There’s a little article about an interesting anti-teardown effort going on in Kirkwood on StLToday: Kirkwood neighbors decry redevelopment of homesite
by Michael R. Allen
One local television station’s report on today’s fire at one of the Cochran Gardens buildings on Seventh Street north of downtown called the building “historic.”
The use of that adjective was bittersweet. The six red brick apartment buildings — including two buildings reputed to be the first high-rise public housing buildings in the city — are a handsome example of relatively sensitive mid-century design. Designed by George Hellmuth and completed in 1953, Cochran Gardens was the city’s third federally-funded housing project built by the St. Louis Housing Authority. It also was the scene for one of the nation’s earliest and most successful tenant management programs. For better or for worse, Cochran Gardens survived its contemporaries, form Pruitt-Igoe to Darst-Webbe. Tenant management helped, as did a modern design much more humanely scaled than the successor projects with uniform heights and building types.
Demolition of Cochran Gardens is currently underway, with five of the six buildings slated for eventual demolition. One of the taller buildings will remain. The replacement HOPE VI project is under construction, and seems better-designed than many recent examples. One wonders what sort of viability the Cochran Gardens buildings could have had in today’s downtown housing market. Next door, the stunning rehabilitation of the Neighborhood Gardens Apartments demonstrates that much can be done to creatively transform mass housing, and that there is demand for the end products. Whereas the intended tenants of high-rise public housing may have desired housing more along the lines of what HOPE VI projects provide, some people do choose to live in basic, sturdy spaces off of the ground. After all, the transformation of the wholesale buildings of Washington Avenue into desired housing suggests that just about any kind of building can be someone’s house. Why not a building design for housing in the first place? No matter — we lost the chance with Cochran Gardens. Next time?
by Michael R. Allen
Christian Herman announces a new blog covering fundraisers for the Marti Frumhoff Memorial Garden, including the fun event held at Tin Can Tavern this past Saturday.
Meanwhile, some work has begun on the effort to rebuild the Mullanphy Emigrant Home. E.M. Harris Construction Company has performed stabilization and debris removal needed to prepare for reconstruction of the south foundation wall. The New Old North blog posted photos of work back on July 17. More work has taken place since then, and foundation work could start any day now. Look for further updates there and here.
by Michael R. Allen
The western half of St. Louis Place suffered some of the most severe building loss of any city neighborhood within the last 50 years. While many houses and businesses survive, there are a few blocks there that provoke comments akin to Camilo Jose Vergara’s chilling statement in The New American Ghetto: “There is so much empty land that in some places the city seems to have ceased to exist.”
The extreme appearance of parts of St. Louis Place is jarring to people not accustomed to seeing urban decay in their daily lives. The preponderance of vacant land is frightening even to optimists. However, most struggling north side neighborhoods don’t look like that. From Hyde Park to the Ville, the more common pattern of north side decay comes in rampant abandonment of buildings, substandard conditions of many occupied units, gradual and scattered building loss and flimsy, quick-to-decay new construction. Even more important to consider is that most of north St. Louis has a population density greater than St. Louis Place.
How practical is the proposed Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit to most of north St. Louis? Not very much, it seems. The latest version of that tax credit act that will be considered in the state legislature’s upcoming veto session mandates developments of at least fifty acres. Fifty acres has proven difficult to assemble in even St. Louis Place. In areas with greater population density, use of the tax credit would be almost impossible and even less desirable than it is on the near north side. Take the Blairmont approach to a densely-populated distressed neighborhood in north St. Louis and the acquisition phase would be cultural annihilation.
North St. Louis is a large place with many different types of neighborhoods. There is no denying north city faces unique challenges, and that it’s high time that state government aid in the rebuilding of half of the state’s oldest big city. However, the Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit Act is really only practical for the near north side where developer Paul J. McKee, Jr. wants to use it. In areas where vacant buildings and substandard housing are more common than frontier-like expanses of vacant land, land assemblage isn’t the most pressing development concern or the most appropriate strategy for renewal. We still have the chance to prevent the Ville or Wells-Goodfellow from looking like the southwest corner of St. Louis Place. We have the chance to use incentives to improve neighborhoods for current residents, not for potential developers. Surely a better incentive for renewal for north St. Louis could be devised.
Categories
Adding Up
by Michael R. Allen
In a recent post to his St. Louis Real Estate Law blog, attorney Greg Kelly offers an interesting idea for ensuring that Paul J. McKee, Jr. stops abusing city government’s ability to provide maintenance for his north side holdings. Writes Kelly:
Right now, the city adds a 10% premium to the final bill before sending it to the property owner. Simply increase that premium by 10% for each subsequent bill. At some point not too far down the line it will be come cost prohibitive to have the city maintain the property.
by Michael R. Allen
On next Tuesday, August 8 will be a groundbreaking ceremony for the Old Post Office Plaza. Situated just north of the Old Post Office on Locust Street between 8th and 9th streets, the plaza site is currently a series of parking lots sharing the block with the Orpheum Theater, Mayfair Hotel and the site of the Roberts Tower. That the site is one of the most valuable pieces of downtown real estate is unquestionable. Located in the core adjacent to some of the city’s largest and most splendid historic rehabilitation projects and one block south of bustling Washington Avenue, the plaza site seems ripe for development. In fact, the Roberts Brothers’ proposed tower — what may be the first downtown high-rise since the Eagleton Courthouse — underscores the fact that developers see viability in this location.
