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Originally Posted by Steely Dan
Yeah, that had me do a double take as well, but it's apparently true.
A giant 44 story, 1.4M SF modern office tower built in 1986 sitting totally vacant in the heart of a major american downtown for several years..... It's a little hard to believe.
I mean, if it was some decrepit old dinosaur from the early 20th that needed hundreds of millions in updates, I could see it, but a 1986 tower can't be in that bad of shape, can it?
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Apparently a big problem for various entities that have looked at the building is the lack of parking. The building has roughly 100 subterranean spots and that's it. The sky bridges connecting it to the neighboring AT&T properties (and the parking) were torn down, and apparently AT&T isn't interested in sharing.
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Yeah, according to the CTBUH, downtown St. Louis hasn't seen the construction of significant commercial office tower over 200' tall since the late 80s.
But two such towers have been built out in Clayton over the past two decades. It seems like it'd be pretty hard to argue that Clayton doesn't hurt downtown St. Louis at this point.
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The PwC Pennant Building, which was a part of Phase II of Ballpark Village and completed last year, was the first newly constructed class A office space in 30 years. The last class A tower was Metropolitan Square in 1989. The trouble is that Met Square is 593 ft to the PwC Building's 141 ft. Everything else in the interim has been about bringing back to life downtown St. Louis' existing buildings, especially the historic ones.
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Originally Posted by craigs
Hey, Clayton has light rail. It's connected. I'm not a hater, I'm just saying that if there were no Clayton it doesn't mean downtown St. Louis would be taller or bigger.
My Dad grew up in St. Louis, and I've still got family there. There is something holding that place back. It's not a declining Chicagoland with a white-hot core full of new skyscrapers, it's just flailing.
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The issue with Clayton is the separation of the city and the county. Clayton benefits from being St. Louis County's seat and the power of the county's incentives that come with it.
If St. Louis was still in the county and the actual county seat then you'd likely see more of a dynamic of a downtown vs Central West End sort of thing rather than a new downtown less than 10 miles away from city hall to city hall.
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Originally Posted by The North One
Says here USDA is putting 1,000 workers in the building so it wont be totally vacant for long, thankfully. https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/...ouis-home.html
We have absolutely no proof that Clayton has to exist or otherwise all that office space would go to Nashville, that's pretty absurd and makes no sense.
Suburban office centers definitely take away from the downtown of their proper cities nearby, we know this because we've seen tenants and companies move directly from central cities to these suburban nodes for the last half century. It's just pointlessly shuffling chairs in a metro area.
They're pretty much worthless parasites that shouldn't exist wherever they are in this country. Today most suburban office centers in Midwest cities seem to be dying out in favor of central downtown space, but Clayton seems to only be getting stronger and more prominent. |
The 1,000 USDA employees are moving into Met Square and sadly not the old AT&T Center according to the city:
https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/governmen...s-downtown.cfm