stevens Institute of Business & Arts as of July 1).
What a handsom building. I'm so proud of how far downtown has come and so excited for what's to come.
Agreed. I don't have anything to add, other than to say this building looks awesome. My compliments to the rehabbers!
The terra cotta along the roof is wonderful.
I don't think I've ever noticed terra cotta on anything but residential homes and neighborhood commercial buildings. Nice to see some downtown, too.
Have to agree with a lot of the comments. However, we still need a couple big projects to come through. First, Keeping Stifel Nichols and Peabody downtown will require some new Class A office space. Unfortunately, Cordish is more concerned with Cordish then they will ever be of St. Louis. Stifel might hang tight but worried about Peabody leaving downtown. Second, I think a new 22nd street interchange and a class A office tower anchoring the west end of the mall will go a long ways in getting Wells Fargo Securities to make a long term committment to St. Louis with its central location, good data infrastructure and financing knowledge present. In other words, McKee has that part of the northside proposal right since the days of AG Edwards being a St. Louis company content with Jefferson Ave is long gone. These are big companies with a lot of employees downtown and are sought by others. To think otherwise is foolhardy.
Agreed about keeping existing employers. What we don't need are 6-block mega projects to build a new building or two. If we'd start taxing the hell out of surface parking lots in the CBD we'd see those owners building on them. I'd like to see new construction at !1th & Locust.
I like this idea, but how do you think it would be best implemented? Something along the lines of a declining tax amount for more stories built, and tax an open lot to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year? Interesting proposal I'm just curious how you think it should look.
It's the jobs! It's the jobs! It's the jobs! You need a big jump in demand to fill both existing buildings and any new ones. Surface parking lots are a symptom, not a cause. They exist simply because they generate the most income, today, for the level of investment that can be justified by actual demand, today. If (and when) a property owner can make more money putting up building, then guess what, they will! BPV is the current poster child. No one wants it vacant – not the owners and not the city – but the numbers simply don't work, at least not now.
As for “taxing the hell out of surface parking lots in the CBD”, be careful what you ask for. Given the present economy, an owner would be just as likely to walk away from a property, if the taxes were too high, as they would be to put up a crappy suburban box, just to comply with the law. Plus, like the earnings tax, the likely unintended consequence of “taxing the hell out of surface parking lots in the CBD” won't be more people using transit, it'll be existing businesses looking for more affordable space elsewhere, exacerbating downtown's challenges!
75 years ago, nearly all of the current surface parking lots in the CBD did have buildings on them. The primary reason the buildings left and the lots came is economics. Owners and users place(d) a higher value on having a place to park their car than in maintaining the existing, aging, underutilized or vacant, buildings. When the old commercial buildings lost their uses, they also lost their value.
Compared to two other local CBD's, St. Louis is in the middle of the pack. East St. Louis has moved beyond surface parking lots to block after block of plain old, weed-covered vacant lots. Clayton, in contrast, has fewer surface parking lots every year, because the demand for office space, and thus land, is high, while supply is limited there. Property tax rates have very little to do with the failure of the former and the relative success of the latter. It all gets back to people wanting to be some place and willing to pay whatever premium is required to be there, whether it's the Loop in Chicago, Manhattan in NYC or Rodeo Drive in LA.
There are reasons why people are choosing not to be in downtown St. Louis, and why they're choosing to be elsewhere in the region. They may be simple or complex, real or perceived (incorrectly), but imposing draconian tax increases that will be passed on directly to the users of surface parking lots would seem to be very short-sighted. This is a complex issue, and one much better solved with carrots than with sticks!
Parking experts advocate changing the economic picture — as long as a property owner can make a profit on surface parking they will have zero incentive to change.
As an armchair Economist, it's hard to argue with Mr. Zavist! I'm afraid that taxing the hell out of the property would just cause the owner to abandon the property and then the city LRA would have yet another lot on their hands.
The city could issue an RFP to get buildings built which would fill in the holes downtown. The property owners are not going to do it without a push.
Huh?! Property owners aren't stupid. If they could make money building a new building, they would or they'd sell to someone wanting to build. How would getting the city involved with taking over properties, then asking for RFP's, change the fundamental economics? As of this morning, the LRA already has 4,960 (!) properties listed for sale (http://stlcin.missouri.org/forsale/lra-owned-pr…). Are you assuming even more subsidies?! The problem is simple economics, too little demand and too much supply.
Steve, Have to second JZ71 comments and surprised at your comment as you have experience selling properties. Businesses as individuals simply have a lot of choices and the reality is that economics has made transportion more affordable and makes up less of the household budget then fifty years ago. The choice that people have made is to buy cars and move around. Taxing the heck of out of parking lots will do nothing except reverse the gains of what has happened. I think Downtown NEXT plan gets that. You create demand and demand will create a premium on space. Taxing space does little to create demand.
