Connect with us

Business

Why historic eyesore homes on Kingshighway were demolished

Published

on

[ad_1]


Seven crumbling multifamily homes along Kingshighway near Interstate 64 in St. Louis managed to stay standing through years of neglect, but they were no match for the excavator that quickly turned them to rubble in late February.The emergency demolition ordered by the city makes way for a new apartment development and removed some of St. Louis’ most prominent vacant homes, situated near one of its busy intersections.“The neighborhood behind these buildings made extraordinary gains over the last couple of decades,” said Alderman Michael Browning, whose Ninth Ward includes the parcels. “And yet you wouldn’t know it by looking at these properties.”There had been plans to revitalize some of the homes in the early 2000s that never materialized, he explained. They were vacant by 2014 and then bounced between a few owners who Browning said avoided investing in stabilizing them.“Just a really cynical strategy of demo by neglect in order to get around preservation ordinances,” he said.Multiple development ideas for the parcels came and went.Drury Development Corp. had planned to build a hotel before it sold the land to apartment developer Lux Living in 2021, which had ambitions to build an apartment building on the site. Those plans were marred by the city’s historic preservation board, though, which denied a demolition request, saying the properties had architectural merit and could still stand for a few more months.

Eric Lee

/

St. Louis Public RadioAn excavator tears down an property on South Kingshighway last month in Forest Park Southeast.

Eric Lee

/

St. Louis Public RadioCrew members from Bellon Wrecking salvage brick from demolished properties on South Kingshighway last month in Forest Park Southeast.

All the while the row of homes along Kingshighway continued to decay until the city threatened to stabilize the buildings at Lux Living’s expense, Browning said. While that case worked through the courts, Lux Living sold the properties to two nearby residents, who then sold them to the current owners, Kansas City-based NorthPoint Development.“As soon as they bought them, it was communicated that the properties were in terrible condition, unable to be saved,” Browning said. “There were a couple of partial collapses that happened right before the sale occurred.”Developers scooping up properties only to let the buildings on them sit vacant and decay is a familiar story to Torrey Park, director of the St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative.“Ultimately, it’s about private owners who purchase land or purchase a building with the idea that they can turn it into a profit,” she said. “It’s speculative.”Similar situations have plagued north St. Louis neighborhoods, which have the overwhelming majority of the city’s roughly 20,000 vacant properties, she said.The newly cleared lots along Kingshighway aren’t set to stay that way. Their new owner, NorthPoint Development, has plans for an apartment building with roughly 150 units.The developer also intends to construct a second apartment building to the north, on land owned by Washington University between Chouteau and Gibson avenues, totaling 328 new units between the two projects and costing nearly $120 million.NorthPoint Vice President of Development Jennifer George explained the developer is attracted to “the continued demand for housing” in the area close to the Barnes-Jewish Hospital campus, Wash U’s medical campus and Cortex.

NorthPoint Development is engaging the community on a two-apartment project called the Monarch. The first is proposed at 1070-1092 South Kingshighway and 4575 Oakland Ave. The second is at the intersection of Kingshighway and I-64, at 4580 Chouteau Ave. Current plans include 328 apartment units and 367 parking spaces.

“We’re super excited about the connectivity opportunity there,” she said. “There’s a lot of bike (and) pedestrian connections in the area. It’s got good Metro access.”These kinds of assets can make development enticing but aren’t evenly spread across St. Louis, which underscores why there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach that will solve the city’s vacancy challenges, Park said.“The north side has less of an infrastructure,” she said, “doesn’t have the same kinds of amenities. You’ve got food deserts, lack of banking institutions.”Park argues this is by design.St. Louis’ central corridor historically received more economic development incentives and investment attention than north St. Louis and some southside neighborhoods such as Dutchtown and Gravois Park, she said.“To really redevelop, (those areas) need an influx of cash,” Park said.

