Ballpark Village Attempts Smarter Start to Development, Misses on Live! Event Space

{yet another Ballpark Village plan - revealed 5/21/12}

The initial vision for the 10-acre Ballpark Village was hard to not like. The only missing detail was a dose of reality. In 2006 it was fashionable to dream big. The $850M Power and Light District was well underway in Kansas City and how couldn't St. Louis not envy it's smaller sibling across the state? And yet St. Louis had learned something, that backing bonds for retail development is risky business (see St. Louis Centre and Manchester Marketplace). So the City of St. Louis declined to guarantee bonds that would have likely jumpstarted the project. Then Stifel Nicolaus and Centene both passed on Ballpark Village.

Two years ago, the nextSTL headline read: "Who Cares if Ballpark Village is Built? Downtown St. Louis Has Better Development Opportunities Elsewhere." The newly revealed plan seems to validate this idea, that this site missed its fleeting chance at significant development, the kind that would re-center downtown St. Louis. That previous article mentioned the coming redelopment of the 21st interchange as a western terminus to the Gateway Mall and the new Mississippi River Bridge and Tucker Avenue reconfiguration as just two more attractive options.