Cupples Building 7 CAN and SHOULD be Saved!

Last week Kevin McGowan applied for a permit demolish Cupples Building #7 saying "he had not choice". Whether he gets a demolition permit will be decided by the Preservation Board on Monday, November 28th, the same night that the fate of the Pevely Dairy will be decided.

There are however other choices besides demolition for Cupples 7. McGowan says that it would be $2 million cheaper to demolish the building than to stabilize it. As someone who works on historic renovation projects for a living, I understand that fully stabilizing the collapsing interior structure would be an expensive endeavor. There is however an alternative that would be significantly less costly than fully re-building the interior timber structure, which is something that should eventually be done as part of the building's redevelopment.

Erecting structural steel bracing on the exterior is something that is often done to stabilize unreinforced masonry facades. On Boston's Russia Wharf the facades of two warehouses were braced while the interior of the buildings were dismantled to make way for a new hi-rise development that incorporates the facades. In the case of Cupples 7, the four exterior masonry walls would be braced and the collapsing interior left as-is, to be stabilized in the future.

Another view of Russia Wharf showing that the scale of the facades is similar to that of Cupples 7. While the cost of this type of bracing would not be chump change, neither would demolition of a massive masonry building. In 2001, according to City records, the unfortunate demolition of another Cupples warehouse (#4) across the street at 10th & Spruce cost $147,760.00. Cupples 7 is at least 1 1/2 times the size of the demolished warehouse and with 10 years of inflation, the cost of demolition for Cupples 7 could be at least twice as much. It should be noted that demolition of the Cupples #4 building was done under the auspices that the building was "structurally unsound" AND would be replaced with a similar scaled office building instead of the parking lot that eventually replaced it.

The exterior walls of the United Methodist Church in Burlington, Iowa were braced after a devastating fire gutted the building. The congregation plans to re-build and expand into an adjacent vacant downtown department store.

Some might argue that bracing the facades of Cupples 7 would render portions of Spruce and 11th Streets as well as sidewalks unusable for years.

This does not necessarily need to be the case as with this example in Memphis (photo by Cathy Jones). The sidewalk is fully usable and there are even temporary displays in the storefronts! In Washington DC, where this technique has been used many times for various projects, the exterior of the former Gales School was structurally braced while awaiting renovation.

While this method may not be a familiar sight in St. Louis, it is a proven way to preserve at least the exterior of historic structures that otherwise would be lost forever. In the case of Cupples 7, while much of the interior is crumbling, you might be surprised how it is possible to save portions of the timber that remain and rebuild what is collapsed.

My first loft project was a building that had suffered what would appear to be catastrophic damage but was resurrected into the M-Lofts, which consists of 40 apartments and commercial space in Lafayette Square. In 1999, the former factory building of the International Shoe Company had seen better days. Almost 30% of the floors of the building were collapsed in the basement, and about 80% of the roof structure had fallen to the floor below.

Looking into the one of the debris pits at the west end of the building

Floors bending down into the hole

Much of the roof and clerestories had collapsed onto the floor below

Portions of the interior structure that had collapsed were carefully cut away and removed, then re-building began from the first floor up. All of the interior rebuilding was eligible for Missouri and Federal Historic Tax Credits because it was a restoration of existing building elements. This made what otherwise would not have been affordable workable for the projects proforma. In the case of Cupples 7, which has a larger floor plate, planning an atrium in one of the collapsed areas could further reduce the cost of re-building the interior structure.

Massive new timbers replicating the originals were imported from Canada

The completed building shows how something that looks insurmountable can be accomplished successfully. If Kevin McGowan is not up to the task of rebuilding Cupples Building 7, then he should sell the building to someone who is willing to do so. In the mean time, structurally bracing the walls from the exterior is the best solution for stabilization so that this National Register landmark can be preserved for the future.

McGowan said himself that "millions of people walk by that building every year going those Cardinals games, going to the hockey games, going to the various courthouses, even living across the street and next to the building in apartment buildings", which is all the more reason that Cupples 7 should not become yet another giant vacant lot like the Ballpark Village site.

