The current wasteland
Several concepts have been proposed under the Bottle District moniker over the years. Now that the 17-acre site just north of the Edward Jones Dome will be sold to Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration LLC (after last week’s swift and decisive approval of the deal by the Board of Aldermen) what will happen next?
McKee and his investors have hinted at a $190 million dollar project, consisting of an office- and residential component with construction starting tentatively summer 2012. No detailed plans have been disclosed yet.
The elevated section of I-70 and Edward Jones Dome
Not a pretty site, or sight.
Relics of the past
As no concrete plans have been revealed so far, allow us to ponder freely about the possibilities.
Residential construction doesn’t seem a good fit for the site. Let’s face it, this place is surrounded by mostly ugliness. A hulking dome to the south, an elevated highway to the east, fairly generic looking housing on the west side, and I-70 viaducts and a power substation to the northeast don’t make for a welcoming environment.
A perfect opportunity to propose something completely different:
This site is the perfect location for an expansion of the convention center.
CODT impression
OK. You had a peek at the rendering above and your disbelief, or even anger, has subsided. Now you ask yourself: Why an expansion?
Solution: America’s Center
America’s Center currently offers 502,000 square foot of contiguous convention space spread out over six exhibit halls, the dome, and the Ferrara Theater. When you add up the many meeting rooms and smaller banquet rooms inside the complex, the total space available is 781,000 Sq. Ft. With this space St. Louis is on par with cities like Denver, Boston, Tampa and San Diego. Not a bad group to be associated with. But why not aim higher?
A new exhibition hall of about 300,000 Sq. Ft. could be built fittingly at the Bottle District site. This would not only give St. Louis more than 1,000,000 Sq. Ft. of convention space, which would propel it into the top 10 of U.S. cities with the most exhibition space. It would also give it a state-of-the-art convention hall with 300,000 Sq. Ft. of space available under one roof, something only a handful of cities can boast.
COGIC and NRA conventions are great for the city, but an addition like this would give the Conventions and Visitors Commission (CVC) a competitive edge in their quest to reel in more big fish. St. Louis is located smack right in the middle of the country (“Perfectly Centered, Remarkably Connected” in RCGA lingo) and with a brand new, cutting-edge facility it would be equipped with the tools to compete with large convention destinations like New Orleans, San Francisco, Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas or Chicago. (Orlando and Las Vegas are more or less in a league of their own.) For instance, in cooperation with BJC and Washington University more large medical conventions could be pursued.
Dome and new Convention Center
Solution: Edward Jones Dome
Building a 300,000 square foot exhibition hall could easily require an investment of $300 million or more – a lot of money – especially in tough economic times. However, by building this new center attached to, even integrated with the Edward Jones Dome (with or without sliding roof), St. Louis could kill two birds with one stone: ensure that the requirement of elevating the dome to top tier NFL territory is met, and thereby securing the Rams’ future in St. Louis, and at the same time create a first class and more flexible convention center.
Parking under new exhibition hall
Solution: Parking
A 2,000-car parking garage could be built under the new center on two levels. This new garage would serve the dome, the convention center, and as a park and ride center with shuttle service for visitors to Laclede’s Landing, the Arch grounds and other hot spots downtown. Possibly, (some) funding for this garage could be allocated through the City+Arch+River (Arch grounds renovation) effort.
Older, obsolete garages could be demolished and replaced my mixed-use retail/residential in more desirable areas such as Kiener Plaza.
Solution: Downtown
It is to be expected that many St. Louisans would consider this proposal another “silver bullet” project. But as downtown residents and small business owners know very well, conventions are the lifeblood of downtown. When a large convention is in town, downtown thrives: the hotels are full and restaurants, shops, bars and even grocery stores are doing brisk business. Currently, many restaurants and stores don’t even open on Sundays or during the day on Saturdays without a convention.
Kiener Plaza rendering (courtesy of MVVA)
A major benefit of conventions is that they generate an inbound flow of money. This is not money revolving inside the metro area, this is money from elsewhere that’s pumped into the St. Louis economy. Further, conventions benefit Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. It generates origin and destination traffic to and from St. Louis, which in turn makes more direct flights feasible. MetroLink is another beneficiary. More visitors from Lambert means more metro riders.