Eric Lee

/

St. Louis Public RadioSt. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones inspects construction progress for an infrastructure project on March 6 in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

Striving for equityThe city does have cash from the American Rescue Plan Act and Rams settlement, some of which is allocated to spur development.“Capital funds, incentives, tax credits, all of those are tools that can be used,” Park said. “We need to think about where the need is and not necessarily divide those funds equally across the city.”Mayor Tishaura Jones agrees.“That is equity,” she said. “Taking a look at where resources are needed and pouring [them] into neighborhoods and places that haven’t seen investment in decades.”It’s the underpinning of the city’s economic justice action plan, which seeks to reverse the historic harm done to the city’s majority Black and brown neighborhoods from decades of disinvestment.Jones clarified that it doesn’t take away from neighborhoods that have seen revitalization, but rather focuses attention on the parts of the city that still need it.“Half of our city has been left to fail for decades and these are the steps we’re taking so that all boats in the tide rise,” she said.

Brent Jones

/

St. Louis Public Radio Developer Paul McKee owns much of the land in this picture from April 2018, looking north from the intersection of Cass and Jefferson avenues. Residents in north St. Louis have long complained of developers like McKee who have purchased property but not invested in it.

The visibility of vacancyWhile the properties along Kingshighway may have been highly visible to thousands of vehicles passing by them each day, they aren’t perfect surrogates for the majority of vacancy in St. Louis.Just 5.5% of the parcels are vacant in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood, which includes The Grove entertainment district. More than two dozen north city neighborhoods have parcel vacancy rates above 20%, according to data from the St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative. Two-thirds of the city’s vacant parcels have no building on them, and some empty swaths span entire blocks.“Folks living in the areas with high vacancy have to live next to it every day,” Park said. “It’s very visible to them.”And it can be more than just a visual marker, said West End resident Tonnie Smith, who has advocated for ways to improve her north St. Louis neighborhood for more than a decade.“It’s not just ‘oh, it’s terrible to look at,’ but it affects our mental health and also property values,” she said. “And just safety in general.”When Smith and her family first moved into their home 17 years ago, nearly half of the 50 structures on her block were empty, she said. Today, only eight remain that way, and they’re all maintained, Smith said.This change was far from automatic, but instead something Smith and her neighbors spent years working toward.“We always wished these vacant properties would somehow be taken care of,” she said. “We would talk about it all the time.”Smith said she began her journey into improving the neighborhood after leaving her role as a branch manager at U.S. Bank. Her neighbors and family encouraged her to learn how other parts of the city became thriving centers with active parks and clean alleys.What started as work to beautify the neighborhood shifted to addressing vacancy, she said.“We shouldn’t just plant flowers and make things look nice when we have all this abandonment,” she said. “Then learning about the things that were done on purpose to cause this was another reason that was important to me to help rectify [the vacancy].”

Eric Lee

/

St. Louis Public RadioWest End Park on Wednesday in West End. The park is situated on what used to be a vacant lot and is one of the improvements Tonnie Smith helped bring to her neighborhood.

‘It does not happen overnight’Revitalizing a neighborhood with higher vacancy can be quite challenging because of how empty buildings and lots can drag down property values, said Linda Nguyen, executive director of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis. She added that vacancy also hurts neighborhoods by giving a perception that they have minimal activity.“It makes people not want to invest in neighborhoods,” Nguyen said. “Seeing things that are happening, it makes people want to be part of it. When people don’t see anything happening, there’s nothing to be a part of.”Reversing this image can take many years of work where the fruits of that labor aren’t obvious, she explained.“When it comes to neighborhood change, I think [it’s important] to remind folks it does not happen overnight,” Nguyen said. “There is a strategy and intentionality to it.”This is something Smith is familiar with from her own experience in the West End neighborhood. It took time to both document the vacancy and explain to her neighbors which lots they were focused on, Smith said.“We’re focusing on the properties that are in really bad shape and causing issues from trespassing, people breaking in, the ones that are really causing issues for the neighborhood,” she said.One success about six years ago that stands out for Smith is when she helped persuade the owner of a vacant duplex to sell the property, which had had continual calls to the police for various reasons. She explained she got important help from organizations like Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to facilitate the sale.“People were really amazed by that on my street that we were able to do that ourselves,” she said.

