Poll: Thoughts on the Plan to Raze Jamestown Mall and build a New Urbanist Village?
Jamestown Mall (map link) isn’t even 40 years old but St. Louis County officials are ready to put it out of it’s misery:
Jamestown Mall opened in 1973 offering regional commercial merchandise on the suburban fringe of St. Louis, in anticipation of residential development moving into the area. The anticipated residential units never materialized and unfortunately, in recent years, new regional shopping destinations that are located closer to larger populations of shoppers have degraded the effective trade area of Jamestown Mall, causing a decline in sales and foot traffic. Over time, the quality of merchandise offered has declined and is now misaligned with the needs of the North County community. Today, although two of the mall’s anchor buildings are occupied, its other two anchor buildings are vacant and portions of the mall have been walled off to reduce the appearance of vacant space. (Executive Summary PDF)
The idea is to raze most of the mall and build a New Urbanist village following one of four concepts: The traditional neighborhood development plan, the garden suburb plan, the central common plan, or the park & village plan:
The Traditional Neighborhood Development Plan features a block and street network creating a complete village. A diverse village center is focused on the northwest parcel and could extend to the plaza at the center of the neighborhood. This scenario develops the site fully including the southern parcel by Coldwater Creek. The operating anchor stores remain as the village center and neighborhoods develop around them. If the existing anchor stores close, the parcels can be redeveloped to create a more complete neighborhood. As with the other scenarios, a diversity of housing is offered including townhomes, live/ work units, duplexes, multi-family buildings and small homes on private lots.
The Garden Suburb Plan features curvilinear streets, center median boulevards, and larger parks and retention areas throughout the village. Neighborhoods are planned around a network of enhanced natural systems that connect throughout the site and to the natural flowways of Coldwater Creek through the open space systems of neighboring subdivisions. Retail is contained within the northwest parcel, resulting in a focused amount of neighborhood retail. The plan identifies a potential location for a sports complex prominently on Lindbergh Boulevard. The southern portion of the site is illustrated with an amphitheater and a large park that would connect to the Great Rivers Greenway trail system.
The Central Common Plan starts with the premise that all of the mall property comes under single ownership of a master developer. This scenario allows the property to be developed in a manner irrespective of the existing property lines, roadways, underlying infrastructure, and buildings. With more freedom to form plan geometries, a larger central gathering space surrounded by shops and townhomes, similar to Lafayette Square in St. Louis, could be possible. It should be stated that any of the four scenarios would benefit from and could be implemented under single ownership and a master developer.
The Park & Village Plan is one in which portions of the site are transformed into a regional park while others are cleared of their existing conditions to reduce blight, but are held until economic conditions are more favorable to development. The northwest parcel could develop with a small village center with a neighborhood serving retail and expand in the future. Farming may continue on the eastern outparcels. This scenario could be considered an interim stage to the other development scenarios.
The St. Louis County Economic Council has detailed information on the proposal here.
Alex Ihnen writing at NextSTL has advocated a “no build” option, taking a hands-off approach:
Reinventing suburbia is sexy somehow. I guess we have a general idea that something’s wrong with it. But this reinvisioning never really touches on roads or cul-de-sac neighborhoods, no, when we talk of a new suburbia we’re speaking of rebuilding retail. Add in a couple apartments and voila, it’s a Live-Work-Play (maybe even Pray) community. It’s also a ridiculous and wasteful idea.
No where is this absurdity highlighted more than with the current effort to build a new development on the 142-acre Jamestown Mall site. Â (THE NO BUILD ALTERNATIVE FOR JAMESTOWN MALL)
The Post-Dispatch touching on doubt for the proposal:
Jamestown Mall, after all, is still open. It has a Macy’s and a J.C. Penney outlet, a movie theater and perhaps two dozen stores along its cavernous concourses. County leaders say they want to involve those businesses in whatever comes next. The site itself is owned by five different entities, in nine chunks. Assembling the land under one owner would make redevelopment easier but will cost money. And the development itself could cost $300 million, according to a rough estimate attached to the plan. (STLToday: Makeover for Jamestown Mall is unveiled)
The reality is 142 acres is a very large site and five ownership entities isn’t that many. The land has been developed for nearly 40 years but the five owners couldn’t do anything different with the site without significant changes to the outdated Euclidean zoning in the region, and that site specifically.
The proposed replacement of this dead mall is the topic of the poll this week. Â To vote see the upper right of the site. Â On June 8th I will post the poll results and give my reasons for supporting the New Urbanist village concept.