The Carnage of Cupples 7

Although I pass within 400 feet of Cupples 7 at least 10 times a week to and from my daily destination of the 8th & Pine station, I had managed to stay away since the City turned down the final effort by Vertical Realty to save the building and it was announced that demolition would begin. Out of site-out of mind. Finally though after seeing a few photos posted online curiosity got the best of me and I figured I should go photograph the carnage in progress.


Approaching from the Stadium Station at 8th & Spruce, once the epicenter of the Cupples complex and home to its most massive warehouse (rivaling the Butler Brothers warehouse in size), you pass through a uneasy checkerboard landscape that alternates between restored warehouses and asphalt parking lots with a few highway ramps thrown in for good measure.


I was surprised to see that almost half the building is gone. A portion the Spruce Street elevation was removed and the interior structure ripped out and knocked down. A resident in the Cupples Station Loft Apartments across the street shot a video of this process and posted it on Youtube on August 1st. Now the exterior walls are slowly being taken down. When I visited on Thursday morning, some remaining interior timbers were being loaded onto a flatbed truck.


From the 11th Street corner you can see the stark effect of the removal of the east half of the building on what was recently a fully intact block face.


Spruce Street in front of the site is piled high with brick debris.


A pair of men on a lift were chiseling apart the east wall brick by brick, which I would have assumed are being salvaged, but I'm not positive of this with the debris piles around the site.


Much of the rear wall remains as viewed from the parking garage behind Cupples 7 and its neighbor, the renovated Cupples 8. With its full height masonry dividing wall and the opposing elevator shafts made the center of the building quite stable despite the loss of much of the roof and interior structure.


The former alley between the two buildings is also littered with brick debris.


A close of of the slow process of taking down the massive exterior walls, which are 5 wythes thick at the top and grow thicker by a wythe every few floors going down.


Once Cupples 7 is gone, the Cupples garage will have quite a view.


The garage, built to serve the buildings north of it and anticipated mostly office use, which typically requires a more spaces than other uses, is now and will be for quite some time mostly empty. The garage was built by Bank of America in 2001, when they owned the Cupples complex, and was purchased by the City Treasurer's Office in 2003


At 8:15 am on a weekday morning levels seven through four were completely empty except one car on four.


Level "T REE" (all the floor signs have been vandalized or stolen) had a few cars and it seemed like some people were still trickling in, but overall the garage operates far under capacity.


Once Cupples 7 is gone, the site will probably sit empty for quite some time as the building that is being destroyed was far more desirable than the site itself. Hopefully I will be proven wrong. As we have seen with phase one of "Carpark Village", demand is not yet present for new large scale office or residential construction, and new structures are likely to go up first on more high profile sites at the "Village". While the Cupples Station Loft Apartments are very attractive across the street, the view west of the Cupples 7 site is challenged by the 11th Street off ramp and a large Ameren sub-station. One thing it does have going for though: parking capacity.

Loss of Cupples 7 Would Further Deplete a Sparse Section of Downtown St. Louis

Yesterday St. Louis University pulled its proposed demolition of the Pevely Dairy from this months Preservation Board meeting, but the proposed demolition of Cupples Warehouse #7 is still on the final agenda for next Monday the 28th.

The graphic above shows starkly how Downtown south of Market still bears the scars of devastation from Urban Renewal planning of the middle part of the last century. Compounded with the fortress like structures dating from the 1960's through 1990's including the Ballpark Hilton, Bank Of America, the US Federal Courthouse and others, result in an urban landscape that is bleak at best (magenta is parking lots and garages and yellow is vacant land, parks & plazas).

The fact that this portion of Downtown is so fragile is reason enough that we cannot lose another major historic structure to demolition. For the area to continue toward a critical mass of life and activity from what has been gained over the last decade through renovation of the Cupples warehouses along Spruce, Building 7 must be retained, stabilized, and eventually re-built from the inside.