Eric Lee

/

St. Louis Public RadioWest End Park is reflected in a puddle on Wednesday in St. Louis’ West End neighborhood. Advocates say the park was instrumental in energizing residents around neighborhood improvements.

Neighborhood plansMore recently, Smith said neighborhood residents were able to develop a neighborhood plan, with some funding from Invest STL, which the city adopted last June. It lays out priorities for the area such as developing the center of the neighborhood at Maple Avenue and Goodfellow Boulevard, turning the Hodiamont tracks into a greenway and others, Smith said.“Through many years and a lot of community engagement, I think residents saw we can have a say in what happens to our neighborhood,” she said. “So when people do want to come into the neighborhood, they can use this as a guideline to know what it is the residents have said they wanted.”These kinds of plans are powerful tools to guide development that responds to local challenges and fits what residents desire, Nguyen said.“A lot of our [community] organizations are in the know,” she said. “That’s the shortcut: they know the residents who live there, they know the businesses around there, they know where the open vacant buildings are and how long it’s been vacant.”Nguyen adds Forest Park Southeast is now reaping the benefits of a form-based code, which lays out rules for how developments should look on particular parcels based on input and feedback from existing community stakeholders, like local residents and business owners.“That’s something the neighborhood had a say in 10 years ago,” she said. “That’s the power they have.”And beyond written plans and codes, Nguyen said continued neighborhood representation and engagement in development proposals is also critical.The Forest Park Southeast Neighborhood Association has regular meetings and a development review committee where residents and those who work in the neighborhood consider opportunities that come up.George, with NorthPoint Development, said she finds it refreshing to work with a neighborhood that is well organized and has formalized ways of engagement. It makes soliciting feedback from many residents a lot easier, she added.“A lot of times where we might do neighborhood engagement or outreach, we’re trying to do cold letter mailings or cold door knocking to introduce ourselves,” George said. “We didn’t have to do this here.”NorthPoint is still working out some of the details for the new apartments, and George said she expects direct feedback from the community will influence how those plans look once finalized.

[ad_2]

Source link

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Business

Laclede’s Landing is moving from nightlife hub to neighborhood

Published

on

[ad_1]


Laclede’s Landing has cycled through many identities throughout the history of St. Louis. Now, some people involved with its redevelopment in recent years hope the landing’s next one will be as a residential neighborhood.The small district tucked directly north of the Gateway Arch National Park has quietly undergone a massive redevelopment with more than $75 million pouring into the rehabilitation of many of the historic buildings at the landing.“We are starting to feel that momentum, especially in the last really 60 days. Things have drastically changed around here,” said Ryan Koppy, broker and owner of Trading Post Properties and the director of commercial property for Advantes Group.Advantes alone shouldered the rehabilitation of six of the historic buildings, which now sport a mix of apartments and retail or office space, he said. Four of those buildings are completed, and of the 119 apartments available, about 90% are filled, Koppy said.“It just shows you what kind of demand we do have for the area,” he said. “We’re separated from downtown a little bit, and for the tenants, their local park where they’re walking their dogs, it’s a national park.”

Sophie Proe

/

St. Louis Public RadioInterior of the Peper Lofts at Laclede’s Landing on Aug. 16