– Steve Patterson
Planners have done worse things. Â
Planners have done worse things. Â
Planners have done worse things.
I believe the Macy’s and JC Penny outlet are both to be closed in the near future if not mistaken. Time to bulldoze as any box store or mall in this case were never built with four decades in mind. Unfortunately, we keep way to many of them in place while building too many more.
Yes, five owners isn’t very many. But I doubt that it is as simple as each having a parcel of land within the 142 acres. Instead, it is probably a complicated contract based on revenues to be generated, how much each owner is entitled too for profits and just as important, who has what liabilities or another way to put it. Who is losing out on a property that is becoming ever more vacant and generating less revenues.
I believe the Macy’s and JC Penny outlet are both to be closed in the near future if not mistaken. Time to bulldoze as any box store or mall in this case were never built with four decades in mind. Unfortunately, we keep way to many of them in place while building too many more.
Yes, five owners isn’t very many. But I doubt that it is as simple as each having a parcel of land within the 142 acres. Instead, it is probably a complicated contract based on revenues to be generated, how much each owner is entitled too for profits and just as important, who has what liabilities or another way to put it. Who is losing out on a property that is becoming ever more vacant and generating less revenues.
The “master developer” model is part of the problem. Long-term successful places have many owners and can reinvent themselves on the fly when necessary. Nice walkable streets as part of some managed master development is almost as much a setup for failure as Jamestown mall was 30 years ago.
The “master developer” model is part of the problem. Long-term successful places have many owners and can reinvent themselves on the fly when necessary. Nice walkable streets as part of some managed master development is almost as much a setup for failure as Jamestown mall was 30 years ago.
The “master developer” model is part of the problem. Long-term successful places have many owners and can reinvent themselves on the fly when necessary. Nice walkable streets as part of some managed master development is almost as much a setup for failure as Jamestown mall was 30 years ago.
Location, location, location.  I’ve only been out there once, but my take is that it’s not a great regional retail location since it’s not on any major freeways, nor near many new subdivisions. Downsizing the retail part and building more residential probably is the best development scenario, but doesn’t help replace all of the sales tax revenue the mall once generated.
Location, location, location. I’ve only been out there once, but my take is that it’s not a great regional retail location since it’s not on any major freeways, nor near many new subdivisions. Downsizing the retail part and building more residential probably is the best development scenario, but doesn’t help replace all of the sales tax revenue the mall once generated.
Have to agree, but it was also bet by the developers at the time it was built on which way growth was going to happen. The best case I can think of is my Uncle’s architect firm designing a mall betwee Fargo, ND and West Fargo of all places and were paid in part with the surrounding farmland. They couldn’t stomach it after a decade of seeing the same farmland. A couple of decades out it was a very differrent story and my Uncle’s missed out on the windfall
For Jamestown Mall, undodubtly growth, levees and the freeways that go with it went West and Missouri intentially for whatever reason decided not to exploit the floodplain between Missouri and Mississpi on the way to Alton. I think it might be a different story if Hwy 367 was built into a true four lane freeway all the way to the Alton Mississippi bridge.
One of the poll options says “New Urbanism is Artificial Urbanism”. This is frustratingly true, but it doesn’t have to be. Duany, Plater-Zyberk, Moule, Polyzoides, Calthorpe, Solomon et al have little desire to test the theory beyond the suburban laboratory. In a recent 30 year anniversary issue of Metropolis magazine (April, 2011), the editors invited several luminaries considered most associated with a genre or idea to author a chapter on their recognized aspect of the evolution of architecture & design since 1981. In Duany’s chapter (http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20110414/new-urbanism-the-case-for-looking-beyond-style), he bristles at the reality that enduring criticism of NU has been that it has historically failed to provide any meaningful transformation of inner city areas, then offers the example of Hope VI replacement of high-rise social housing estates.
If this is the best that can be expected from NU, while the planners continue to rake in millions in consultancy fees laying out the colorful replacements for dead malls or chasing ambulances (a la southern Mississippi after Katrina), then the criticism is well-deserved. When I saw Duany speak back in the early 1990s, he was skewering the ‘burbs in the same way that many of us do now, much to the delight of the audience who laughed aplenty at his humorous jabs at snout houses and side yards, but he and the others mentioned above have not done much more than effect a lateral move for those convinced that their typical suburban life was not as fulfilling as the ones they could live in a walkable ‘town’. Those that live in New Town previously lived in those typical burbs, and while the physical form of much of NT is preferable to the conventional suburban model, it’s obviously just another disconnected subdivision where culturally homogenous folks park SUVs in rear, detached garages. Its position in the metro area is not unlike any subdivision in Chesterfield that has its cliche pair of curved stone entry monuments, and carved wood signs with ridiculous names like Pheasant Way, or Oaken Meadows.
