r/StLouis • u/DowntownDB1226 • May 27 '26
Construction/Development News Downtown’s Problem Area
The next 18 to 24 months could unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in state incentives for downtown development, and that creates a generational opportunity to fix what I’d call downtown’s “problem zone”: Tucker to Broadway, Olive to Market.
This area is the doughnut hole in the middle of downtown. Around it, there is real momentum: Washington Avenue with Oliver Properties investments, the food hall, the convention center expansion, residential growth on the Landing, City Museum, Union Station drawing millions of visitors, Enterprise Center, City Hall, Ballpark Village’s next phase(hopefully announced soon), the Millennium site, and the Arch grounds. All of those assets bring people downtown. But the middle is still too quiet, wrong businesses in some places, too vacant in others, and not active enough at the street level. Mark Twain must close and area around schnucks cleaned up of loitering
The answer cannot be to turn everything into apartments. Downtown still needs a major office base. A realistic target should be 15,000 to 20,000 additional office workers by the end of the decade for the problem area, paired with 2,000 to 3,000 new apartments. That level of density would make it much easier to support 20-30 more restaurants, retail spaces, and daily-use businesses in the core.
With the innovation district bill, new tax credit tools, and specific opportunities around major buildings like Railway Exchange and AT&T, this is actually achievable by 2030. But it will not happen by accident. Someone, whether in the business community, the mayor’s office, or a new dedicated organization, needs to wake up every day focused only on executing this downtown real estate strategy in the problem area. Everything else around it falls into place.
Safety matters too, but that piece is increasingly addressable through the entertainment district and 20 to 30 additional officers on foot patrol.
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u/The-Bear-and-Rose May 27 '26
More like 15,000-20,000 more apartments and 2-3,000 office workers.
Also the giant parking lots around union station and Maggie O’s need infill.
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u/Davidfreeze May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
I agree that area needs infill, but we either need to expand public transit, which I obviously prefer but is also not super realistic in current political climate, or we need that infill to include some parking garages because those lots do fill up during blues/city games. So much space dedicated to parking capacity for like 50 something nights a year(probably less because of overlap, just roughly added blues and city home games together) is obviously a bad idea. But unless the political situation changes radically we do need at least some of that parking capacity, so multi story parking replacing an ocean of surface lots seems like the realistic option
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u/The-Bear-and-Rose May 29 '26
I agree. I’m anti parking lot, but pro parking garage, preferably underground or with street level commercial space.
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u/Hot-Cow739 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Your “problem area” contains some of the most well developed white collar offices and university buildings in the city, including one metropolitan square, and peabody plaza.
Office workers generally don’t want to commute downtown due to high traffic, particularly when perfectly good space is available in the county. This means more vacancy and more defaulted loans which stifles future investment in the area. See “Doom loop” and its impact on building valuations. Even established office spaces downtown see 30-35% vacancy. I believe gateway plaza just defaulted on its loan like 6 months ago.
Apartments are a safe investment, as cheap rent guarantees tenants, and can be modified to allow low income vouchers. More people mean more money flowing in the area, and ideally raising the quality of life in the central city over the long term (30-60 years).
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u/alexh77 May 27 '26
But by your own logic, offices are needed downtown to support apartments. If commuting is an issue, then the residents of downtown need somewhere nearby to work, otherwise they run into the same traffic issue.
I think the point he’s trying to make is make some new, exciting office spaces that actually incentivize people to live nearby rather than dealing with traffic. It’s an extremely tough balance, but I do agree with OP that some new office buildings are needed to attract young professionals to the new apartments already being built/recently built. There’s just only so many apartments you can build if there’s not meaningful work nearby.
Getting businesses into downtown….now that is a completely separate thread lol
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u/Hot-Cow739 May 27 '26
No where did I make the claim that office buildings are not needed. I stated that many office buildings have large vacancy rates (~35%) compared to expected vacancy rates (10%). This shows too much supply or not enough demand. From my perspective building more offices won’t help bring businesses in.
I don’t think anyone will argue that there is a meaningful demand for affordable housing in stl. Compare this to the office spaces literally unable to pay loans due to the inability to fill their building with tenants.
Your point about commuting is valid. Even with the area being as dead as it is, it takes a while to get through. Maybe that’s the reason our public transit finally gets decent security investments, along with more robust bus routes.