It is about using taxes to get what you want. We want property owners to build new buildings on the surface parking lots rather than pay taxes on the lots. So we find ways for the owners to make more money with the land full of building rather than parking.
To a business owner, taxes are a cost of doing business. Increase taxes and you increase costs. To maintain profits, the higher costs are passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices – an owner has only a limited ability to “absorb” any cost increases. Make the cost of parking higher (one of the negatives, perceived or real) and you make downtown less attractive, especially for daily commuters. Double the cost of monthly paking from $60 to $120 and someone is now taking a $720 cut in their annual salary.
Should this be viewed as an incentve for people to use public transit? In a perfect world, yes. But we don't live in a perfect world, we live in St. Louis. A $720 “pay cut” will, more than likely, be offset by a) an employer having to pay their employees higher salaries, b) having to directly subsidize parking costs, and/or c) forcing employees to walk further to find more-affordable parking. Any or all of the three can and do become incentives to look at relocating to suburban locations, or even to urban locations outside the CBD (A-B, Wells-Fargo, Ameren, etc., etc.).
Economic development (keeping existing and attracting new businesses) is a complex issue, and taxes play a crucial role in any discussion. No, they're not the only criteria, but they are quantifiable, unlike intangibles, things like coolness or hipness. St. Louis already gets dinged for its earnings tax, while places like Tennessee and Texas tout the fact that they have no state income taxes. We have one of the highest total sales taxes in the region. Imposing what essentially would be a parking tax may be PC, but it makes no sense if your goal is positive economic development. Don't give our competition any more ammunition, they have plenty already!
You always make arguments why the market conditions means nothing will ever change for the better. Sorry, I don't buy your line of libertarian thinking. Pricing is elastic. If the owner of the lot could charge $120/month for parking it would already be priced that high. Government can use a carefully constructed set of carrots and sticks to guide development patterns. We just have to stop believing 1) a free market economy currently exists and 2) that it is humming along perfectly in tune.
You're absolutely right, we do need to “stop believing 1) a free market economy currently exists and 2) that it is humming along perfectly in tune”, especially in St. Louis. Our local economy has hemhorraged thousands of jobs over the past half century, and it shows, in the aging buildings, surface parking lots and vacant lots that are all too common across the city. It also shows in the inevitable “need” for government to subsidize way too much development, through tax credits, TIF's, BID's, parking structures, urban renewal districts and other mechanisms.
Where we disagree is on how to fix things or on how to change the current dynamic. Your belief that “Government can use a carefully constructed set of carrots and sticks to guide development” is rooted in academic idealism, and assumes that a) development is an inevitable conclusion, and b) it won't happen without government intervention. True growth only happens when there is real demand, where the private sector sees opportunity and is willing to risk their private capital to make it happen. Government can and should provide the framework – roads, transit and a general vision – but the private sector is in a much better position to know what will sell, and what won't, and to be nimble and flexible in meeting these evolving needs.
St. Louis is struggling. We can “put lipstick on the pig”, but we first need to catch the pig. Parking costs $50 a day in Chicago's Loop not because it's heavily taxed, it costs that much because of limited supply and high demand. We continue to have cheap surface parking here because of the opposite, ample supply and a relatively limited demand. And yes, the pricing is elastic – prices do go up when the Cards are in town.
Our fundamental disagreement is what would happen if the price to park for the day, in every lot, went up by, say, $5 or $10. In your world, the higher prices would reduce demand. I agree, demand would drop. You assume that the drop in revenue would motivate owners to replace their now-empty lots with new structures. I assume that the drop in revenue will just result in more empty, non-productive lots. You assume that people would switch from driving to using transit or cycling. I assume that people would switch from coming into the CBD to working and shopping elsewhere in the region. You call that libertarian. I call that pragmatism/hard reality.
If you want a vibrant urban environment in St. Louis, like I do, we need to give people a reason to move here. Arbitrary, higher taxes are rarely a good idea, especially when combined with bad schools, racism, a rising homicide rate, and, now, a rash of motor-vehicle break-ins around downtown. People have choices, especially the demographic that we're trying to attract and retain. People ARE willing to pay more to get something special. The question now is how really “special”, or not, are we?!
Re: “Arbitrary, higher taxes are rarely a good idea, especially when combined with bad schools, racism, a rising homicide rate, and, now, a rash of motor-vehicle break-ins around downtown…”
Neither are arbitrary facts, especially when not all of them are relevant… or for that matter, even facts. Bad public schools can be found in any large city. I'm from Chicago. Chicago's schools aren't any good – I don't care how they massage test score numbers. No business moves there because of the schools, I can promise you.
