Suburban Office Park Buildings Don’t Belong Downtown
The building on the NW corner of 10th & Convention Plaza (formerly Delmar) is better suited for a suburban office park.
The mirrored glass, generic design, parking out front (39 spaces) was commonplace in 1987, the year the building was built. Located one block north of Washington Ave., this building is a good example of how wrong we went in downtown St. Louis.
When built the convention center, one block east, was just 10 years old. Convention Plaza led to the entrance at the time, the entry was pushed out to Washington Ave in the early 1990s.
This building, once considered the future, is now part of one horrible suburban pocket adjacent to the good part of downtown. This building will be 25 years old next year but I can’t see the owners planning a new skin or something to infill the large corner parking lot. Without a strong effort to fix past mistakes, this section of downtown will remain dead.
– Steve Patterson
I think this was an unfortunate moment when numerous cities were happy for any development as these are evident in many a city.
Some of downtown's largest employers have sprawling campusus: Anheuser Busch, Wells Fargo, Ralston, and Ameren. I'll take the workers if it means they're on a campus setting.
None of those companies are downtown.
Only when you narrowly define downtown. Lots of people think of the whole city of STL as downtown, especially close in places like Soulard and Jefferson and Market.
I agree with you. Most people see the City of St. Louis as being Downtown. This post is not “narrowly defining” Downtown, it is correctly defining Downtown.
One great thing about St. Louis is its many and varied neighborhoods, with Downtown being just one of them. I live on 17th St. and am in Downtown West.
It's not that big of a deal, really. But to those who are truly interested in St. Louis, Midtown Alley is not Downtown just as St. Charles is not Chesterfield. =p
I'm not suggesting sending these jobs to the county, but wouldn't you agree that any structure in the downtown CBD needs to add to the streetscape and vibrancy of the street grid?
I'm not sure this building had to be set off from the street and given a clear “suburban” feel to attract whatever jobs the building has brought to the City.
I agree with you; this building was constructed when the city had an inferiority complex and believed it could only compete if it became suburban.
I would bet that when designed this building was being constructed on a large vacant lot, planned for onsite parking, with large floor plates and a suburban feel. They succeeded! It was never intended to part of an urban street grid, although it is close to everything downtown. The development provides convenient, downtown office space. I'd also bet that most of the workers arrive in single occupancy vehicles and that they commute to work from outside of the city limits. I have no idea what companies are housed there, but suffice it to say, in this case, if indeed these are private companies, the businesses have chosen to locate in downtown St. Louis instead of anywhere else in the region. As a city taxpayer, I'm happy about their decision.
Right, this building was clearly never intended to be apart of the urban street grid. The building looks suburban and “outta” place in the city.
I'm also glad that someone chose to develop Downtown. Gosh knows we need to grow the tax base. I'm a City resident as well. But there is nothing wrong with requiring that new development meet reasonable guildlines to remain congruent with the larger community in which the development is going into. There are many examples of good urban design that are convenient for auto commuters that would have the same amenities this building provides.
According to Google Maps, it's an office building for St. Louis Public Schools Special Services: Security. So they didn't have much choice in location, but you'd think a city department with an abundance of beautiful, underutilized buildings throughout the city could take a lesson from Wm. B. Ittner et. al, and commission an office building that's both attractive and well-suited to its urban surroundings. Of course, you can't really blame the aesthetics since postmodernism was the trend of the times…(ugh!)
This is probably all true, but when did attracting tenets have to mean building junk? Could it not have been designed better?
We settle too often in this city and in this country. We need to hold a higher standard.
Money talks. Every tenant has multiple options, and to many outside the design professions (and many inside), close, secure, free parking trumps historic character and an inflexible interior layout. Buildings like these are “no-brainers” – they work at a lowest-common-denominator level for many MBA's and bean counters.
I don't think anyone commenting knows the context of that time. The convention center had wiped out several buildings (including a 15+-story anchor convention hotel) and all the blocks north of the back of Washington Ave. had become either open space or parking lots. The building in question was built on a lot that was a combination of both.
Further, the buildings that were in the immediate area had grown into a “campus” for Sverdrup & Parcel starting at what's now the St. Patrick's Center and moving east. The 1005 building was constructed as overflow for Mercantile-now-US Bank, opening up some Class A space in the tower and consolidating jobs from three other spread-out buildings downtown.
It's all well and good to wish they'd constructed mid- or high-rises, but there wasn't any demand for that. And then Sverdrup got bought out and all of the nearby buildings emptied out and eventually became low-rent magnets for not-for-profits.
