Category: North St. Louis

Categories
Abandonment Adaptive Reuse Industrial Buildings North St. Louis

What To Do With The Army Ammunition Plant?

by Michael R. Allen

What to do with a huge, transite-clad steel-framed building? That’s the question to ask about the Army Ammunition Plant at Goodfellow and I-70 in north St. Louis.

The answer that the Mayor offers is demolition for retail construction.

Of course, removal of the transite covering and thorough abatement would leave a highly-adaptable steel frame in a highly-interesting shape. Re-cladding in any number of materials is feasible, and the resulting big retail outlet would be less of a big box and more of a big curiosity. The rumor is that Home Depot is interested in the site. Don’t they want to open the world’s coolest Home Depot?

Categories
Columbus Square North St. Louis

Bottled District

by Michael R. Allen

What is the fabled Bottle District going to look like?

This?

Or this?

Will the towers shrink, the architecture get more conservative and the tenant list atrophy? Probably. While the site is excellent for very tall buildings, it is extremely disconnected from areas of residential and commercial density. While the plans hint that it will be a drive-in, self-contained world, it is being billed as a great entertainment district. Unfortunately, it would need for the demolition of I-70 and Trans World Dome to be a walkable complement to other areas of downtown activity. It’s not likely to attract vibrant street life or many interesting stores and restaurants; the tenant list so far could easily be confused for the Union Station renovation tenant list, with barbecue restaurants, go-karts and other things that attract auto-bound visitors.

As a place to live, it could do very well, though. But the designs need to be progressive. I was not a huge fan of Libeskind’s plans, which were rather derivative of his other work, but I admired the flair and the notion that the site should be a visual focal point. The newer renderings show rather commonplace buildings, better suited for the high-rise-choked Chicago Gold Coast than the skyline of St. Louis.

Categories
Hyde Park North St. Louis

Goodnight, Bremen

by Michael R. Allen

Bremen Bank, Broadway at Mallinckrodt in Hyde Park. Photograph taken at 10:13p.m. on January 21 by Claire Nowak-Boyd.

Categories
Local Historic District North St. Louis Preservation Board Visitation Park

Windemere Place Owners Want Inappropriate Alteration

by Michael R. Allen

The owners of #19 Windermere Place want to cut up their historic front porch to add off-street parking to their home. They have applied for a permit to alter the home to create a parking lane that would run at yard grade under the existing canopy — a plan that would remove a section of their original porch deck. What a mistake that would be!

While other houses on the street have off-street driveways, they are either original to the home or did not get built through alterations to the houses. The homes on Windermere Place are part of the Visitation Park Local District (made a City Landmark in 1975 and expanded in 1987). Owners of homes here have to adhere to historic district standards that preclude major alterations like this one; they must get a variance from the Preservation Board to go against the standards.

Rarely does anyone seeking a variance aim to do anything other than damage the architectural quality of both home and street scape. The owners of this house are no exception to the norm.

These owners and those of other properties will be appearing before the Preservation Board at its meeting on Monday, January 23 at 4:00 p.m. at 1015 Locust Street (12th floor meeting room). Thankfully, the Cultural Resources staff recommends denying the permit.

Read the Cultural Resources staff summary of the application to see photographs of the home as well as plans for the remuddling.

Categories
James Clemens House North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Place

Blairmont Case To Be Continued

by Michael R. Allen

The hearing for the Building Division’s suit against Blairmont Associates LC over the condition of the Clemens House (known as Blairmont #054-2163) has again been continued. The next hearing has been scheduled for February 14, in Division 7 at the Civil Courts Building, at 9:30 a.m.

A tipster says that Paul McKee denies having anything to do with Blairmont or any of its allied enterprises (Noble Development, N & G Ventures, VHS Partners), as well as sharing an address with the company. Should we believe that Harvey Noble and Steve Goldman — the people who are definitely working for Blairmont — are going it alone on the “project”?

Categories
Abandonment Housing LRA North St. Louis Old North

2917-23 N. 13th Street

by Michael R. Allen


Photograph by Michael R. Allen; December 21, 2005.

A lovely row of late 19th-century houses at 2917-23 N. 13th Street creates a very urban setting in Old North. Too bad that the back walls have fallen off and the owner is the city government.  I wonder how much time this lovely group has left. There is nothing stopping anyone from coming in, removing damaged sections and rebuilding the row with modern materials. This could be the site for a demonstration of historic-modern stylistic blending, but fate likely is a strong counterweight to that dream.

Once upon a time, people cared for this row. (Source: National Register of Historic Places Inventory Form: Murphy-Blair Historic District, Prepared by Landmarks Association of St. Louis, 1984.)


Around back. Photograph by Michael R. Allen; December 21, 2005.

Categories
Martin Luther King Drive North St. Louis Streets Urbanism

Old Easton Avenue

by Michael R. Allen

One of the two remaining three-story 19th-century commercial buildings on the south side of Dr. Martin Luther King Drive just west of Jefferson disappeared last week.

We have no photograph of the building. May someone else have a better memory of the building than ours.