A wall of shame (Photo courtesy of nextSTL)
Again, we realize this plan will be considered (at best) a long shot by most, but maybe, just maybe, if Rams owner Kroenke, McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration, and the city and its citizens would get behind it and work out funding for such an endeavor we could solve several problems in one fell swoop:
We keep the Rams, increase revenue at the dome and America’s Center, add a great asset to the city, and create a much needed parking solution. We could start demolishing some of our most offensive and crumbling parking structures.
Lastly, by hosting more and larger conventions, tens of millions of dollars would be pumped into the St. Louis economy, resulting in thousands of new jobs.
Retail and residences at Kiener Plaza
Sure, a lot of money is required to realize this vision for The Bottle District, but let’s put this in perspective:
If we are happily willing to spend $587 million on the renovation of a National Park, a.k.a. the Arch Grounds, $300 million doesn’t sound so excessive.
We believe that this vision for the Bottle District would reap a much greater return on investment.
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Do you have a vision for the Bottle District?
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This seems to be a no-brainer, but if you peruse the comments on StlToday you’re met with nothing but nay-sayers.
Adding a sliding roof over the dome will NOT suddenly solve the dome’s top-tier problem.
Yikes man! It’s already a superblock. Put that thing on the end of it and there will be no walking around the monster. Convention Centre Plaza should be renamed Delmar and we should get a street grid friendly structure if there’s any expanding.
The convention center already forms a northern border to downtown. The bottle district is dead and vacant because the highway and dome cut it off from downtown. Extending the superblock just further disinvests the north riverfront, especially if you make that rendering true to how it would be built, with loading docks all along the side facing residences.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a bigger convention center, just that I don’t think that cheap box is the answer.
Cole Street would still run under the connected buildings. The loading docks would be on the highway side, not on the residential side. With the new bridge and I-70 traffic being funneled onto Cass Ave, N. Broadway would be used for truck traffic.
I believe this plan would connect Columbus Square more to downtown, not less. Also, this plan would spur more and much needed economic development for this area.
(Please, don’t take the renderings as an absolute. They’re just meant as a rough sketch. My rendering techniques are limited.) – Frank
This is a very workable plan,we would have to look at the numbers to see if the 300 million is the correct amount.There would still be an need for parking in the Keiner Plaza area.The idea of parking under the new section is right on target. Lets hope our usual St. Louis naysayers do not persist.
Does the plan include removal of the I70 ditch downtown? Hopefully it does.
^ Mike: As it stands, it seems a given that a “lid” will be built over the depressed section of I-70 between the Arch grounds and The Old Courthouse / Kiener Plaza.
The plan discussed here could be realized with or without removal of the elevated section of I-70. Removal would be my preferred scenario, as it is to many others – Frank
The rendering looks very nice, so I must give you proper credit for the best articulation of what the site could be that has been provided to date.
However, I think the plan is a disaster from an urban planning standpoint. I agree with Daron–our downtown suffers horribly from super-block syndrome. Even with Cole as a through-street, this massive horizontal structure would be visually repetitive and intimidating to the pedestrian. The most exciting downtowns I’ve seen are those that have preserved at least some semblance of the “horse-and-buggy lot”–that is, small, 25 foot wide parcels that allow for smaller, more varied buildings. Downtown has whole blocks dedicated to one land use, often contiguously, which allows a boring, predictable, and often ugly urban “monoculture” to develop. Cities need to be surprising, interesting, and active, especially in their downtowns. This concept creates more-of-the-same: a boring out-of-scale single-use block that is pleasing to the architect but damning to the pedestrian.
I like the Kiener Plaza rendering much more (I’d rather see the site added to the Gateway Mall green space than remain a parking garage)…but even it suffers a bit from visual monotony over much too large a stretch of urban street frontage. Allow parcel-by-parcel development on narrow lots, and true urbanism can flourish.
Again, let me thank you for furthering a discussion about this site and commending you for a very nicely done representation of your idea–which I’m opposed to.
Thanks for your comment, Mark.
We agree to a certain extent. Where we disagree is the definition of downtown. This site is really on the fringe of downtown and it has been for a long time.
The relative remoteness of the site makes that it is one of the very few spots where I would propose such a project.
In light of the developments with the Rams, the dome, the Arch plans, highway 70 and parking issues, I deemed it the right time to introduce it.