Another 40 apartments are set to come online next year along with some retail space, Koppy said. He added he’s noticed a wide range of people who are considering and moving into the newly refinished apartments.“It’s very mixed, surprisingly,” Koppy said. “We have a lot of young professionals, maybe on their second job out of [university], we have some empty nesters too.”Part of the newfound momentum comes from a new market, the Cobblestone, and coffee shop, Brew Tulum, opening recently and bringing more foot traffic to the area, said Brandyn Jones, executive director of the Laclede Landing Neighborhood Association. She added that more apartments are set to come online within the next few months.“We have a great riverfront area here and so there are plans in the works to activate those spaces, bring people in,” she said.That could be more daytime events, like a farmers market, music festivals (one of which is happening this weekend) or just bringing in food trucks to Katherine Ward Burg Garden, Jones said. It’s a departure from the identity the district held a few decades ago as a hub for nightlife and entertainment.“That’s part of what connects so many people to Laclede’s Landing,” Jones said. “It’s important to tell the story of where we’re evolving. It won’t be what it was in the same exact way, but it will still be fun, and it can be fun early morning, midday or late night.”It’s a view shared by Koppy.“It’s grown up, it’s a bit mature,” he said. “We’re not going to have 3 a.m. bars here anymore because we have residents here.”Koppy added that Advantes is joined by other developers working to rehabilitate buildings in the district.“We all work in unison,” he said. “If I get a call and [a client is] asking for something and maybe the square foot doesn’t really match up with what I have available, but I know it matches up over there, they’re getting a very warm welcome and introduction.”

Sophie Proe

/

St. Louis Public RadioRyan Koppy looks out the window of Brew Tulum Specialty Coffee Experience on Aug. 16 at the Cobblestone on Laclede’s Landing in downtown St. Louis.

This push toward making Laclede’s Landing a residential neighborhood also comes alongside broader conversations about the future of downtown St. Louis more generally as it looks to move away from a dependence on office space. While the city as a whole continues to lose population, downtown added about 1,700 people between 2010 and 2020, according to U.S. Census data.“It’s been wonderful timing to have all that going on, that stress that you’re not just in downtown to work has been critical to part of this rejuvenation and energy down here,” Jones said. “Sometimes people forget Laclede’s Landing is part of downtown, really the original downtown.”And success in the small district could spread beyond its small confines and potentially serve as a model for success, Koppy added.“My idea is, if we could get all the great things of St. Louis coming in through here, we can eventually spread that,” he said. “We understand we can’t change the whole world, but we’ll just make the effort to try and change the world around us.”

[ad_2]

Source link

Continue Reading

Business

St. Louis barbecue festival Q in the Lou canceled

Published

on

[ad_1]


The largest barbecue competition and tasting festival in St. Louis, Q in the Lou, has been canceled. The event was planned for Sept. 6-8, but organizers decided to cancel it due to poor ticket sales and insufficient corporate sponsorship.The traveling festival had low attendance in Denver last week, said Sean Hadley, a festival organizer.“We made the tough decision to cancel Q in the Lou,” said Hadley. “We’re seeing a lack of support … it’s just not there.”The traveling event first came to St. Louis in 2015 and drew hundreds of people to downtown St. Louis for barbecue, live music and a “major party.”“It shut down out of the blue … I’ve gone every year,” said Scott Thomas, local chef and food blogger. “It’s brilliant. You could take a tour of some really amazing barbecue restaurants and competition barbecue guys all in one place.”In a late July news conference, city officials touted Q in the Lou as a significant tourism draw and a boost for downtown revitalization.“Bringing a signature national festival back to downtown St. Louis … is making us stronger,” Greater St. Louis Inc. CEO Jason Hall said then.Less than a month later, ticket holders from every festival stop learned they’d be refunded. On Monday, organizers privatized the Q in the Lou website and deleted its social media accounts.Conner Kerrigan, a spokesperson for Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office, said city officials are disappointed the festival won’t be back this year.“St. Louis knows how to throw a festival … bringing people together to celebrate our culture is one of the things we do best as a city,” Kerrigan said in a statement. “Should Q in the Lou try to come back next year or any year after that, they’ll have the support of the Mayor Jones administration.”

