Pyramid’s Claims to be “Leader in Urban Redevelopment”
John Steffen’s Pyramid Companies is trying to remake its tarnished public image. Their website is newly updated with a vision statement:
The Pyramid Companies were founded in 1992 to realize owner John Steffen’s vision to rebuild urban areas with high quality historic renovations and the construction of new homes. Today, Pyramid is the acknowledged leader of urban redevelopment in the City of St. Louis with over $500 million in projects completed or in various stages of development.
“Acknowledged leader?” Under who’s terms? Perhaps if you look solely at the total cost of the projects they are the biggest, most likely with the most tax-payer contributions. Biggest does not mean the best. What about criteria that includes urban form factor? How about neighborhoods that have long-term prospects of remaining sustainable in 50 years?
With most of Pyramid’s bigger projects located downtown in existing structures it has been nearly impossible for them to screw up the urban form. But their new construction, throughout the city, has been highly questionable.
The mission statement talks about “John Steffen’s vision to rebuild urban areas.” I think his vision is a bit cloudy. One look at Pyramid’s new Sullivan Place project, at right, and it is easy to doubt any vision other than a money making suburban one. Steffen certainly can’t think Sullivan Place represents a wonderful urban vision!
Over the years they’ve built numerous projects of questionable urbanity. Early projects included very suburban looking houses along Delmar with front-facing garages. Moving on they started and then abandoned Keystone Place. What was built there had attached garages and long driveways, a small step up from front garages. Sure, a detached garage option was listed in sales literature but customers were never shown a display from which to chose.
Next up was King Louis Square, an apartment complex trying hard to be urban but falling short on several levels such as building form and the actual architecture with its PVC molding carelessly applied to the facade. Just up the street they built Old Frenchtown, another uninspired apartment complex. Now we have La Saison, a new single family home project between King Louis Square & Old Frenchtown. In La Saison many of the homes are set far apart and nearly all are set way back from the street as if they were in suburbia. Poor detailing on the houses does not bode well for their long-term value. Pyramid had a great opportunity to create a wonderful mixed-used neighborhood where these recent projects stand yet their suburban “vision” resulted in the housing types all being segregated from each other. This land, cleared once in the 1950’s for public housing, was cleared again in the 1990’s. We should have demanded better. Although, we should have gotten better from a major developer and the city.
A true urban vision would have resulted in a greater variety of housing types, all mixed. We would have seen rental buildings next to single family homes next to attached townhouses. Granny flats over some garages could have helped create affordable rental units convenient to transportation and jobs. Commercial activity on Park in Lafayette Square should have been continued East toward Tucker. Apartments/condos over storefronts would have helped create streets people might actually walk down. As it is, this redeveloped area is clean but lifeless. Is this Steffen’s vision?
Back to propping up Pyramid’s image.
A recent St. Louis Business Journal article on Pyramid was little more than a press release. Everyone got into the act:
“We have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that John will be able to complete St. Louis Centre and the other projects he has embarked on, based on the fact that over the past five years, everything that he has said he would do in the downtown area, he has done and done on schedule,” Geisman said.
The key phrase is “in the downtown area.” Other quotes in the same article used the same ‘downtown’ qualifier. Pyramid’s downtown track record might be good but outside downtown the track record is poor, and getting worse.
– Steve
To be fair, I think Pyramid started out with reasonably good intentions. Their earlier, small-scale single-family infill sites were decent, albeit still with siding on the rear and sometimes side facades, and obviously poured concrete foundations.
But their latest new construction developments on a larger scale outside downtown are clearly not designed with longevity or blending into the landscape as serious considerations. It’s all about making money.
[REPLY – Yes, but it was their early single family homes that had front facing garages. So much for good intentions? – SLP]
I don’t know much about Pyramid’s reputation with their downtown projects, but I drove by Sullivan Place over the weekend and was truly impressed–in a bad way!
It is as bad in real life as it is in the photo above. Sadly, I was trying to get to a house on Sullivan in Old North St. Louis and found my way blocked by this monstrosity. I had to drive around it to get back on Sullivan. The drive around the “complex” made it clear that no one lives there. I think there was one car in the massive parking lot on the 3 sides of it that I saw. I figured that was a sales rep’s car since signs everywhere said the place was open.
The fence belongs around a cemetery.
Buildings around it are in various states–some in good shape, one recently collapsed. I don’t see how this monster is going to do anything good for surrounding properties. Shouldn’t urban development, especially on this scale, be a catalyst for surrounding properties?
I can’t see how this will make money in any time frame.
What you may not know about the houses on Delmar is that Pyramid was NOT the developer for that project. A group known as BFGF held the development rights – Pyramid was only the builder. Now, while this doesn’t excuse their abhorent nature, Pyramid was not entirely responsible for this one. Believe me, at the time that these were being built, very few of us at Pyramid were fond of them (I was with Pyramid from 1998 to 2004) – they were ridiculously expensive to build for what they were.
As for Sullivan Place, I wanted to put a nice group of single family homes on all that vacant land. Unfortunately, I was over-ruled, and what you see now is what we’ve got. I