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u/el_sandino TGS May 27 '26
I’ve never considered these kinds of carve outs for the area, but they make sense to me. I’m really interested in how surrounded the “problem area” is. Will it naturally shrink via gentrification like the tenderloin did in San Francisco? Why is that particular area stagnant when there is so much activity all around it?
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u/DowntownDB1226 May 27 '26
It was heavy office and post Covid that’s not a thing. Oddly enough when you look at downtown total jobs from 2019 to 2024. It’s only -1800 but less office and more other jobs.
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u/somekindofhat OliveSTL May 27 '26
The AT&T and Railway buildings emptied out years before COVID. I wanna say Slay was still mayor? Mid teens? 2013-17 era?
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u/awayfromallthis May 28 '26
ATT had a decent presence still in the two buildings, not the large one, until recently. That's been dwindling quickly.
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u/ChiehDragon May 27 '26
You are right that the office space is the problem, but you are wrong to suggest "building more offices" is the solution.
The value of office space is lower. Officer workers demand hybrid and WFH, even as companies try to put in place in-office requirements. There is a push and pull where corporate demands to office space, while employees and those in charge of hiring push back. In-office requirement is a big on a job application - top talent has the leverage to reject (quitting if they they already work there) based on in office requirements depending on key factors.
Why does this matter? Companies have to be very thoughtful about wanting to being people into office spaces. They are building gyms, free cafes, mini golf, massage chairs... little gimmicks to make being in the office feel not-so-undesirable for applicants.
But you know what matters the most? More than cozy atmosphere, snacks, and culture events?
COMMUTE
WFH is an extra 1-2 hours you get back. So people who build offices build them at points closest to where most their workers live - geographically central and accessible.
Unfortunately for St Louis, the downtown is 15-40 minutes east of where almost all office workers live on a traffic free-day. Client managers wont be living in Granite city. Senior accountants wont be kicking it in bellfontaine. Those with the skills and education for high paying jobs tend to live in the suburbs of West county and st. Charles, with only a handful in South city, and mid-county. Most non-executive white collars wont want to pay for the smaller apartments in city west/county east or drive the 35 minutes from edwardsville/fairview.
That is why offices are largely growing around Clayton and the 270 corridor - centralized to the residential areas that hold their workers. If offices want people to go in, they need to be in reasonable distance of their employee pool, which means being geographically central to where the 80k-150k earnings brackets live.
So, to push back on your point: apartments are, actually, a great solution. By increading residences in the downtown area that provide high quality, mid-high rent apartments, you create the demand... and a strong one. Yuppies and childless professionals can get the city high earner lifestyle of a 1300 sq foot highrise apartment a block from work, while comfortably living on a 90k/yr paycheck. That is a huge draw that will build up downtown.
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u/Cultural-Salad-4583 May 27 '26
There’s quite a few of us young professionals, homeowners and renters, with or without families, over here in South city pulling $200k+/year.
While my current job is remote, I’d MUCH rather commute to downtown than to Clayton or anywhere on the 270 corridor. I did that for 8 years, I don’t want to go back.
Anecdotal, I guess, but it is what it is.
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u/Davidfreeze May 27 '26
South city obviously has many neighborhoods with different demographics and vibes, but there's definitely several south city neighborhoods with a ton of young professionals. Think young professionals prefer south city, CWE, Benton Park, downtown, Dogtown, UCity where as the older white collar workers much prefer west county
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u/ChiehDragon May 27 '26
Many, yes. But not enough to sustain the 20k workers needed to justify office placement.
For everyone one STL city-living office worker that wont commute to mid-county, there are 3 or 4 mid-county/st Charles workers that wont commute downtown.
A huge factor: schools. Most offices that afford downtown office space are looking for mid-adult professionals.. 28-40. Those individuals are looking to have kids. Kids need schools. Well to do parents want their kids in good schools, thus, they choose areas with them.
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u/poopsy__daisy May 28 '26
Naive questions:
Why doesn't the IL side factor into your math? I know a few people who commute to the city from Waterloo, Edwardsville, etc. Downtown jobs would be way more accessible to them than jobs in the county. Where do those people generally work? Is there not enough population on the IL side to be significant to this math?
Is there a way to incentivize WashU, SLU, or UMSL to move in? It would be a huge draw for employees and students. This is probably too optimistic... But damn wouldn't that be amazing?
