Jamestown Mall Site Part 1: Analyzing the Site, Problems, and Options

My blog posts about Jamestown Mall are few. In 2011 a poll followed by the poll results with a few thoughts. In 2016 I posted that it had been two years sine the mall permanently closed. My 2011 visit was done while the mall was open, I arrived via MetroBus using my power wheelchair.   As it had been over a decade since my last visit, we recently drove up to the dead mall to reacquaint and get current photos.  Driving allowed me to take in more of the overall area.

Some things have changed in the last decade, others have not. Today I want to share with you my approach to analyzing the site, its surroundings, listing the various problems I see, and what options exist for moving forward. The 2nd part will be my conclusion, offering a solution.

First, a little history courtesy of Wikipedia:

Construction began on the mall in 1972. Its anchor stores at the time were Sears and Stix Baer & Fuller, a local chain based in nearby St. Louis. The Stix store was converted to Dillard’s in 1984 after Dillard’s acquired the chain. Famous-Barr (now Macy’s) was added as a third anchor in 1994, and two years later, JCPenney relocated to the mall from an existing store in Florissant. A movie theater was also added in the 1990s.

Jacobs Group sold the mall to Carlyle Development Group in 2003. At the time, the complex was approximately 30 percent vacant. In April 2006, Dillard’s Inc. announced the closure of the Jamestown Mall store, and Sears closed two years later.

Carlyle announced redevelopment plans in 2008. Under these plans, the former Dillard’s would be converted to offices, and its wing would be closed to retail. A year later, St. Louis County hired researchers from the Urban Land Institute to analyze the mall’s viability as a retail center. The study found that the center was no longer viable as a shopping mall because it overlapped with existing retailers in the area. These plans were canceled in 2009 when the mall developers lost financial support from the county following an attempt to auction the former Dillard’s store. Further plans in 2010 called for the demolition of everything except the JCPenney and Macy’s stores, with the rest of the complex to be re-developed as a mixed-use center. In June 2011, a furniture store called Central States Liquidation opened in the former Dillard’s. The JCPenney Outlet store, which was renamed JC’s 5 Star Outlet, csed in late 2013.

In late 2012, gas service to the mall was shut off but later restored. The mall’s closure was announced in November 2013 due to the heat being shut off. The closure of the Macy’s store was announced in January 2014, leaving the mall with no anchors. Jamestown Mall finally closed it doors on July 1, 2014.

For a long time one or more anchor stores had different owners than the remainder of the mall, but in 2017 the St. Louis County Port Authority acquired ownership of the mall and parking to make redevelopment easier. The exception is a small outparcel strip between the two driveways connections to Old Jamestown Rd., on the west side of the site. Appropriately, this is owned by a funeral home.

Here are some basics for analysis:

• Municipality: None, unincorporated St. Louis County
• School District: Hazelwood
• Fire Protection District: Black Jack
• Mall building: 422,533 square feet
• Main site: 142.42 acres
• Outlot building: 2,509 square feet
• Outlot site: 2.09 acres
• Total area of combined site: 144.51 acres (0.2258 square miles)
• Site access points: seven total from public streets, five mall drives plus two dead end streets in Fox Manor subdivision. One of the five mall drives includes a signalized intersection. Photos of each below.
• Surrounding areas include older & newer suburban housing, largely stable middle class. Part of the surroundings become rural very quickly. The area is lacking a major grocery, the nearest is 3.6 miles from the site.
• Vehicular access is excellent, but pedestrian access is poor. The only pedestrian access is the public sidewalk on the east side of Old Jamestown Rd., this connects to the south. There are numerous MetroBus stops in both directions along Highway 67 (aka Lindbergh Blvd) but no pedestrian infrastructure exists to get to/from the stops.  Photos of some orphaned bus stops below.
• Topography: Mostly flat where mall sits, otherwise gently sloping downhill to the south. Prior to the mall the area was rural, with ponds and nothing altering the natural flow of rainwater to Coldwater Creek on the south, just beyond the site boundaries. The topography isn’t what it was before the mall, it was changed to create a mostly level spot for the building a parking lots.

By comparison the mixed-use Streets of St. Charles project is 27 acres.  Again, the Jamestown Mall site is 144.51 acres — more than 5 times larger!

The most recent proposal was for the mall site a massive warehouse operation, which was met with local opposition.

The St. Louis County Port Authority, which owns the 145-acre site near Missouri highways 67 and 367, will issue a request for proposals next month for a contractor to abate the property, Chairman John Maupin said, calling it the first step to tearing down the former mall building.

Demolition would be a “very expensive process,” Maupin said, but it is necessary to attract potential buyers, as the building is blighted “beyond any sort of redemption. Pressed for a cost estimate, Maupin said clearing the entire site could cost up to $10 million.

