St. Louis’ Ballpark Village Changing Mix, Includes New Centene HQ

This past Summer the Missouri Supreme Court told the City of Clayton and the Centene Corporation their project area doesn’t meet the qualification of “blight” — therefore they could not force adjacent property owners to sell. Rebuffed by the state’s highest court, Centene began opening the doors to any and all offers. Using their number of employees — both current and projected — as a major bargaining tool, Centene had the upper hand in negotiations with those who were interested.

So this past Sunday Mayor Slay and Centene’s President jointly announced that Centene would be building a new corporate HQ building in downtown St. Louis, and in a portion of the mud hole formerly occupied by Busch Stadium II (1966-2006). This is, without a doubt, a very big deal. But to hear the Mayor and others talk about it the decision was reaffirms past decisions — such as the convention hotel and razing the historic Century Building for a parking garage. Downtown didn’t empty out overnight and the recovery was certainly underway before Mayor Slay was elected in 2001. Developers Craig Heller, John Steffen and others were already converting warehouses to living spaces. The nationally known City Museum opened in 1997 due to the vision of one elected and affluent artist, Bob Cassilly. The wheels were already in motion when Slay moved down the hall from the Board of Alderman to the Mayor’s office in 2001.

What we cannot do is create a laundry list of past decisions and definitively conclude these are all responsible for downtown’s turn around. Take the convention hotel, for example. I’m really glad the old hotel at the SE corner of 9th & Washington was incorporated into the project. The former lobby makes for a stunning restaurant (An American Place). But did we have to close off St. Charles street with the monolithic parking garage in the process? The convention hotel has struggled to make its debt payments and reserves have been nearly depleted. Occupancy rates, however, are increasing. In the end it probably was a good decision to supplement the convention center with a hotel — we had to do something to save it. But this does not mean that the final design was the best choice to make — that different design decisions might have connected more of downtown together and had better results.

We are in a time when people are simply bored with their lives in the suburbs. The baby boomers dutifully raised their children in the ever expanding suburbs — it was perceived as the right thing to do and their parents certainly approved. But now their kids have families or are perhaps off to college so those boomers don’t need the big house on a half acre lot anymore. They are finally ready to have some fun, travel, walk and see things. The kids of the boomers, having grown up in the burbs, are also seeking a more interesting lifestyle. They are staying single longer and waiting to have kids longer than their parents and grandparents generation. As a result, suburban municipalities across the country are scrambling to build walkable town centers to keep a hold on their tax base. These suburban areas, like Creve Coeur in the St. Louis region, is realizing they cannot survive simply on large single family detached homes, the occasional apartment complex and the arterial lined with generic strip centers. Suburban communities that once placed minimums on the size of residential units are dropping or lowering them so that people can stay in the area but still be able to downsize. St. Louis’ Mayor Slay did not create these conditions.

Of course you can’t blame the Mayor for attempting to put a good PR spin on changing demographics that are naturally working in the city’s favor. Part of his job is to market the city and a major past obstacle has been about perception. The Slay administration, to their credit, has been working overtime to change the perception of downtown and the city. Unfortunately, they’ve done nothing to change the perception of how business is conducted. If anything, they’ve reinforced negative ideas about back room deals and he with the most money gets what they want.

Back to Ballpark Village and Centene. We all knew, several years ago, that something was going to get constructed on the site of the old stadium. The Cardinals would never leave a big hole next to their new stadium. The Cardinals, developer Cordish, the City and the State have been in continual discussions about the various components and how much of the tab the tax payers should fund for developing this private land.  One of the things that has annoyed me is the claim of it being six city blocks in size.  I took exception to that, saying it was only 3 city blocks — 3 blocks east to west and one block north to south —Broadway (5th) to 8th and Walnut to Clark.  I wasn’t around when the street grid changed back in the 60s so I looked at a map from a recent used book to prove my point.  Turns out, I didn’t know about Elm.

I’ve circled the area above that is the Ballpark Village site.  Clark used to jog a bit at 7th.  Clark, if you recall, was closed from 1966-2006 with the previous stadium.  With the current stadium Spruce, formerly open, is now closed.  But as you can see in this pre-urban renewal map, a street called Elm used to run between Clark and Walnut.  So originally it was divided into five blocks, not three and not six.  Given the shape of Clark today — going around the north edge of the stadium, the total area is a bit less than it was back in the day.  Also, I suspect that Elm was sorta like St. Charles Street or Lucas St — more of a wide alley.  Elm was obliterated during the massive urban renewal project in the 1960s when basically everything in the area was wiped away.

The difference however, was that back in the days of active cities the buildings turned outward toward the public streets.  All the indicators I have of BPV is that it will be like a mall only without a roof — it will focus inward.  But who can blame it?  To the east and west are the sterile stadium parking garages. To the north is the back side of the two-blenders on a base hotel.

Ballpark Village, with or without Centene, was going to need delivery areas.  Where will this end up?  Not in the center food court!  And certainly not along Clark next to the stadium.  No, Walnut and Broadway will likely take the brunt of the docks and trash receptacles.  Walnut will likely be no more pleasant than it is today.

And a year ago we were told of the 250 condos and 1,200 parking spaces in Phase 1 (view PDF of handout).  Now it is zero condos and 1,750 parking spaces!  The city’s new math.  And are these spaces underground?  Of course not, they are out in full display along the north edge of the inwardly focused site.   The jobs created was listed at 1,969 with salaries totaling $54.5 million (an average of just under $28K/year).  Why was this important?  To illustrate how much additional tax revenue the city would bring in due to earnings tax — $545,000/yr based on their estimates.

So now with Centene’s 1,200 jobs the city will bring in zero additional earnings tax because while Mayor Slay bent over he dropped an agreement to exempt Centene from the city’s 1% earnings tax.  Nobody likes the earnings tax but every time it is mentioned to do away with it the city claims it is necessary.  Maybe this is a clever way for Slay to eventually eliminate the tax?  Why?  Well, you think that Wachovia (A.G. Edwards) is going to bring all their new jobs to the city without a similar deal?  And the brewery, they are not going to like this.  AT&T and all the other big players are going to scream foul and they’d be right.  The little guy, however, will keep paying the tax for a long time.

I think the Mayor is right, some of these new 1,200 jobs may well translate into new city residents.   They’ll buy places with 10-year tax abatement!  Still, new residents means new local shoppers which, in our city, will be justification for new big box developments like Loughborough Commons.  Ugh.

Still I am concerned about all the cars this project will bring to such a concentrated area.  How backed up will the streets be at 8am and 5pm?  How vacant will the streets be on a Sunday afternoon?  The city should have asked for more.  For example, Ballpark Village/Centene HQ is an excellent location for a downtown bike station — a small area with showers, lockers and bike storage.  This allows office workers to bike to work, shower and get dressed for a day’s work.  A.G. Edwards provides such facilities for their employees but downtown needs this in the bigger picture.

The city could have also could suggest to Centene they not offer free parking to employees — going so far as to tell an employee they’ll get an extra $50 and a transit pass each month if they don’t take up a parking space.  It is called parking management, St. Louis study the practice sometime.  Cities like Portland OR actually set maximum numbers of parking spaces for new construction — a limited supply creates higher demand, driving up prices and encouraging alternate modes.  St. Louis is still in the ‘we can’t have too much parking’ mode of thinking that has ravaged our downtown for decades.

So while I am pleased the Slay administration & the Cardinals/Cordish team managed to land the Centene HQ for downtown I’m wondering if the price was too high.  If you give enough away we could attract many more jobs, residents and retailers but at some point the numbers don’t add up to a net positive.  Once the initial hype and popping of champagne corks settles down perhaps we’ll get a clearly picture of the deal.