St Louis Centre; Different Owners, Different Standards

In 2005 the failed downtown mall, St. Louis Centre, was at the center of Mayor Slay’s priorities. At the time the Mayor and others were busy pushing Centre owner Barry Cohen to tear down the sky bridge that crosses over Washington Ave and move forward with redevelopment.

From the Mayor’s blog on Sept 25, 2005:

Stories in the business pages last week confirm the obvious. Barry Cohen, the owner of St. Louis Centre, is stalled. After a summer of fumbling, Mr. Cohen lost the funding proferred by Downtown Now’s Tom Reeves to demolish the skybridge.

Since purchasing the downtown mall more than a year ago, Mr. Cohen has promised, announced, floated, and projected some plans – none of which has come to anything. It is not clear to me whether he is hapless or canny, hoping for a profit on the $5.4 million the Biz Journal says he paid for the property.

Whatever.

As Tom Reeves told us, there’s plenty else to do Downtown. Meanwhile, we’ll keep sending Mr. Cohen those tax bills.

Wow, he had the mall for a whole year and the mayor calls him out. Slay supporter, now former developer John Steffen, was treated differently from day one:

Friday, February 17, 2006

This is a note to every developer hoping to be able to make a deal in the City and to every citizen hoping for redevelopment: John Steffen has announced ambitious plans to turn St. Louis Centre and the One City Centre office building into a mixed-use development.

These plans are possible because a public/private team, including Barb Geisman, Rodney Crim, Rollin Stanley, and Tom Reeves, kept their eyes on the goal line — not the headlines.

Not every real estate transaction can be negotiated in a blog.

I congratulate Barb, Rodney, Rollin, and Tom for their discipline — and I wish John good luck in getting this done.

This was well over two years ago and today the mall is totally vacant and the bridge still hovers over the street. Pyramid is out as developer with their equity partner Spinnaker taking over the now very stalled project. In fact, as reported here a week ago, Steffen and his company are out of the development business completely. Does this mean that Geisman and company dropped the ball? Were they all too cozy with Steffen?

Oh wait they did manage to give Steffen a sweetheart deal — a TIF backed by the city’s general revenues. That was also in 2006.

In the year and a half since then we’ve seen only slick marketing — drawing a line around a few blocks and calling it a district, The Mercantile Exchange or MX for short. That is almost as clever as the cards calling Ballpark Village a six block area (Broadway/5th to 8th and Clark to Walnut is 3 blocks no matter how many times they say otherwise).

So my question is this —does the city-backed TIF deal run with the property regardless of who takes over? If so, how long does Spinnaker have to complete the project? A year? Five years? A decade?

I think Steffen wanted this project so the city put up roadblocks for Cohen so he’d be forced to sell to Steffen.

Finally on Wednesday KMOX reported Pyramid’s story with greater detail and certainty than I had last Friday:

The developer of major St. Louis projects…St. Louis Centre and the former Dillard’s building, in the Mercantile exchange project…is getting out of the development business. Pyramid Construction’s John Steffen made the announcement through Steffen’s attorney Attorney Steven Goldstein… Problems in the real estate lending market are the main reason. Goldstein says Pyramid is currently working with other developers, investors, lenders and the city to make a transition for its development projects…but will continue to operate it’s property management division…which oversees a thousand apartment units in the city and surrounding area.

For someone with $609 million in development on his plate, Steffen has gone on a crash diet. Two years ago Steffen had this to say;

“We literally have more people offering to finance us than we have projects to finance,” Steffen said. “I need more projects because I have banks wanting to do business with me.”

Our city’s leaders bought Steffen’s hype. Or did Steffen buy off their better judgment with generous campaign contributions and illusions of success? Regardless our leadership has once again failed us. They claim Steffen was a victim of the current crisis but the roots of this go way back (see my post from June 2006) .
Perhaps we would have been better off giving Cohen a chance to prove himself? Of course then many of us wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the fancy parties thrown by Steffen for each project he announced. We sold out for some sushi.

I do hope all their projects are assumed by others and that they perform well. I also hope the next time we’ve got a developer bragging about his ability to get financing that we recognize the red flags.

I Have Missed This View, on KDHX Monday

Just days prior to my stroke I took a series of pictures from my balcony and from the shared rooftop space:

Above is the view from my balcony looking North. I’ve been away for nearly three months now but I know the view is unchanged. CPI Corp. hasn’t built a new building on their surface parking lot (that would be nice).

A guy was found murdered in the parking garage of the Ventana (right above).

The view is still in place for my return to St Louis and back to my own place.

Tune in Monday evening at 7pm on 88.1 or online at kdhx.org and I will talk about my rehabilitation, the date I return to St. Louis (soon) and share details on a welcome back party in my honor. I’ll also talk about being disabled and what life is like in a wheelchair.  Of course host DJ Wilson and I will talk about current development issues in St Louis.

The Video Store, Now in the Parking Lot

In the years that we’ve had video we’ve had video stores. Traditionally these have been brick & mortar stores. As I pointed out in November, local video stores are closing. With rentals from places like Netflix and iTunes who needs to drive to a store.

Companies like Redbox are bringing small video distribution machines to local stores like Shop-N-Save and McDonalds. In other parts of the country these have been placed outdoors.

Above is probably the only video rental place in the small town of Mt. Vernon, MO. The sad part is that it isn’t a place at all.

These are also located in Oklahoma City and likely in every city that doesn’t ban outdoor vending machines.