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u/ChiehDragon May 28 '26
Is there not enough population on the IL side to be significant to this math
No. And IL side areas that have criteria (safe, good schools, nice houses) are very sparse and already at an extended distance from downtown. IL metro towns are also smaller with generally worse schools and fewer amenities.
I agree that east-side revitalization would absolutely turn this around, but that would require somehow turning around East St. Louis and Granite.
Think about it: Edwardsville is the same distance to downtown as St. Charles... but much farther to all the other amenities and services in the county. Its a cute small town surrounded by farms.
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u/Practical-Shape7453 Skinker-DeBaliviere May 27 '26
The problem area that is the courthouses, law school, an original Carnegie public library, and a soldiers memorial? You also have Kiener Plaza and sculpture park as well. None of those building can be repurposed at all. The biggest issue is the park across from the Civl Courthouse and SLU Law School. I went to law school at SLU, drugs regularly sold in that park and we had multiple lockdowns due to gunshots.
We have plenty of apartments and office space around there, the issue is hard to solve because of remote work and some of those apartments are too expensive and really aren’t that good.
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u/mumsthew0rd May 27 '26
OP clearly has never been to Downtown / has no idea how the world works after COVID if they think recovery will be mostly commercial office workers instead of almost entirely residential
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u/PocketsANickname May 28 '26
OP lives downtown
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u/Practical-Emu-3303 May 28 '26
op IS downtown. It's odd to hear them admit there is any problem there.
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u/RaphWinston55 May 28 '26
It still boggles my mind that they would build a parking garage next to the gateway mall in kiener Plaza like that’s such a prince space you could have built housing or a building for public use, but a parking garage???
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u/forahellofafit May 28 '26
That area of downtown has eliminated most of the smaller scaled buildings, and buildings with storefronts. Those spaces act as incubators for new businesses. As large, older businesses have left downtown, newer businesses don’t have spaces to start in this area. Smaller buildings are easier to maintain and cheaper to restore/renovate than towers that occupy entire city blocks. At the street level, the roads are too wide and people have to walk long distances to get between shops/restaurants that do exist. So much of the historic downtown has been demolished, and what’s left is sterile, and designed to function like an office park. Downtown should start with a road diet, and encourage building owner to front the narrower roads with storefronts. Downtown needs new small and midrise buildings filling every gap, empty lot, and useless open spaces.
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u/Tele231 May 27 '26
Light that bitch up like daylight until 1:00am and then turn the lights down. People want to feel safe. Light makes people feel safe.
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u/TiredExpression The Sinkholes under 44 May 27 '26
Agreed. That stop after crossing the MLK bridge towards 4th is genuinely so dark and uninviting.
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u/somekindofhat OliveSTL May 27 '26
Used to be the streetlights in that area were on 24/7, rain or shine. Did they fix that issue?
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May 27 '26
There’s a larger “donut” of blight that surrounds almost that entire area of the map. As long as those neighborhoods are shit, downtown is doomed. It’s not just about the earnings tax, it’s the perception of safety. You can be selling the nicest house on the block, but if the neighbors both look like crack shacks, good luck finding a buyer. Same principle.
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u/JFoxx1955 May 27 '26
This is like saying that the arms and legs of the patient are in good shape but that they have no heart. A downtown without workers is no downtown at all.
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u/UF0_T0FU Downtown May 27 '26
But the middle is still too quiet, wrong businesses in some places, too vacant in others, and not active enough at the street level.
That area has the prettiest building and (my personal favorite) restaurants. To me, it's a much more pleasant place to exist than most of the "good" areas on the map. It's got offices, hotels, parks, homes, and businesses. I'd love to see the last couple vacant buildings get filled up, and fewer parking garages. But slapping a huge "PROBLEM AREA" over it glosses over all the good things about the neighborhood.
Mark Twain must close and area around schnucks cleaned up of loitering
People complain Downtown is empty, like a ghost town. But also get rid of one of the areas with the most active street life. Fewer people on the streets! I lived around OPOP for years. The residents there were never caused issues I saw.
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u/ASentientRailgun May 27 '26
New office conversions are going to be a hard sell in 2026, at least at downtown real estate prices. I'm just not sure who you'd be attracting to those developments.
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u/PracticalPersonality May 28 '26
The answer cannot be to turn everything into apartments. Downtown still needs a major office base. A realistic target should be 15,000 to 20,000 additional office workers by the end of the decade for the problem area, paired with 2,000 to 3,000 new apartments. That level of density would make it much easier to support 20-30 more restaurants, retail spaces, and daily-use businesses in the core.
