Most of the new buildings along the Mall are poorly done in terms of pedestrians and commercial activity. It’s either big, useless plazas no one would ever think of using (KSDK), or a lack of street commercial, or both (Not to mention plenty of blank walls)
The city holds all of the regulation cards and also the purse strings. (I’m guessing all of the new buildings received some type of government give away), but they still cannot manage to build a lively environment for citizens and visitors.
It’s the same story repeated over and over, the latest debacle being a non responsive city to the metro link station on Grand Ave and SLU proposals, and I’m sure other future mediocre proposals in this area will come forward in due time.
But hey the desires of private property owners take precedent over building a livable city for all citizens according to some.
So what has it been, 30 years or so since these buildings were built?. Still no progress in building a pedestrian, transit friendly city.
Reed vs Slay may offer an opportunity to see if either one can supply the leadership needed for the 21st century.
Either that or St. Louis can continue to bath in mediocrity.
Think about it, what an absurd concept, build a Gateway Mall that is unusable and undesirable for pedestrians. Hell even Webster Groves and other suburban communities have boards and regulations to make sure buildings conform to what are considered community standards. What is it with the city?
My feeling is that most of the new buildings in this area are one step above garbage. Certainly you’ll never find architectural design advocates looking at these buildings for inspiration, for there is no inspiration to be had.

Just a little historic perspective – these hidden retail spaces are actually a result of earlier attempts at form-based zoning. Although I wasn’t here in the ’70′s and ’80′s, nearly identical results were being built in Denver. They were a result of a combination of urban renewal agency design requirements and zoning incentives. The regulations in place at the time allowed developers to build more office space if they created “arcades”, covered areas with storefronts set back from the traditional public sidewalk. Part of it comes from the logistics of accessing below-grade parking, typically with one ramp on one side of the building, parallel to the street, and a second ramp on the opposite side of the building, parallel to a second street. (And here, the Metro access carves a third chunk out of the traditional building face). Combine the two, and starting near the curb line, you find on-street parking, curb, parking ramp “moat”, public sidewalk made wider and shifted inward, leaving the storefronts 40′-50′ (or more) back from the curb and 50′-60′ (or more) back from passing traffic, while the office towers actually tower above, pulled up tight to the property line. Combine that with most developers’ “rules” that only allowed minimal, “tasteful” signage, even for retail users, and you get some pretty sterile (and unsuccessful) results, like these.

With the clarity of 20/20 hindsight, and seeing how other “solutions” have been implemented in the ’90′s and ’00′s, I believe that the best solution is to combine office towers (with minimal plazas and with retail storefronts pulled out to face of the overall structure) and separate, above-grade parking structures (with some ground-floor retail on one or more sides). Not every street is equal, and every structure needs a “back” side, for deliveries and trash and, hopefully, access to the obligatory parking*. And, we need to have some real, localized analysis on how retail actually works in an urban, working environment. How many people “won’t” go out in bad weather (and will accept the necessarily-limited choices within their own building) and how many will “bundle up” to get to more choices? Minneapolis and Montreal both have successful, protected (from the weather) retail concourses linking multiple buildings. They also have frigid winters. Denver’s urban renewal regulations mandated bridges connecting second-level plazas – highly unsuccessful and eventually dismantled. Here, we get rain, frigid weather in the winter and humidity in the summer, but how many decent days do we have, where office workers will venture over to Culinaria? What works best HERE?

*In both Denver and here, parking is not a city requirement in the central business district. The “need” to provide parking directly connected to these office towers comes directly from the executives who make the final decision on which building to occupy. It’s the rare CEO, CFO or big-shot attorney that will deign to take public transit or to ride their bike to work. The much, much more prevalent paradigm is “where is my reserved parking spot”, the one where I won’t get door dings and where I’ll have easy in and out? These $40,000+ parking spaces are being provided because it’s something that’s required to “close the deal”. We may not “like” it, but it IS very much the reality we live in.