[ad_2]

Source link

Continue Reading

Business

Alton’s Jacoby Arts Center likely to relocate permanently

Published

on

[ad_1]


The Jacoby Arts Center, a staple of Alton for many in the Metro East community, will likely permanently move out of its downtown building at the end of September.Its departure and relocation from the historic building that the arts center has called home for the past 20 years has created a tense situation for not only the arts center’s supporters but also the local development company working to revitalize Alton’s downtown that owns the building.“It’s an unfortunate situation,” said Chad Brigham, the chief legal and administrative officer with AltonWorks, the real estate company owned by another prominent local attorney working to develop the town. “I wish there wasn’t misunderstanding and disappointment in the community. It’s difficult sometimes to clarify that.”When news of the likely departure spread in June via a letter from the Jacoby Arts Center to its supporters, an outcry on social media quickly followed. Some assumed it would be the end of the arts center.“There’s a lot of feelings right now that I think are more about the building itself than there are about the Jacoby Arts Center,” said Valerie Hoven, vice president and treasurer of the nonprofit arts center’s board.For supporters of the Jacoby, moving from the building and likely never returning will be a sad affair. Exactly what’s next for the arts center remains unclear. However, Jacoby board members believe this will not be the end of the organization. It will likely look different though.

Sophie Proe

/

St. Louis Public RadioThe Jacoby Arts Center earlier this month in downtown Alton

Sophie Proe

/

St. Louis Public RadioThe Alton-based Jacoby Arts Center features more than 75 St. Louis-area artists and their work.

The history of the buildingFirst dubbed the Madison County Arts Council, the nonprofit arts center renamed itself after the Jacoby family gave it the current building in 2004. AltonWorks founder John Simmons purchased the Jacoby Building in September 2018, according to property records from the county.Managing the large building, at 627 E. Broadway, became too expensive for the Jacoby Arts Center. In 2018, the organization approached Simmons to purchase it, said Dennis Scarborough, a past president of the board and a downtown business owner.“Of course, it sounded really, really good,” Scarborough said of Simmons’ purchase. “He took over the insurance, property taxes, all those kinds of things that were really, really getting into our budget, and he rented it to us at a fair price.”The two parties entered into a lease agreement initially for five years. Since then, Simmons has spent more than $1 million in upkeep, taxes, insurance and more on the building. The lease has been extended twice until the end of September this year.Over the six years, Jacoby paid $1,500 per month, which covered a portion of the utilities.“It’s been wonderfully generous of AltonWorks,” Hoven said.Because the building is aging and needs repairs, Brigham with AltonWorks and those connected to the arts center have long known the Jacoby Arts Center would need to relocate — at least temporarily.

Renovations on the Jacoby building will begin this fall. They’ll include modernizing the aging building, repairing the old elevator and putting in apartments on the second and third floors.

News of the likely departure and controversyRenovations will begin this fall. They’ll include modernizing the aging building, repairing the old elevator and putting in apartments on the second and third floors.In May, it became clear that a preliminary proposal for the arts center to return to the building after renovations finished in 2026 would not work for them, Hoven said.She estimates the first floor and basement of the Jacoby Arts Building span roughly 20,000 square feet.

Chad Brigham is a business and legal adviser for AltonWorks.

AltonWorks’ initial idea floated to the arts center would only provide 2,553 square feet, according to both Hoven and Brigham. While the board calculated the price for the new space to be at least triple the current payment, Brigham said there was never a specific price discussed.“No discussion in terms of actual rent price,” he said.AltonWorks didn’t make a specific rent offer because the organization doesn’t even know itself, Brigham said.In addition to cash from John Simmons, there will be loans, tax increment financing and state tax credits to cover the $20 million in building renovations. The entities financing the cost of renovations will also help determine the rent when the construction is complete, Brigham said.Regardless, the price required to return will be too much for the arts center to pay, Hoven said. Also, the organization would like to maintain the many programs it offers to the community — a rentable event space, a dark room and a clay studio, for example — in the future.“For us to really meet the needs of the community and be sustainable, we need a space where we can offer some of those programs — the artists’ shop, and other spaces that offer some kind of income as well — so that we can continue to give money back to the community,” she said.AltonWorks offered at least two other locations as possible alternatives from their vast stock of buildings along Broadway to house the arts center during the roughly 18 months of construction. Those alternatives came with similar deals requiring the Jacoby to cover only utilities, Brigham said.“We did put in a great deal of work behind the scenes in trying to find an interim solution,” Brigham said. “We wanted to find a place for them to go, where it was easy for them to continue programming, whether it’s 100% of it or some portion of it, that would work for them.”Initially, the arts center hoped to keep the basement during the renovations, Hoven said. When it became clear the preliminary offer to return was for much less space than the arts center anticipated, the letter to the community was sent.“The letter that came out was merely showing our surprise,” Hoven said. “Don’t misinterpret it as panic. Don’t misinterpret it as desperation.”