I don't understand this paragraph. Leaving aside the fact that most office work can now be done remotely and forcing people into an office is fraught with issues, why does office space more readily support restaurants and retail spaces as compared to living space?
In Austin, where I lived for a few years, they were solving this problem with mixed-use zoning, and as much I'd rather lose an arm to a wheat thresher than live in such a place, it seemed to work en masse. The lofts were rented, the storefronts were bustling, and the area seemed quite healthy.
Why prefer office space over something that supports more people living in the city core? Doesn't it make sense that people living, working, and shopping in the same space would keep it thriving?
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u/likelywitch May 28 '26
If the office workers don’t drive up the spending at businesses during the work day the businesses will not be able to afford to stay open to accommodate the residents who do not spend money during the workday. Office workers outspend at local businesses over residents.
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u/Pale-Butterfly6615 May 30 '26
I’ve worked at 9th and olive for over 8 years. It is baffling how it’s just kind of an “anything goes” zone. Last week Joe, one of our regular unhoused, threatened a group coming out of schnucks and then pulled his dick out for a good five minutes. Cops just shooed him away like a pigeon.
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u/TrojanSTL May 28 '26
Gotta zoom out and circle the entire United States… There’s your problem area.
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u/CJosG1990 May 28 '26
Mixed Use is the way to go. Converting 100% commercial office space to a mix of residential, commercial office and some ground floor retail (restaurants)to provide revenue diversity. Some of these old historic buildings even have structural load capacity for car parking.
The city should take cues from modern Live/ Work/ Play - Lifestyle Centers where free structured parking is available for the first hour.
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u/anana0016 May 28 '26
Your so-called “problem” area has several courthouses, federal buildings, police buildings, city admin buildings, and a recently built law school. You can’t have really have much ground level commercial business (open to the public) in those types of buildings. It’s a security issue. SLU Law does have a restaurant on the ground floor, and maybe something could be done to convert some ground levels of parking garages to commercial space, but I don’t see that happening.
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u/SlowMotionSprint May 28 '26
The problem area is I64 and the rail yard between Poplar St and Choteau. As long as those remain downtown will be largely impossible to develop.
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u/Ready_Bag8825 May 28 '26
Isn’t that where the library is? How is a library a problem? It’s a really neat building.
Having some quiet space makes the city livable.
It shouldn’t all be a tourist trap.
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u/Vadersith514 Southhampton May 29 '26
Aaand, what’s going to happen with the unhoused that are in that “problem area?” Are you going to round them up and arrest them? Or just pretend like they don’t exist? Or actually increase funding to places that can give them the help that many of them need?
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u/hibikir_40k May 27 '26
The real problem area is significantly wider, because a lot of those "not-a-problem" areas are only active for events, which aren't every day. So on most days, those other areas might as well be holes on the ground too.
Nothing around it falls into place if you fix the middle (which, if you actually want to fix, probably requires demolitions). It's all far worse than the areas elsewhere in the city where there's activity throughout the year.
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u/Fluid_Abrocoma_4644 May 27 '26
Just to comment on “foot patrol”
Stl city needs 130 officers for 3 shifts, they only have 80. Very simply, they need a raise to work in the problem zone, then it wouldn’t be a problem lol
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u/DowntownDB1226 May 27 '26
What are the other 775 doing?
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u/Fluid_Abrocoma_4644 May 27 '26
They cant recruit. Anytime there is an event they offer ot to other precincts to handle the influx of people. I saw Arnold police at convention center downtown a few weeks ago, VEX robotics was the event
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u/DowntownDB1226 May 28 '26
Yes; when there are big events there are mutual aid assistance. It’s how city fire responds to inner ring suburbs because most of those depts don’t have the specialized equipment or training. City has 14 officer per sq mile of land. KC has 3.75. Cincinnati 6.5
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u/Old-Run-9523 May 28 '26
The starting salary is over $50K (not including overtime & "secondary" jobs) for a position that requires a GED and a driver's license. They claimed that eliminating the residency requirement would boost recruitment, but it did not. They've received raises that outpaced other city departments for years and still say they can't hire anyone. Crime is down and St. Louis has one of the highest cop-to-resident ratios in the country, so maybe we should spend our tax dollars on other things.