Above: Redbox rental outside a new McDonalds in suburban Oklahoma City. As this is an entirely new facility they could have found room indoors —the decision to place it outdoors was on purpose. On the plus side this offers the consumer access at times other than when the McDonalds is open.

My fear is that we replaced our main streets at first with suburban strip centers and drive-thrus. Now we are seeing the strip mall fail with walk-up kiosks in parking lots replacing full stores.

Above is the new main street of suburbia.

While the Redbox kiosk is convenient, it fails to help create any sort of meaningful space on the par with a good walkable commercial district. Our cars help isolate us from these dreary spaces — who’d want to walk here?

So the question is should municipalities ban exterior vending machines like soda machines or video rental machines? Should they only be allowed when built-in like a walk-up bank ATM? Should their number be limited based on some sort of formula. Are these visual clutter or just a fact of modern life? I personally think they are clutter and I don’t like seeing a Coke machine outside a store. Still I am reluctant to advocate a total ban except as part of a new urban form-based zoning code. However, allowing this to continue is only going to further denigrate our public & private spaces.

Pyramid sold former Sears site last year

For much of 2006 Pyramid was trying to swap the former S, Grand Sears site with McDonalds, but strong opposition from those that would be directly impacted by having a drive-thru closer to their homes raised a fuss — I helped too.    In the end the McDonalds closed.

The senior housing center Pyramid wanted to build on the site of the old McDonalds at Grand and Chippewa was then planned for the old Sears site across the street that they already owned. Owned as in past tense.

Property records indicate Pyramid sold that property (3708 S. Grand) and others on Oct 12th last year for $361,869. The properties are now titled with Pyramid’s name as well as “c/o Grand Future Realty LLC.” Grand Future Realty LLC is the owner of the adjacent building at 3722 S, Grand, which it purchased on 6/28/06 for $275,000. The registered agent and both organizers are from St Charles.
With Pyramid’s shut down last Friday it raises questions about the future of this project and others.  The property transfer raises questions about who all is involved in the project and who we might look to for its completion.

Downtown Springfield, MO, a follow-up visit & rehab update

Not even being a patient in a rehab hospital will prevent me from getting out and about. This past weekend my two older nieces and their mom came up from Oklahoma City to visit me. On Saturday they indulged me and we headed eastbound on I-44 to Springfield, MO. My last post on Springfield was nearly three years ago — from when I was there for a class to get certified as a bicycle safety instructor.

Our first stop was to satisfy my nieces’ husbands — we stopped at a Brown Derby Liquor store to get some He’Brew beer so they could take it back to them. It was here that I saw something a bit odd.

A bike rack at a liquor store.

Personally I think we need to have bike parking everywhere, including liquor stores. Such parking could serve employees as well as customers. However the way this rack is mounted up on that curb I think it reduces some of the utility — perhaps it works ok in practice.

Our real destination was downtown and the Park Central Square (see map).

According to When Missouri Took The Trolley by Andrew Young, Springfield’s first horse drawn trolley line originated in the Square, opening on April 15, 1881. In short order additional lines would open— most converging on the square but heading different directions. Eventually electric lines replaced horses for powering the vehicles. St. Louis investors were among some of the early backers of these lines.

St Louis based developer Kevin McGowan and his company Blue Urban have plans to convert the old Heer’s Department store (above) into lofts. Several other smaller buildings on the square have already been converted and at sidewalk level are a couple of coffee houses. A hip new public library branch is open in one of the storefront spaces.

Around a portion of the square remains an earlier attempt to revitalize the area — a concrete canopy that once encircled the square. Facades of once beautiful buildings were blocked by this attempt to give the area a uniform open air mall look. Thankfully this awning has been removed from the other three corners.

The Square’s center is still a bit on the dated side. It was a nice day while we were there but we saw few people out.

Despite the dated appearance we ventured into the center and took time to pose for a picture — On my left is Patty and on my right is Shelley — their mom, my oldest brothers first wife, Sam, took the picture.

Well, since I am sharing personal family photos, above is me & Sam on the square. All three are Oklahoma State fans so I wore my Oklahoma University shirt to get a rise out of them — mission accomplished.

We had lunch at a cute Italian deli, St Michaels bar & grille. We didn’t have to worry about cigarette smoke since Springfield banned smoking a number of years ago — somehow the restaurants managed to stay in business. Imagine that? I guess people do go to restaurants to eat and not to smoke.

Just South of the square is one of Springfield’s more tragic buildings . I’m guessing this is actually an old building that got a horrible new skin a few decades ago. Whenever it was done, they shouldn’t have.

When I was here in 2005 the parking arrangement on South Ave was different than it is now. In 2005 the left side of the street above had angeled parking but now it is basic parallel. All parking downtown is free, a mistake in my book.

At the end of a side street, not far from the square, is a large parking garage. It seems that they left their old downtown intact but chipped away at the edges. Although Springfield is the county seat I didn’t spot the courthouse or the city hall.

After we had toured downtown Springfield it was time to head back to the hospital. Yes, that is me getting into Sam’s big gas-sucking SUV. As my right side remains strong, I was able to pull myself into the vehicle along with a little push from Patty.

That evening we went to dinner here in Mt Vernon and we decided to leave the wheelchair in the vehicle — my physical therapist had given me the OK to walk out in public as long as one of my relatives “guarded” me against falling (holding onto a gait belt around my upper torso). It felt good to walk into into a restaurant rather than being wheeled in.