1900 Washington Ave Appears Salvageable, But Too Soon To Be Certain

Monday afternoon I was at home writing, looking up from the computer screen it looked foggy outside. A quick check of my email was a Nextdoor.com message from a neighbor asking what was on fire. Ah — smoke — not fog. My first thought was the building at 17th & Locust.

Despite the cold, I decided to have a quick look to see. From 18th & Locust I could see emergency equipment at 19th, the #97 MetroBus, usually on Washington, was rerouted to Locust. So I headed North to see where Washington was blocked.

The good news is the walls appear to be sound. Monday afternoon owner Pete Rothschild replied to my earlier email, indicating they’ll know more once the engineers In a followup on Wednesday he said:

The goal and likely outcome is that we’ll still do the project. There are a million moving parts, and it’s going to be quite a while until I really know if that’s possible.

I look forward to the day 1900 Washington is fully renovated and occupied.

— Steve Patterson

New Parking Payment Stations Finally Added To South Side of 11xx Block of Locust Street

Scaffolding next to the condemned parking garage at Tucker & Locust prevented the adjacent parking meters on the South side of Locust Street from being upgraded with the rest of downtown. Until last week, the old meters remained on the South side of Locust between 11th & Tucker (12th). The North side got new individual meters last year.

The other side of the street has new individual meters, not the multi-space pay stations added to the South. This is far from the only block that has both individual meters and multi-space pay stations. I guess having lots of one-way streets and streets that are closed for a block wasn’t confusing enough — now we have two different types of electronic payment machines to understand.

— Steve Patterson

Sunday Poll: Should We Continue With The North Riverfront Stadium Plan?

The Rams are returning to Los Angeles, but a lot of effort — and $16 million dollars — has gone into planning a new stadium on the North Riverfront.

Now what?

The poll is open until 8pm.

— Steve Patterson

Arcade-Wright Converted To Affordable & Market-Rate Apartments

I’ve toured the Arcade-Wright building three times. The first was pre-renovation and pre-stroke — more than a decade ago. We walked through the building and up the stairs to the roof — I foolishly wore my cowboy boots that day. The building smelled of pigeon crap. My last two tours, December 10, 2015 and January 2, 2016 were of the newly renovated building. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in March 2003

Before I show you the completed project, let’s review some history. First, the Arcade-Wright is two buildings. The Wright, on the corner of 8th & Pine, was built first — in 1906. More than a decade later the owners of the Wright bought most of the rest of the block and razed the existing brick structures. In 1919 construction began on the Arcade, wrapping around two sides of the Wright and connecting the two.

Numerous brick buildings, mostly 3 floors high, were razed to build the Arcade next to the Wright. A similar thing happened in the mid-1920s with the rest of the block — see Paul Brown Building history here. Above you can see a little distance between the buildings, not attached like so many were. This gap remained as the block was rebuilt.

Before we go up to the roof I want to talk about the basement parking garage. When Pyramid planned to build condos they were going to build larger units — the smallest condos would’ve been about the size of the largest apartments. The resort is more people, more total units. The condo plan had enough parking so each unit got one parking spot with purchase — typical for condos. However, with many more apartments, and Webster University using some of the parking, there isn’t enough for each unit.

The most expensive market rate apartments include one garage space in the rent. For everyone else, market & affordable, the cost for a parking space is an additional $125/mo — first come. As I posted about in July 2014, they secured an agreement with the Treasurer’s Office for additional parking in the garage in the block to the East — at $75/mo.  Thankfully, this parking is “unbundled” — meaning a person can rent a unit without parking. Or a couple might decide to have only one car. The 8th & Pine MetroLink station is right outside and Enterprise CarShare has six cars downtown.

Remember how I said the Paul Brown and Arcade share a street entrance for parking — when Pyramid owned the Paul Brown it created an easement to allow the Arcade to connect in the basement. This was because the Arcade had no logical place to access the basement from any of the three streets it faces.

When many buildings downtown were made into loft condos is was common for the top floor and roof to be occupied by large, expensive units.  With apartments the roof here becomes a great place for all residents — those in a small affordable unit and those in a bay window market rate unit.

Big kudos to everyone involved in this project!

— Steve Patterson

Gateway One/Peabody Plaza Is Here To Stay

In the 1970s/80s the City of St. Louis sought to keep the Gateway Mall marching Eastward toward the the Old Courthouse and Arch. However, there was no money to pay for it. There were also historic buildings in the blocks — the owner(s) proposed renovating the historic buildings. Another plan was selected:

Downtown business executives and union leaders created Pride Redevelopment Corp. and successfully pushed for a plan to clear the land between Kiener and Serra. Then, they would develop office towers on the north side, facing Chestnut. The revenue from the towers would underwrite costs for a “half mall” on the south side.

Over the protests of preservationists, the three notable buildings were demolished. But because the economy remained in a trough, only one tower was built: Gateway One, the 15-story sore thumb that has irked scores over the years. (Now it’s Peabody Plaza, home to Peabody Energy.) (Spotlight: Building interrupting the Gateway Mall is a mayor’s regret)

The Buder & International were imploded in August 1984, the Title Guaranty was also gone by the end of 1984. The half-mall plan called for four identical buildings — one on each of the four blocks from 6th to 10th.  More detail here.

In hindsight, most acknowledge the half-mall plan was a mistake. It was already dead by 1993, but demolition continued. Had the buildings on the two blocks West of Gateway One not been razed the one half building wouldn’t have stood out so much. I moved to St. Louis in August 1990 — Gateway One was already complete by then, But in 1992/93 I personally argued with architect Donald Royce, telling him razing the two blocks between the Gateway One and the Serra “Twain” block was another mistake. Fifteen years later Citygarden almost makes up fir the bad decision.

Back to Gateway One.

Over the years many have said it should be torn down. I’m no fan on the building, but that’s not going to happen. Ever.

The building sold in 2006 for $65 million. For many decades the building will be too costly to raze for more park space — we can’t afford to redo the excessive park space of the Gateway Mall — we don’t need more.   Peabody has another decade remaining on their lease and the building will remain viable for decades.

Face the facts — it’s not going anywhere. Just be thankful St. Louis abandons plans before they’re finished, otherwise we’d have a total of four.

— Steve Patterson