Beyond the potential to reinvigorate the area, demolition of Cupples Building #7 would push the total loss of the Cupples Warehouses to over half the original content (magenta = 1960's demolition, yellow = 2001 demolition, cyan = warehouse #7). This would not trigger a de-listing from the National Register of the remaining buildings, but from an architectural standpoint reduces the overall significance and cohesion of the district (all designed by Eames & Young) that made this collection of buildings unmatchable in St. Louis and arguably the entire midwest.

Elevations of the original district along the south side of Spruce. The first pair of buildings tied together by a multistory connector over an alley and the next long building tied by two bridges over what are now the Metrolink tracks comprised a massive complex within the overall district. The single elevation below (longer than any two of the other buildings combined) was along 8th south of Spruce. This complex was lost to demolition for the construction of Busch Stadium which was completed in 1966.

The fourth building in the row is Warehouse #9 which is scheduled for renovation by the Koman Group for offices and retail to be completed in 2012. The fifth building was demolished for highway ramps to and from Highway 40/64. The sixth is Warehouse #8 for which renovation into the Ballpark Lofts by Kevin McGowan's Blue Urban partnership was completed in 2008. The last in the row is Warehouse #7. If it is demolished, there would only be two building's left of the original seven along the south side of Spruce.

Looking west along the south side of Spruce from 8th Street (photo from the 1928 publication Missouri's Contribution to American Architecture). The building in the foreground, had it survived, would be across from the Westin Hotel.

A view looking south along 10th Street from just south of Clark Street (photo from Geo St. Louis). The center building in this photo was allowed to be demolished due to what were claimed to be structural problems as part of an ill-fated plan to turn the entire block into a four building office complex linked by a giant curved glass atrium. This would have involved new buildings at 10th & Spruce and 11th & Clark.

A rendering of the four building scheme inset into the reality of what we ended up with. Several years after that deal fell through, Conrad Properties renovated the historic building at 1000 Clark Street into office space a ground floor restaurant, but the site of the demolished building remains a surface parking lot. HRI renovated the warehouse at 11th & Spruce across from #7 into apartments completed in 2006.

The northwest corner of 10th & Spruce today. We cannot allow this to happen to Warehouse #7! Please attend the Preservation Board meeting next Monday, November 28th a 4:00 pm at 1015 Locust Street, suite 1200 and tell the Preservation Board to say NO to demolition. If you cannot attend, please email your comments to the board's administrative assistant at BufordA@stlouiscity.com

Preservation Board Upholds Denial of Demolition for Cupples 7

Last evening the Preservation Board unanimously upheld the Cultural Resources Office denial of the permit for demolition of Cupples Station warehouse #7. The preservation board raised many concerns over application including the lack of details establishing financial hardship and the fact that the owner, a partnership of Kevin McGowan and Nat Walsh, has owned the structure since 2006 and did nothing to stop the acceleration of deterioration.

Aerial of Cupples Station #7 from 2011 showing extensive collapse.

Aerial from 2006 when McGowan Walsh bought the building shows a much smaller holes on the east side and possibly one small hole on the west side. At this point creating inexpensive temporary structures to span over the holes and keep water out of the building would have still been feasible.

The estimated cost of demolition was stated as being $675,000. Preservation Board member Alderman Antiono French brought up that the owner has not paid taxes on the building for the last three years, and there was also mention that the owners had lost Cupples buildings 8 & 9 to foreclosure. This makes one wonder how they planned to pay for the demolition cost.

One of the more intriguing testimony statements came from a lawyer for the St. Louis Treasurers office. He said that the Treasurer has been in discussions with the current owners of Cupples #7 about purchasing the property to protect their investment in the parking garage that the Treasurer built south of buildings 7 & 8. In this scenario the building would be gone, but he said they would also be happy if the exterior walls were stabilized so that the barriers could be removed from the streets. He did not indicate whether the Treasurer would buy the building at that point.