Sophie Proe

/

St. Louis Public RadioA smorgasbord of radios are displayed at the Jacoby Arts Center in Alton.

The commentary on social media was passionate. Some critics of AltonWorks said the organization has good intentions but hasn’t executed those plans. Others said Jacoby hasn’t planned well enough for the future.For Brigham and the AltonWorks team, some of the criticism has been disappointing.“I thought that there were some decent solutions. Were they perfect? No, but they were very, I thought, very good solutions,” he said. “And the fact that it has come to the point that it is right now is a bit hurtful.”AltonWorks remains committed to the arts, Brigham said. John Simmons remains one the largest donors of the Jacoby Arts Center, Hoven and Brigham said.“I don’t think there’s ever been a question of our support of that organization — of our affinity for that organization,” Brigham said. “While some of the events were unfortunate, some of them were encouraging. The entire community rallied around the Jacoby Arts Center. That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing to have a love for the arts like that in a downtown community.”Sara McGibany, the executive director of Alton Main Street, an organization aimed at preserving the town, said AltonWorks should be commended for its vision. In many ways, her organization and AltonWorks share a vision for a thriving downtown.Even though AltonWorks hosts public meetings, McGibany believes the current situation lacks true community engagement.“We really think that if AltonWorks can get past some of the communication hurdles — and harness the community’s passion and shift to more of a bottom-up decision-making process that centers on community input — then we can turn around the growing sentiment of distrust that’s happening now,” McGibany said.Scarborough, the past board president and downtown business owner, echoed the praise for Simmons and his support of the Jacoby Arts Center. With the Jacoby likely moving, the future looks bleak, though.“It’s a community arts center that does a lot of good work,” Scarborough said. “The community is going to suffer, and they’re going to be missed by the community if they’re not there.”

Eric Lee

/

St. Louis Public RadioShalanda Young, director of the federal Office of Management and Budget, talks to Illinois U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Springfield, during a tour of a construction project by AltonWorks last April in Alton. AltonWorks, who is building the LoveJoy Apartment Complex is receiving over $1 million in federal funding.

What does the future hold?AltonWorks will continue forging ahead with its ambitious plans to revitalize Alton. The organization hopes to conclude construction on the Wedge Innovation Center, which will have a restaurant, retail and co-working space, this fall. Lucas Row, a mix of apartments and retail space, is scheduled to be completed next spring.The remainder of the arts and innovation district, currently named after the Jacoby, will also move forward.“I believe in two years it’s going to be a much different place,” Brigham said of Alton. “It’s going to be thriving. It’s going to be new businesses, new tenants — and it’s going to be a nice proof of concept for what you can do in a small community like that.”The Jacoby board recently formed a strategic planning committee. Its task: figuring out what’s next for the arts center. The committee will reevaluate what space the Jacoby needs, what programs it wants to offer to the community and how they want to make that a reality.Keeping the arts center is essential for board members like Hoven. In her experience, it’s been a place where local aspiring artists get their start.“Art is one of the only ways to show your true authentic self,” Hoven said. “And there’s more people than I realized who do not get that opportunity every day.”The Jacoby will shut its doors to pack over the next month. Hoven said she’s optimistic the board will have concrete plans by the end of September when their lease officially ends.“Alton is such a fabulous and supportive community,” she said. “We still have lots of great options, so that the Jacoby Arts Center will continue to thrive in Alton and beyond.”

[ad_2]

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending