Readers: New Building Should Replace Condemned Parking Garage
No surprise, but most who voted in the Sunday Poll favored an occupied building to replace a condemned parking garage downtown:
Q: The parking garage at Tucker & Locust, built in 1967, was condemned a few months ago. What should be the long-term outcome? (PICK UP TO 2)
- Raze for new building w/zero parking 22 [34.92%]
- Raze for new building w/some parking 21 [33.33%]
- Renovation of structure, reopen garage 6 [9.52%]
- Raze for new parking garage 5 [7.94%]
- Unsure/no opinion 3 [4.76%]
- Other: 3 [4.76%]
- Apartments, parking, ground level retail.
- Restaurant
- Traditional incremental urbanism
- Raze for surface parking lot 2 [3.17%]
- Nothing, leave as is 1 [1.59%]
- Raze for open space 0 [0%]
I was very happy nobody voted for “Raze for open space”, because we’ve got more open space than we need. I have to wonder about the person who voted that leaving a condemned parking garage is the best long-term outcome. Really!?!
Even in the short-term I’d oppose a surface parking lot. If built properly, it would likely stick around until fully depreciated — which isn’t short-term. We need to build on many of our existing surface lots to reduce holes in our urban fabric. A case could be made for a new parking garage on the site. At this point I’d give little chance the existing garage will be renovated — the repairs are just too costly.Without a doubt, a new building, with or without internal parking, is ideal.
The New Jersey-based entity that owns the condemned garage likely doesn’t care about what’s best for creating a more urban St. Louis, but I don’t care about their bottom line! In the Downtown Neighborhood Association’s Planning & Zoning Committee I’ll advocate for a position on this site that opposes just letting it sit or a surface parking lot, supports a building.
— Steve Patterson
My main concern is that we get some street-level retail in that property. If you look down Tucker in each direction you’ll see that a number of restaurants have popped up (Maurizio’s, The Docket, an asian place, Papa John’s). They’re a bit scattered right now and could use something to tie them together. That would be a great location for a sundry shop. If you put something like that on the first floor and some sort of specialized college above (arts/theater, trade, etc.), you’d bring more of the younger crowd downtown – it’s great having the SLU students down here – and improve the overall downtown living equation.