The announcement comes a week after a Kansas City-based developer’s plans to turn the mall into a large warehouse site were scrapped amid opposition by Councilwoman Shalonda Webb, who represents the area. Webb said residents overwhelmingly prefer a mixed retail site or community center. (Post-Dispatch)

I’m very happy the awful warehouse proposal is dead, and glad the old mall will be razed and the site cleaned up. It’s excellent area residents didn’t give into the tired notions that “anything is better than nothing” and “anything is better than what it there now.”

So what are the options:

One option is do nothing after demolition, let nature take over the land again. Another is to reopen it up to bidders for whatever they propose.  A variation is reopen for bidders with some limitations, such as including a mixed-use component. It’s very clear the area residents prefer a mix-use project, not a single use. They also would like a grocery store, which is necessary given how far away the nearest is.

In the meantime, below are recent photo of the 7 site access points. Also below are examples of bus stops just on a highway shoulder.

In part 2 I’ll explore my preferred option.

— Steve Patterson

New Book — Suburban Remix: Creating the Next Generation of Urban Places; Edited by Jason Beske and David Dixon

The book I want to share with you today is about one of my favorite subjects — what to do with millions of acres of suburban sprawl.

The suburban dream of a single-family house with a white picket fence no longer describes how most North Americans want to live. The dynamics that powered sprawl have all but disappeared. Instead, new forces are transforming real estate markets, reinforced by new ideas of what constitutes healthy and environmentally responsible living. Investment has flooded back to cities because dense, walkable, mixed-use urban environments offer choices that support diverse dreams. Auto-oriented, single-use suburbs have a hard time competing.

Suburban Remix brings together experts in planning, urban design, real estate development, and urban policy to demonstrate how suburbs can use growing demand for urban living to renew their appeal as places to live, work, play, and invest. The case studies and analyses show how compact new urban places are already being created in suburbs to produce health, economic, and environmental benefits, and contribute to solving a growing equity crisis.

Above all, Suburban Remix shows that suburbs can evolve and thrive by investing in the methods and approaches used successfully in cities. Whether next-generation suburbs grow from historic village centers (Dublin, Ohio) or emerge de novo in communities with no historic center (Tysons, Virginia), the stage is set for a new chapter of development—suburbs whose proudest feature is not a new mall but a more human-scale feel and form. (Island Press)

As they point out, the suburbs aren’t going away — 2/3 of America lives there. But they will change.

As always, I like to show the contents:

Introduction by David Dixon

Part I: Setting the Stage
Chapter 1 – Urbanizing the Suburbs: The Major Development Trend of the Next Generation by Christopher Leinberger
Chapter 2 – From the Rise of Suburbs to the Great Reset by David Dixon

Part II: Suburban Markets
Chapter 3 – Housing by Laurie Volk, Todd Zimmerman, and Christopher Volk-Zimmerman
Chapter 4 – Office by Sarah Woodworth
Chapter 5 – Retail by Michael J. Berne

Part III Case Studies for Walkable Urban Places
Chapter 6 – Blueprint for a Better Region: Washington, DC by Stewart Schwartz
Chapter 7 – Tysons, Virginia by Linda Hollis and Sterling Wheeler
Chapter 8 – From Dayton Mall to Miami Crossing, Ohio by Chris Snyder
Chapter 9 – Shanghai’s Journey in Urbanizing Suburbia by Tianyao Sun
Chapter 10 – North York Center: An Example of Canada’s Urbanizing Suburbs by Harold Madi and Simon O’Byrne
Chapter 11 – Dublin, Ohio: Bridge Street Corridor by Terry Foegler
Chapter 12 – The Arlington Experiment in Urbanizing Suburbia by Christopher Zimmerman
Chapter 13 – From Village to City: Bellevue,Washington by Mark Hinshaw

Part IV: Bringing it All Together
Chapter 14 – Planning by David Dixon
Chapter 15 – Placemaking by Jason Beske

Conclusion by Jason Beske and David Dixon

Though this book contains many color photographs, it isn’t a coffee table book. There are plenty of graphs, charts, tables to illustrate the market analysis. The prospect of reshaping the suburbs was one of the most exciting things about studying to become an urban planner — until my stroke ended that prospect.

This book is available in hardcover, softcover, and digital.You can check out a preview here.

— Steve Patterson

We Drove Through Miles of Sprawl to Reach the Country

The weather was so beautiful Saturday September 3rd we decided to go out to lunch — in Washington, Missouri. Since my husband hadn’t tried Sugarfire Smoke House, we decided to go to the riverfront location. Granted, we could’ve gone to the one downtown just 11 blocks away from our loft, but we wanted to go for a drive in the country with the windows & sunroof open.

