nextSTL | Page 6

When the Art World Came to St. Louis: The Noonan-Kocian Art Company at Tenth & Locust
St. Louis Zoo Rethinks Almost Everything, Offers Transformative Vision of Expansion
Biondi Before and After
CVS Finally Gets Its Lindell Boulevard Store, Elliptical AAA Building Remains
Urban Chestnut Brewing Company to Open 100K bbls Capacity Brewery, Retail Location in The Grove

A Plan for the Gateway Arch Leaves a St. Louis Highway in Place. But for How Long?

Published on Saturday, 13 April 2013 18:16

Written by Scott Ogilvie

{I-70 and the Gateway Arch, downtown St. Louis - credit: MoDOT}

St. Louis’ downtown riverfront is on the verge of a transformation. A major new bridge span over the Mississippi River is nearing completion, while on April 2, in separate but simultaneous votes, residents of St. Louis City and St. Louis County approved Proposition P, a 0.1875 percent (3/16th) sales tax increase that will fund a diverse range of regional parks and trails initiatives.

The complicated arrangement is expected to raise between $700 million and $1 billion in new revenue over 20 years, shoring up funding for existing parks and expanding available money for the regional trail building district known as Great Rivers Greenway. Most controversially, it dedicates an unprecedented stream of local revenue to a national park, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, home of the Gateway Arch.

Category: Downtown

Paul McKee's Next Move May Be Saving This Building

Published on Friday, 12 April 2013 07:50

Written by Alex Ihnen

Will this be NorthSide’s first historic renovation? While the entire project seemed to be in a holding pattern for the past couple years, Paul McKee’s plan to reimagine 1,500 acres of the city chugged along. We learned Tuesday that the project’s $390M TIF is alive and landscape architecture guru Mark Johnson of Civitas had remained connected to NorthSide.

Now we’ve learned that McKee has successfully added the ABC Auto Sales and Investment Company Building at 3509-27 Page Boulevard to the National Register of Historic Places. While the designation doesn’t confer special protection for the building, it does allow the owner the opportunity to access historic tax credits for renovation. The nomination form states “The new owner anticipates a full historic rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of the building.”

Category: Preservation

What's Wrong With Clayton? That's Easy, but Does Clayton Care?

Published on Thursday, 11 April 2013 07:13

Written by Alex Ihnen

{five-lane Maryland Avenue is a typical "successful" Clayton street}

What's wrong with Clayton? It's a great question, largely because many people find it absurd. It's one of the success stories of St. Louis County, right? There are new high-rises, million dollar plus condos and homes, the schools are highly rated...but everyplace has problems and for Clayton, the symptoms have become apparent to many: vacant retail space, dead sidewalks and empty lots.

It's a strange problem. in 2011 Forsyth Boulevard in Clayton was recognized as the 30th most expensive average office rent per square foot in the nation. That sounds healthy. Now the city has been recognized for its Complete Streets legislation. But visit Clayton after 6:00 p.m., after cars have emptied out of the dedicated parking garages and left behind the ubiquitous four-lane streets for a highway commute, and you will begin to glimpse the issue.

Category: St. Louis County

McKee, NorthSide Win Unanimous $390M TIF Ruling

Published on Tuesday, 09 April 2013 17:33

Written by Alex Ihnen

The SouthSide Regeneration plan may have been an April Fool's Day prank, but today Paul McKee is again thinking big. His NorthSide $390M Tax Increment Financing package has won a unanimous decision at the Missouri Supreme Court. Passed by the city's Board of Aldermen in 2009, the TIF, meant to jumpstart the rebuilding of a large swath of north city, has been stalled by a lawsuit ever since. The decision states that judge Dierker erred in his ruling that invalidated the TIF on grounds that it lacked specificity, essentially saying that Dierker ruled on an argument of his own making and not one made by the plaintiffs.

With the win, and the secured financial backing of the city, McKee has everything in place to move forward. What happens next is anyone's guess. The lawsuit had challenged the ambiguity of the plan and the decision means that McKee does not need to provide more specific project detail to access the TIF. Having been criticized for years for allowing vacant building to burn or fall down, McKee has repeatedly pled for more time and money. The ambitious project is on a scale not seen in the city's urban core since the building on Pruitt-Igoe in the 1950s.

Category: North St. Louis