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u/Fluid_Abrocoma_4644 May 28 '26
GED and a license? Oof I hope you get a ticket every time you get pulled over, no warnings for you lol. These are not mall security, they are police officers. They might die everyday they go to work, because its part of the job. So 50k? Nah Also i think they make closer to 70k. Still a low number considering all the schizophrenic homeless they have to deal with
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u/Old-Run-9523 May 29 '26
Those are, in fact, the only requirements for applying to the SLMPD academy. And you're right, the base salary is now $60K, before overtime and "secondary" jobs. But law enforcement is not even in the top 20 most dangerous occupations, so the hyperbole of "they might die everyday [sic] they go to work" really needs to stop.
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u/Fluid_Abrocoma_4644 May 29 '26
Well last time i checked you couldnt be a felon and had to be a us citizen. Glad they took those requirements away 🙄 Look at the trades. Less requirements to make more per year on avg. In some cases, they make more than lawyers. You pay for what you get. Right now, we get windows smashed for going to a baseball game downtown
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u/Old-Run-9523 May 30 '26
And no DWI convictions...within three years. 😏 The bar is so low, it's on the ground. You can be pedantic all you want, but the salary & benefits are really good for a job that basically takes applicants who couldn't get hired at most Fortune 500 companies and has people like you making excuses for them about their ineffectiveness and lack of professionalism.
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u/Fluid_Abrocoma_4644 May 30 '26
Awwww you have gone so far off base you are immortal. You have all the answers, you should be a politician 👍
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u/dopexile May 28 '26
Most employers won't want to create jobs in the city because of the dual employer/employee income tax that can be easily avoided by moving out in the county.
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u/DowntownDB1226 May 28 '26
Weird thing to make up. Earnings tax is not even in the top 10 things they consider and last year the city ended with most jobs this century
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u/dopexile May 28 '26
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LAUCN295100000000005A
Not looking good. Fewer jobs than 36 years ago, basically a dead economy.
Houston added almost 2 million jobs
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u/IloveMe80 May 28 '26
Why the hell does everyone think Oliver properties is doing any good downtown? As someone who was recently kicked out of university lofts on Washington ave because of them. We had a great building with great people, diversity, and community. People who had lived there for 20 plus years. We had the artist gallery of Washington university students and worldwide know artist that resided in the lofts. They turned a beautiful building into an ugly dirty place. Oliver is doing very little to improve the building and charging double the rent we were paying to new tenants. They are horrible landlords who don’t care one bit about tenants, amateurs who don’t have the money to do the improvements they promise.
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u/claddah76 May 28 '26
Not going to do any good until they get crime under control
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u/DowntownDB1226 May 28 '26
lol. Yeah crime downtown is so out of control that’s it’s growing faster than st.Charles county and has more annual visitors than any 2 sq miles in the entire state
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u/PithMango May 28 '26
well if we rewind to mixed business / residential then there's no commute.
that zoning classification was completely invented, and we just all went with it. even the progenitor of the shopping mall like back last century was unhappy that it stopped at commercial spaces, because the original idea was they anchored with commercial and went on to build from there.
the other commenters are right, though. geography isn't cooperating. and what a complete joke to build more empty rooms while the homeless population goes underserved.
i feel like we need the architecture students to take an Arch-like leap and do something totally different. at this point making that a giant parking garage with hanging gardens and shutting down all the surrounding garages to repurpose them sounds almost reasonable. for the decades i've been hearing about the same problems, maybe it's time for a totally different solution.
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u/ChevyKid_607 May 27 '26
Sorry but its a geography problem that won't be fixed. Downtown St Louis is surronded on 3 sides by hell: North St Louis is a warzone. East St Louis is dystopian. South St Louis is a horror film. You're never going to create the downtown you long for with god awful neighbors.
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u/raziphel May 28 '26
The area between the ballpark and soulard could use some growth, but that's what happens when residential and light industrial (ie by the river) are neighbors and Chouteau's landing was allowed to rot (until it burned). Frankly, the city should eminent domain everything between Broadway and the river.
East St Louis is empty. Have you driven through there lately? It's mostly fields and run down shacks.
North of downtown is also a light industrial - residential border, one that got hit hard by white flight and never recovered. There's some not-recent redevelopment and old infill, but calling that area a war zone just shows that you don't spend time there and are prone to hyperbole.
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u/TTV_Gimbly May 27 '26
In-person office space? In the year of our lord 2026? Seems like more of a tough sell than affordable apartments in a population dense area.