The form-based models of land development are excellent, and I will thank the CNU for the creation and advancement of the templates that can easily be followed to improve inner city areas and certainly should replace current Euclidean (from Euclid v. Ambler, and not geometry) zoning model that has effed up just about everything. Personally, the Jamestown Mall is nowhere near anything of vital importance in walking distance, so if the mall is removed the ‘improvement’ of the land could just as easily be a return to natural condition, as argued for by Alex Inhen and some others at NextSTL. I don’t really care if this mall is replaced with New Town East or Black Jack Village, but nothing will have been learned by the repeated lab experiment and the region won’t see any significan improvement because of it.
One of the poll options says “New Urbanism is Artificial Urbanism”. This is frustratingly true, but it doesn’t have to be. Duany, Plater-Zyberk, Moule, Polyzoides, Calthorpe, Solomon et al have little desire to test the theory beyond the suburban laboratory. In a recent 30 year anniversary issue of Metropolis magazine (April, 2011), the editors invited several luminaries considered most associated with a genre or idea to author a chapter on their recognized aspect of the evolution of architecture & design since 1981. In Duany’s chapter (http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20110414/new-urbanism-the-case-for-looking-beyond-style), he bristles at the reality that enduring criticism of NU has been that it has historically failed to provide any meaningful transformation of inner city areas, then offers the example of Hope VI replacement of high-rise social housing estates.
If this is the best that can be expected from NU, while the planners continue to rake in millions in consultancy fees laying out the colorful replacements for dead malls or chasing ambulances (a la southern Mississippi after Katrina), then the criticism is well-deserved. When I saw Duany speak back in the early 1990s, he was skewering the ‘burbs in the same way that many of us do now, much to the delight of the audience who laughed aplenty at his humorous jabs at snout houses and side yards, but he and the others mentioned above have not done much more than effect a lateral move for those convinced that their typical suburban life was not as fulfilling as the ones they could live in a walkable ‘town’. Those that live in New Town previously lived in those typical burbs, and while the physical form of much of NT is preferable to the conventional suburban model, it’s obviously just another disconnected subdivision where culturally homogenous folks park SUVs in rear, detached garages. Its position in the metro area is not unlike any subdivision in Chesterfield that has its cliche pair of curved stone entry monuments, and carved wood signs with ridiculous names like Pheasant Way, or Oaken Meadows.
The form-based models of land development are excellent, and I will thank the CNU for the creation and advancement of the templates that can easily be followed to improve inner city areas and certainly should replace current Euclidean (from Euclid v. Ambler, and not geometry) zoning model that has effed up just about everything. Personally, the Jamestown Mall is nowhere near anything of vital importance in walking distance, so if the mall is removed the ‘improvement’ of the land could just as easily be a return to natural condition, as argued for by Alex Inhen and some others at NextSTL. I don’t really care if this mall is replaced with New Town East or Black Jack Village, but nothing will have been learned by the repeated lab experiment and the region won’t see any significan improvement because of it.
I have to agree with JZ that the location is dubious. I remember when it was built and it seemed to be a stretch even then. To me the real problem is the structural shape of the urban environment in the region and surrounding area. Simply dropping an urban form onto this site may not work. There is nothing to compliment it in the surrounding community. For it to be successful probably requires a comprehensive philosophy about the evolution of urban planning in the environment surrounding this dead mall and how it will strengthen any decisions made over a period of time.
Of course we are way past the point new discussions about urban planning anyway. (Oil is choking us, global warming is becoming real to even the biggest deniers) Unless there is an attempt make sense of new initiatives at the mall dovetailed with new thinking about urban planning in the community and region, they might as well demo the mall and turn it back into a soybean field, or better yet market gardens.
I have to agree with JZ that the location is dubious. I remember when it was built and it seemed to be a stretch even then. To me the real problem is the structural shape of the urban environment in the region and surrounding area. Simply dropping an urban form onto this site may not work. There is nothing to compliment it in the surrounding community. For it to be successful probably requires a comprehensive philosophy about the evolution of urban planning in the environment surrounding this dead mall and how it will strengthen any decisions made over a period of time.
Of course we are way past the point new discussions about urban planning anyway. (Oil is choking us, global warming is becoming real to even the biggest deniers) Unless there is an attempt make sense of new initiatives at the mall dovetailed with new thinking about urban planning in the community and region, they might as well demo the mall and turn it back into a soybean field, or better yet market gardens.