The fastest way was out via I-44, 55 min – 1 h 10 min (51.6 miles) per Google.  A little slower was out I-64 to MO-94, 1 h 10 min – 1 h 20 min (55.5 miles) per Google.  Because it was a nice day and we weren’t in a hurry we drove to Washington MO without using an interstate highway. Though it added an hour, we took MO-100 W/Historic U.S. 66 W — 1 h 30 min – 2 h 20 min (52.6 miles) per Google.

Just a short drive South on 18th from Locust and I turned right onto Missouri 100 — aka Chouteau. I stayed on 100, mostly Manchester, until in Washington, MO.  At one point we were behind a #57 MetroBus dropping off workers to various retail jobs. Wow, mile after mile of super ugly suburban sprawl.

There was a brief break in the ugliness before we crossed over I-44, but we quickly got into Washington’s ugly suburban ring.

After turning off MO-100 onto MO-47 we began to enter the charming part of Washington and we made our way to Front Street along the Missouri River.

After lunch we took MO-47 North over the river to reach MO-94. We went through Dutzow, Augusta, and Defiance before reaching I-64 to return downtown. We saw great scenery/views before and after lunch, but it was the drive there that reminded me how truly awful most of America’s built environment is.

— Steve Patterson

Reading: The Future of the Suburban City: Lessons from Sustaining Phoenix by Grady Gammage Jr.

Many Western cities aren’t as dense as Eastern & rust-belt cities, but residents still desire to live sustainably. Though St. Louis was a dense rust-belt city, bad decisions have turned it into an unsustainable mess largely suburban mess. But, we can learn from others on how to dig ourselves out.

A recent article, The Santa Fe Strategy: How Small Cities Can Act on Climate and Inequality, explored these issues. A new book goes deeper:

There exists a category of American cities in which the line between suburban and urban is almost impossible to locate. These suburban cities arose in the last half of twentieth-century America, based largely on the success of the single-family home, shopping centers, and the automobile. The low-density, auto-centric development of suburban cities, which are largely in the arid West, presents challenges for urban sustainability as it is traditionally measured. Yet, some of these cities—Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake, Dallas, Tucson, San Bernardino, and San Diego—continue to be among the fastest growing places in the United States.

In The Future of the Suburban City, Phoenix native Grady Gammage, Jr. looks at the promise of the suburban city as well as the challenges. He argues that places that grew up based on the automobile and the single-family home need to dramatically change and evolve. But suburban cities have some advantages in an era of climate change, and many suburban cities are already making strides in increasing their resilience. Gammage focuses on the story of Phoenix, which shows the power of collective action — government action — to confront the challenges of geography and respond through public policy. He takes a fresh look at what it means to be sustainable and examines issues facing most suburban cities around water supply, heat, transportation, housing, density, urban form, jobs, economics, and politics.

The Future of the Suburban City is a realistic yet hopeful story of what is possible for any suburban city. (Island Press)

The table of contents:

Prologue. Getting Through the Haboob

Chapter 1. Suburbs, Sprawl, and Sustainability
Chapter 2. Just Add Water
Chapter 3. Coping with Heat
Chapter 4. Transportation and the Suburban City
Chapter 5. Houses, Shopping Centers, and the Fabric of Suburbia
Chapter 6. Jobs and the Economy of Cities in the Sand
Chapter 7. Politics, Resilience, and Survival

Afterword. Planning to Stay

Our regions can’t just keep expanding outward the way they did the last 50-60 years. We must improve existing suburbia.

— Steve Patterson

Writing About Improved Pedestrian Access For A Decade, Before Becoming Disabled

In the nearly ten years I’ve written this blog I’ve consistently argued for improved pedestrian access, even before I became disabled in February 2008. Newer readers may have forgotten my early advocacy for walkability, here are some reminders:

• October 2004: Kirkwood Station Plaza, another great idea with questionable execution
• December 2004: Gravois Plaza Less Pedestrian-Friendly than previous center
• January 2005: Loughborough Commons will be Common indeed!
• February 2005: McDonalds May Move Across Grand to Former Sears Site
• June 2007: St. Louis Restripes Bad Crosswalk, Enforcement Needed

The above posts were all before my stroke! I’m particularly proud of pushing for pedestrian access at Loughborough Commons, it’s a better than planned project because of my pushiness.

Loughborough Commons would’ve been better had the city, developer, and engineers planned for pedestrian access & internal circulation from the start. They didn’t, but by pushing throughout construction I helped the project be just a little accommodating to pedestrians.  In one post I even said something like “I hope I don’t become disabled” when arguing why it was important for new development to welcome pedestrians in edition to motorists.

Yes, I’ve posted about crosswalks & pedestrian access since becoming disabled — but they’ve been a regular topic since that first day I started writing: October 31, 2004.

— Steve Patterson