Yet the site is being squandered for yet another downtown park. I admit that this site could be far worse for a downtown park. Sure, it offers a broad view of the Century Building Memorial Parking Garage (which fails to fully screen its descending floors). Sure, having an Old Post Office Plaza that faces the rear of the Old Post Office is more than a little strange. Yet the site does have some sense of enclosure, being surrounded by buildings that come up to the sidewalk line on all of its street-facing sides and butting up against the Orpheum Theater and the Roberts Tower. One can see some interesting views of wonderful buildings from the middle of the site. A failing of many downtown parks, including blocks of the Gateway Mall, is the lack of visual enclosure that creates interesting views as well as an urban sense of place. This site is better than most in that regard.
The design, published on the website of designers Baird Sampson Nuert (link here), provides the basic ingredients of the typical contemporary urban plaza: a large paved assembly space, a wooded lawn for passive recreation, a screen for moving images, dramatic lighting and the presence of moving water. Perhaps all of these plazas, at least in the United States, are now the descendants of Chicago’s Millennium Park with predictable dominant genes. The Old Post Office Plaza deftly packages the components of this type of plaza without overwhelming the site severely. The plaza design doesn’t dazzle, but it just might work. (One potentially troubling visual issue is the relationship between the new tower and the plaza.)
Of course, the plaza probably won’t get to work. There is a simple reason: It’s in downtown St. Louis. This is no slight on the center of our fair city, but a recognition of the fact that there is glut of park space downtown and already spaces like Kiener Plaza that receive the attention of tourists, noonday office workers and other users attracted to well-defined recreational spaces. The cool kids, it seems, prefer their outdoor concerts and movies on parking lots and streets, saving lots for buildings.
Downtown lacks a coherent vision for recreational space, an in the absence of that vision has accumulated enough of that space to serve a downtown three times more dense. The worst part of the Old Post Office Plaza is not its location, or its design, but its timing — it is simply too late to make a difference. The loose-knit nature of downtown has led to disconnection, visual uncertainty and diminished context for those truly good park spaces like Lucas Park. City leaders seem to see no problem with the situation, since the in-progress Gateway Mall Master Plan calls for neither treatment of the mall’s ills nor of the context that makes the mall so dreary. Instead, the mall is proposed for mere remodeling and the amount of green space downtown goes unquestioned. Thus, the Old Post Office Plaza stands little chance to redeem itself.
by Michael R. Allen
Fans of mid-century modern design had already mourned the loss of the St. Louis Hills Office Center, that multi-story brick office building at Chippewa and Watson in St. Louis Hills. Eloquent prose and loving photographs are online at Toby Weiss’ B.E.L.T. and Rob Powers’ Built St. Louis. Demolition work is underway, with the parking garage heavily destroyed and the office building notably damaged. However, an article in yesterday’s Southwest City Journal reports that the elusive owners are in fact renovating the office building, not demolishing it. Only the parking garage will be completely removed.
However, given the damage to the office building the new version will certainly be something less that what was there before. The eulogies may still prove apt.
From Landmarks Association of St. Louis:
The Plaza Square Apartments Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 2007. Located between 15th, Olive, 17th and Chestnut Streets in downtown St. Louis, the district includes St. John the Apostle & Evangelist Catholic Church from 1860 and Centenary Methodist Church from 1870 as well as the signature high-rise apartments completed in 1961. The Plaza Square apartment complex, the cornerstone accomplishment of the city’s first Urban Renewal project, was designed by the newly formed Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum architectural firm in collaboration with Harris Armstrong—an acclaimed leader of the Modern Movement in the Midwest. Evenly divided into two different configurations with a total of 1,090 apartments, the six buildings utilized native limestone, brick, concrete and colorful enameled metal panels (most now painted tan) to create a sleek contemporary aesthetic enhanced by balconies, landscaped grounds and underground parking
Although the “skyscraper home in a garden” initially attracted urbanites of all ages, Plaza Square soon experienced increasing vacancy rates. In 1965, Building # 60 at the southeast corner of 17th and Olive Streets was sold to Bethesda General Hospital which converted it into the Town House retirement community. Now dubbed BLU CitySpaces by a new owner, Building #60 is being converted to condominiums utilizing historic rehab tax credits. Thanks to the National Register nomination prepared by Landmarks Association for that developer, the other five buildings (which have been subjected to repeated foreclosures) are also prime candidates for reinvestment.
Developer pays city to ‘treat’ eyesores – Jake Wagman (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 30)
by Michael R. Allen
A recent post on Urban St. Louis about the James Clemens House caught my attention:
A co-worker and I were out on the north side this morning and since he had his camera with him we decided to get some pics of the place. When we got there a man was walking around the property looking it over and talking on a cell phone. He asked who we were and said he was talking to the property owner who wanted to know who we were and why we were there. I took the phone and explained that we were just taking pictures. I asked if he really was the owner and he said that he was. I asked what he was planning to do with the place. He said he was going to rehab it. That he was accepting bids and that the work will begin in September.
Read more here.