Looks to me like St. Louis Mills Mall in Hazelwood is in the same situation. Way out in the middle of nowhere with development unlikely to build up to it. It too will be outdated in 15 or so years.
Looks to me like St. Louis Mills Mall in Hazelwood is in the same situation. Way out in the middle of nowhere with development unlikely to build up to it. It too will be outdated in 15 or so years.
Jamestown Mall is isolated; there are still farm fields across the road from it (not a bad thing). You would think that a mall would spur development around it in 40 years, wouldn’t you? Bad locations can’t be fixed overnight.
Jamestown Mall is isolated; there are still farm fields across the road from it (not a bad thing). You would think that a mall would spur development around it in 40 years, wouldn’t you? Bad locations can’t be fixed overnight.
Have to agree, but it was also bet by the developers at the time it was built on which way growth was going to happen. The best case I can think of is my Uncle’s architect firm designing a mall betwee Fargo, ND and West Fargo of all places and were paid in part with the surrounding farmland. They couldn’t stomach it after a decade of seeing the same farmland. A couple of decades out it was a very differrent story and my Uncle’s missed out on the windfallÂ
For Jamestown Mall, undodubtly growth, levees and the freeways that go with it went West and Missouri intentially for whatever reason decided not to exploit the floodplain between Missouri and Mississpi on the way to Alton.  I think it might be a different story if Hwy 367 was built into a true four lane freeway all the way to the Alton Mississippi bridge.Â
Why did they call it the Jamestown Mall? Were there early settlers there hewing logs and burning witches?
Why did they call it the Jamestown Mall? Were there early settlers there hewing logs and burning witches?
That is good farm land. The river is only a few miles north. There was a parking stop off and a short walk through the woods to the river. I have no idea if it is still around, it has been decades since I have been in that area.
The new proposed mall at Maryland Heights and Creve Coeur Park is a twist on a similar theme. No doubt (not mentioned) excessive public subsidies are available. It is to be built on bottom land, the soulful crime of history. The idea is a joke, but one that the front loaded money changers will benefit from when the joke is complete.
One only has to view this proposed mall on the bottom land in Maryland Heights to understand how totally bankrupt government has become. Decisions that benefit and fill the pockets of the few are embraced, no matter how useless they are at this time.
Lets see the urban planning arguments, the transportation issues that warrant the project in Maryland Heights and the one at Jamestown Mall are weak or nonexistent. At least Jamestown Mall is physically available, but so is Crestwood Mall and other failing malls in St Louis (Northwest Plaza, River Roads, Union Station etc).
Government leadership is dead. Questions the county have about Jamestown Mall are great on the surface. but if rigorous debate does not follow the Maryland Heights Mall then comments on Jamestown are merely a charade to distract everyone from policies that are doomed to failure and that enrich a few.
Truly a Mall in the bottoms next to Creve Coeur Park is an exercise of a worthless government giving their all to succeed for the select few.
There is no calculating how obscene a Mall would be in this location. The reasons are endless.
It no doubt matches questions that were not asked when Jamestown Mall was built and that have led to its failure.
That is good farm land. The river is only a few miles north. There was a parking stop off and a short walk through the woods to the river. I have no idea if it is still around, it has been decades since I have been in that area.
The new proposed mall at Maryland Heights and Creve Coeur Park is a twist on a similar theme. No doubt (not mentioned) excessive public subsidies are available. It is to be built on bottom land, the soulful crime of history. The idea is a joke, but one that the front loaded money changers will benefit from when the joke is complete.
One only has to view this proposed mall on the bottom land in Maryland Heights to understand how totally bankrupt government has become. Decisions that benefit and fill the pockets of the few are embraced, no matter how useless they are at this time.
Lets see the urban planning arguments, the transportation issues that warrant the project in Maryland Heights and the one at Jamestown Mall are weak or nonexistent. At least Jamestown Mall is physically available, but so is Crestwood Mall and other failing malls in St Louis (Northwest Plaza, River Roads, Union Station etc).
Government leadership is dead. Questions the county have about Jamestown Mall are great on the surface. but if rigorous debate does not follow the Maryland Heights Mall then comments on Jamestown are merely a charade to distract everyone from policies that are doomed to failure and that enrich a few.
Truly a Mall in the bottoms next to Creve Coeur Park is an exercise of a worthless government giving their all to succeed for the select few.
There is no calculating how obscene a Mall would be in this location. The reasons are endless.
It no doubt matches questions that were not asked when Jamestown Mall was built and that have led to its failure.