Racism is everywhere, and overhyped as an issue. Do you know how many stable, racially-integrated areas there are in Chicago that aren't attached to a university? None that I can think of, but feel free to correct me. Yet we have areas like Tower Grove South here. Doesn't fit the “racist” tag, I know. sorry.
The murder rate is dropping, not rising. Just got stats on that last week, I believe.
I doubt that “motor vehicle break-ins” are high on the list of any company deciding on moving here or not. Certainly didn't hurt New York in its comeback. Crime is a red herring.
I agree with my sister (who has also lived here) in that there are two major problems facing St. Louis. One is geography. It's hard to sell. It's not East Coast, it's not West Coast, it doesn't have mountains or a beautiful lakeshore.
Two, the local business community and government have their collective head up their asses. We can't even get a raise in the lowest cigarette tax in the nation, for Pete's sake. Entrepeneurs are practically mocked here. Billions of money controlled by trust fund babies who won't spend it here.
With all that said, I'm not going anywhere and believe in a great future for the city. I think the development going on will continue to pick up steam… and someday, we'll get some brilliant people in state and local government.
It's all a matter of odds, right?
Yes. Plus we have essentially an unlimited water supply, something that will become a much greater issue, especially out west, over the next 30-40 years. I do have to disagree on the geography observation. We may not have the natural assets of a coastal city or one in the mountains, but what do Nashville, Dallas, Houston, Charlotte, Atlanta, Louisville or Indianapolis have over us, in the geography department? They all seem to be doing better economically than we are. Oh yeah, your second observation. 😉
Steve, on a second note. The biggest downtown projects to secure financing this year have been done with a very healthy dose of HUD loans, New Market Tax credits, and Union pension funds. Little of it is outright private investment that drives the bulk of development. Nor have these projects been new construction which is lacking big time in downtown St Louis. How come a new tower can be built in Clayton as we speak yet we can't one tower built on BVP's site? It tells me that we got a long ways to go.
BPV is trying to redevelop a multi-block area including all the infrastructure including new streets and expense parking structures. Building a new building at 11th & Locust wouldn't be as complicated or as expensive.
Steve, the problem with your argument is that almsot all dowtown development is a result of the opposite. Its the use of tax credits given to developers that are sold on the financial market. Either it be historical tax credits, brownfield tax credits, and New Market Tax credits. Add the fact that downtown had a tremendous building stock to work with, ei, its cheaper to build out a space if the shell is already in place. The only new buidling, the Roberts Tower, was essentially self finanaced by millionaires.
I would say that downtown has two more good years to work with Historical tax credits. The legislator will cut them significantly next year when they have to find a way to deal with a budget that will not have 900 million in stimulus funds. The only reason why they survived this go around was due to Nixon trying to consolidate decision making under his admin, creating a tax credit pay to play scheme.
I do believe you need taxing to get what you want. Once again, what do we want? We want the 22nd street interchange replaced with a new interchange and street grid back. We want I-70 to be removed from downtown. We want better pedesterian/bikeway access as an alternative. We want better transit service. We got Prop A passed. Now its time for the region to realize that having the 46th lowest gas tax in the nation is not sustainable does it promote the infrascture beneficial to development. Heck, a 5 t0 10 cent gas tax specific to region would be a bearable tax that would provide a benefit to the region. Nor is 1/10 cent sales tax adequate to support the Greenway plan that would bring significant quality of life benefits to the region.
What I'm advocating would take a good 2-3 years to put together anyway. We need to think about the next 20 years. Most of the buildings that qualify for historic tax credits have been renovated already. We must plan for the building of new construction outside of the Ballpark Village site.
Steve, I don't disagree with your goal of getting surface parking out of the CBD, I just don't think that uber-taxing them is the best solution. I believe that there are better ways to accomplish the goal, primarily through zoning. If we agree that they need to go, be explicit, say so. Surface parking is currently a use-by-right in the I (CBD) zone district; change it to a conditional use (like a pay telephone!) or outlaw it, like used car lots and drive-thru's. 26.52.030 explicitly states that “No parking regulations shall be required for this district.” Change that, to at least require screening and landscaping on surface lots. Provide incentives (square footage increases) for ground-floor retail in parking structures. Cars and trucks are going to be a part of our lives for the forseeable future, we just need to figure out how to minimize their impacts if we want walkability.
Zoning changes would be necessary along with taxing changes. The idea is to tax the property similarly regardless if it is “improved” or not.
Zoning changes would be necessary along with taxing changes. The idea is to tax the property similarly regardless if it is “improved” or not.
I have to admit that I haven't reviewed your latest post that well nor streamd the movie, but look at Detriot and how could you possibly tax yourself out a problem.