At the end of the testimony, the Board ultimately agreed with Betsy Bradley's assessment that the exterior walls should be stabilized to preserve the outer significant masonry structure. The question now becomes how that happens and who pays for it? Would the Treasurer be willing to chip in, or maybe the City which had offered up a $3,000,000 TIF for the redevelopment? Ultimately McGowan & Walsh should be forced to pay at least the amount they were going to spend for demolition.

SLDC Releases Cupples 7 RFP

St. Louis Development Corporation has released a Request for Proposals for Purchase and Redevelopment of the Cupples 7 Building located at 1014 Spruce Street. The deadline for  submittal of proposals is January 10,2013.

Montgomery Bank took back the building from Ballpark Lofts III, LLC after developers Kevin McGowan and Nat Walsh failed to pay back taxes of over $250,000 and the $1.4 million mortgage that was held by the bank. The bank is having SLDC / LCRA administer the process to see if there is interest in taking on the task of rehabilitation of the building. Last year the St. Louis Preservation Board denied a request by Ballpark Lofts III, LLC to demolish the building. 

My opinion, having dealt with a smaller, but very similar collapsing building in Lafayette Square that was rehabilitated into the M-Lofts by Craig Heller and Conrad Properties, is that Cupples 7 can be saved. It will take an experienced developer to put together the right package of financing combined with a creative use of the large footprint of the building to make the project work, but It can be done.

Last Gasp for Gasometers in St. Louis

On Sunday I found this video of the Shrewsbury gasometers taken shortly before they were demolished in 2009 but never posted due to the low quality. The video was taken from the window of the Metrolink blue line on a rainy late afternoon. After re-discovering the video, I was thinking I should head up to Natural Bridge and photograph the last one of these structures left in St. Louis. Then Tuesday I saw the Preservation Research Office post announcing that the last one is currently being cut up into small pieces.

One of first posts on Vanishing STL back in January 2007 was about the gasometer at Chouteau & Newstead that was taken down that May. Currently a complex of very bland apartments that look like they belong in Ballwin are going up on that site. In the 2007 post I featured an example of four historic gasometers in Vienna, Austria that have been rehabilitated with new structures built within.

This past August, I had the pleasure of visiting Gasometer City in person! The exterior brick shells combined with new contemporary structures built within is quite pleasing. 




I was unable to see the residential floors as they are secured for residents only, but was able to view them through giant skylights at the first level.


The first floor spaces resembled an american shopping mall with a series of retail spaces encircling center atria and connected together with glass bridges between the gasometers. The end closest to the U-Bahn station had three levels of commercial space with a mix of retail, restaurants, fast food and a small grocery store. 


One of the retail spaces at the tri-level end of the complex.


Two of the retail atria at the other end of the complex that was completed between 1999 and 2001 however resembled an american dead mall with completely empty storefronts.

 
The fourth atrium retail area which is closest to the tri-level end is currently being completely remodeled into music themed spaces. 


Flanking the re-purposed historic gasometers on one side are a series of odd green colored housing blocks scattered randomly on re-clamed industrial land. The lack of good urban design surrounding the gasometers is disturbing and along with the isolated inward facing design, could help explain the lack of life at the commercial level.


On the other side is a giant movieplex with large blank walls facing the streets. While the  re-use of the beautiful historic brick gasometers is highly commendable and seemingly successful from the residential standpoint, the failed mall and surrounding areas show that European cities are not immune from the planning mistakes that are so common in the US.

Back here in the Brick City, our gasometers were made of steel instead of brick, so no shells existed to insert new structure within like what will need to be done in order to save Cupples Warehouse #7. The steel frame of our gasometers was structured to carry only the weight of frame members above and the thin walls of the giant segmented tanks which would rise and fall with the pressure of gas pumped into them, but not to help carry the weight of a new structure within. This does not mean that the structures could not be incorporated in new development, but the assumption was made with three different locations here that no one would want to bother.