If we decide we want to keep the Rams and be competitive in the convention market (and I am not saying we should) this might be the only opportunity to use this site for that purpose.
Once we start building a downtown Winghaven on the site, with or without Walmart (and I bet you that will be the alternative) this opportunity will be gone forever.
Further, It’s not that we don’t have tens of holes in the heart of downtown where we could and should build pedestrian friendly projects such as you prefer.
We don’t have a lot of strategically located sites where we CAN think big. Not everything has to be pedestrian friendly and/or look like main street USA.
You see it a lot in Europe as well: The old cities are like you (and I) want downtown St. Louis to be. Pedestrian friendly and compact. Around the core on the edges of downtown are the large scale projects.
If we can’t build any large-scale projects we might as well become Springfield. (I love Springfield, I just don’t want St. Louis to go in that direction.)
Lastly: In the rendering you’ll find the new center facing west. In my vision, 7th Street would be widened and sidewalks and bike lanes would run from Cole Street to Cass Avenue and then east to the riverfront where they could join the bike trail along the Mississippi.
Thanks again for your comment!
Thanks for the response.
I understand this isn’t exactly “downtown proper”, but a “downtown adjacent” location is perhaps even more appropriate for a mixed use, low to moderate scale setting (3-4 story buildings).
I think you’ve correctly identified that this site is a tough sell for residential of the non-subsidized variety given its relative isolation.
To me, this only increases our imperative to get rid of the obtrusive span of I-70 that is soon to become redundant (see City to River plan). The excitement over this plan would very likely drive up demand for housing, offices, and perhaps even retail close to the new boulevard.
As I said in the other comment thread, Count (and as Mark points out here) a plan such as this further boxes in downtown and walls off its neighborhoods.
You speak of the Bottle District as fringe space in downtown, but it shouldn’t be — thinking like that only suffocates the city. This space (and really much of the Near North Side) should be the site of growth and expansion of downtown — both residential and commercial. There’s a chance to reconnect the areas and break down the not-past-Cass mentality through smart design and focused marketing.
We’ve hit our sweet spot regarding conventions — there’s a good, smart group in the STL-CVC office that is working hard to promote the city (they blew it out of the park with ASAE earlier this year) and knows the target conventions it can best reach. IF there was a new center at the Bottle District, I would rather see it as a replacement for the current one than an extension of the center.
My thoughts on the subject here: http://bit.ly/tS05J1
This is just the type of thinking St. Louis needs. KC used over $500 million to improve their sports complex that does not have the ripple effect of our downtown stadium. Too much of St. Louis’ capital goes to non-profits that continue to suck the life out of St. Louis. We need to create a community fund that qualifies for tax deductions that is available to the community for such projects proposed. They would provide grants to the community worthy projects. We need to be strategic with our generosity. Giving priority to the overall wellness of our community if we want to grow versus rust. Metro is an agency that should develope tourist friendly options to the various entertainment districts in the south city. The greatest need for the community is to promote tourist and act regionally. The mantra should be regionally connects rather than remarkably connect, until we prove we are a city that desrves this moniker. Get to work. A generic ballpark village can wait while we develope the dome/bottle district.
Sounds like some excellent ideas, lets do it!
This is not a bad plan from a convention center standpoint, assuming StL could attract enough convention traffic. My concern would be from the football side of it. Essentially this project would eleminate the last sizable area for tailgating. I believe from a standpoint of building the value of the St Louis Rams any thing that further diminishes this aspect of game day really devalues the gamedays experience and thus makes it harder for the team to sell their events.
Also this project means little in terms of the current facility being a “first tier” facility. The way the current lease is written I’m pretty sure that the stadium being first tier is simply another way of stating that the Rams are happy with it. Clearly if you look at Mr. Kronke’s MO he prefers a situation where he owns the venue his team plays at outright and I would bet his long range plans are just that so this plan would probably not suit his vision for the Rams.
Most likely the best long term solution would be to offer up some more minor concessions like a dedicated team store, better concessions with a bigger share of the profits going to the Rams. Then as a major concession for the Rams to waive their right to break the lease for the last ten years, we would offer a commitment to provide assistance in building a new facility in an area that doesn’t have the spatial constraints of down town. At such time the current America’s center site could be easily expanded to suit it’s needs.