Rob Powers did get a photograph of another great commercial building across the street that came down in 2001. The “Heller Co.” sign and its greatly-altered building still remain in use. This block was one of many thriving commercial blocks on the former Easton Avenue; by the 1930s almost every block of Easton from downtown through the Wellston Loop was chock-full of buildings housing apartments, stores and offices. The street must have been fabulously urban.

Today, traces of the past density remain, especially between Grand Avenue and the city limits. But the vitality is less evident, and certainly less concentrated. Enough buildings remain to make the thoroughfare a likely candidate for future revitalization.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration

Blairmont, VHS Partners Share Address with McKee’s Companies

by Michael R. Allen

The July 15 Quarterly Report of the Jordan W. Chambers 19th Ward Regular Democratic Organization reveals some interesting information about its contributors. Namely, that the following contributors, all real estate holding companies, share the same address:

N & G Ventures LC
Noble Development Company
VHS Partners LLC
McEagle Properties LLC
West Alton Holding Company LLC
Oakland Properties, Inc.
Blairmont Associates Limited Company

That address is 1001 Boardwalk Springs Place in O’Fallon, Missouri .  1001 Boardwalk Springs Place is the address of the largest office building in the sprawling WingHaven development. This also happens to be the mailing address for Paric Corporation and McEagle Development, the well-known companies founded by wealthy developer Paul McKee, Jr. (Paric is now led by McKee‘s son Joe.)

Readers know that we have detailed the adventurous purchases of rogue real estate companies Blairmont Associates LC and VHS Partners LLC, and that we along with other northsiders have been wondering what the hell these silent speculators have been trying to do in our neighborhoods. But few people would have known that Blairmont and VHS shared an address with these other companies, because both Blairmont and VHS were registered anonymously and their only known agents were Harvey Noble and Steve Goldman of Eagle Realty Company and Roberta M. Defiore. Even fewer would have known the links between Blairmont, VHS, Noble Development Company and N & G Ventures. Without seeing this report, I would have never learned of this additional entity or of the definite link with McKee’s enterprises. Campaign finance disclosure again proves to be a valuable democratic tool. Together, these four companies own 244 north side properties and hold an option to buy one city-owned parcel:

Blairmont: 82
VHS Partners: 101
N & G Ventures: 58 plus one option
Noble Development Company: 3

The holdings of these companies are geographically confined: most are in the 63106 zip code and the a well-defined southern part of the 63107 zip code; all are in either Ward 5 or Ward 19; nearly every property is a vacant lot, with only a handful of vacant buildings in the inventory. (Although we know that they did attempt to trick a legally-blind woman into selling her own house to them.)

The question remains: What exactly is the tie with McKee? And what is the plan for such a large area of the city?

The alternating silence and aggressive pursuit of properties by the entities at 1001 Boardwalk Springs Place is disturbing no matter how good their plan could be. These companies need to talk to their neighbors, who are very worried about the intentions and methods behind these companies. Consensus is built through communication; suspicion grows through silence.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North

Over on Hadley Street

<strong>by Michael R. Allen</strong>

The lot at 2805 Hadley Street in Old North St. Louis may be fenced but sports an incredible amount of debris. One can find broken PVC pipes, old furniture, solid fill and scraps of wood lying around its confines. That is, during the winter. In the warm months, the grass grows so tall on this lot that passers-by would not be startled if someone told them that a house was on the lot.

Next door, a lovely late 1870’s townhouse is undergoing and ambitious rehab from an owner who is rehabbing other buildings in the neighborhood. Across Hadley Street is Ames School, one of the city’s finest elementary schools.

The owner of the lot?

Blairmont Associates LC, one of the near north side’s most active collectors of vacant lots and buildings. Where the owner of the house next door sees a need to restore his building, Blairmont sees nothing but the future value of the land and is willing to hurt its neighbors today so that its owners can profit tomorrow.

Categories
Historic Preservation James Clemens House North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North

Blairmont: Rook to QB4

by Michael R. Allen

Word on the snow-covered street is that Blairmont Associates LC was not pleased with the attention it received from a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on its abusive ownership of the Clemens House and the resulting speculation on the identity of the deep pockets behind Blairmont. Sources say that Blairmont had no idea that the property at 1849 Clemens was a historic mansion; they were only interested in the large lot the home and chapel sit on. Thus, to avoid more publicity they will sell the house by January 6 (not sure why this date is being floated).

Of course, if they want to avoid attention they will need to do more than sell the Clemens House. We will continue to monitor their abuse of other historic buildings (such as the Brecht Butcher Supply Company buildings at 1201 Cass, if Blairmont is reading) and many northsiders are actively working to uncover the identity of Blairmont. People who are investing their time, labor and money in rehabbing homes on the near north side have a right to know who is behind Blairmont Associates LC and VHS Partners LLC. Some people think that they know, as the comments section on this blog shows.

For the record, we have no evidence that isn’t already public record. Our guess is as good as yours — probably worse, since we have neighbors who know a lot more than we do about them.