Anyway, although that building is butt-ugly, it's occupied (although probably not as densely as first planned). And downtown office space overall is well below capacity. We need to fill up the middle of downtown before we worry about the edges.
(BTW, although Nestle, Wells Fargo and Ameren aren't technically downtown, they are counted into the oft-quoted figure of 90,000 or whatever for downtown employment.)
They still shoulda considered the urban context better. I personally don't think the building is ugly. I just don't like what it (and others like it) do to the streetscape. I would not even suggest that the building should be x-stories tall, just that the pedestrian experience should be taken as seriously as other design concerns.
The whole notion that the county should come to the city is ludicrous to me…lol…In another vein, who couldn't have predicted the demise of a surburban mall in the CBD. Why on earth would any county resident pay to drive and park downtown to find basically the same stores that are in county malls? I seriously wonder what the thought process was at the time! There was and is plenty of suburban then and now. Why build more of it in the CBD? Did anyone ever really believe that city suburbia would be able to compete with suburban suburbia?
I'm not a conspiracy theorist; the world is much too complicated for that. But one has to wonder if some of these developers did know what they were doing and intentionally tried to degrade the urban experience? How do you really account for “suburbanizing the urban”?
Travel a couple of blocks further north and west and you basically find Earth City on the near north side. Mega blocks with large office/warehouses lining Dr. Martin Luther King Drive.
St. Louis had 50 years of disinvestment leading to lots of vacant land to reuse with very low demand.
With the clarity of 20/20 hindsight, it's really easy to criticize and second-guess. When this and many other buildings were being built, it WAS a different time, one where the “traditional”, “urban” answers were not working, as in tenants were not signing leases and vacant buildings were not selling for what they should have. Owners/developers were willing to try something different, and going suburban was a logical conclusion since that's where many city people were choosing to move. Yeah, now it seems like not the wisest solution, but back then it was, or at least most people thought so.
Bigger picture, we need to reach consensus on how to best move forward. Do we live with existing zoning that continues to allow this? Do we move to form-based zoning? Do we require a return to the finer-grain, traditional, city grid? Or, do we allow the creation of more megablocks, better suited to suburban office parks and distribution centers? Can we convince our aldermen to push for better design in each of their wards? Or, do we fight for any scrap of development by essentially rolling over to whatever anyone wants to do?
Assuming that McKee's Northside development does move forward, how its design is vetted and integrated with the surrounding community will set the tone and the precedents for development over the next 20 years throughout much of the the city. The urban design components will be critical, and I have yet to see strong leadership from the city. The developer has said many of the right things, so far, but like they say, it's not over until the fat lady sings. I've seen too many good plans compromised over the years, when a real project conflicts with academic vision, to trust that we won't get much more than the lowest common denominator.
The building could actually be built out to fill the block. Perhaps the glass is half full.
Thank You!
This building could have been pushed up to the sidewalk. Maybe change the design of the building to a U shape so it allows for parking in the “U” and hiding the parking lot from the street.
I think the argument is about about constructing something, suburban in design or not, that relates to the street. That building isn't really even a “campus” the way I see them. Just a building with a parking lot in front.
Keep the building looking exactly the same, suburban office park design, and just push the front entrance up to the sidewalk.
If you have a parking lot, whatever door that faces the parking lot will be the real “front” door, no matter if you make a grand architectural statement facing the public sidewalk, or not. One semi-downtown example is the Schlafly Tap Room – see which of the two entrances gets 90% of the use!
We still build single family homes with front doors and grand front facades even though most people use the garage entrance. Why? Because that's how houses are supposed to look! We want our homes to put their best, welcoming face forward to the community around them.
What would be wrong with having a grand architectural statement that is seen be each and every driver headed to the building AND seen by each and every driver passing by the building? And having an entrance that meets teh needs of parking in the rear?
It seems to me architecture is as much about form as it is about function. Neglect either and a bad result is created. A building can make a statement to the city at large while still providing for the needs of drivers.
I see no need to destory the urban fabric of the CBD to ensure drivers are able to use the front door.
The real issue is not the driver, it's the surface parking lot. The two better urban solutions are structured parking and virtual parking. Putting parking below grade or above an occupied first floor maintains a natural, logical public entrance at grade. Putting parking offsite and using public transit does that as well, plus it energizes the larger streetscape by putting pedestrians on the streets. In contrast, wrapping surface parking with an office building(s) also runs into the reality/physical impossibility that a car occupies 2-3 times more space than an office or cubicle does.
I agree, this is an atrocious bit of architecture for the downtown area. No consideration for context, tradition or sense of place. Architects frustrate the hell out of me all too often.