Coming Soon: More Driveways for 10th Street or an active retail corner?

At Monday evenings Preservation Board meeting, the board approved the Robert's Brothers proposal to demolish buildings at 919 & 923 Locust, and proceed with their proposed redevelopment which will feature an Indigo Hotel. What remains to be seen though is what will be built on the site of the demolished buildings. Previously the Robert's Brothers had proposed leaving the corner of site at the intersection of 10th & Locust open for a new semi-circle driveway in front of the new lobby structure.

At Monday's meeting however, Virvus Jones of The Robert's Companies and Mike Killeen, the architect for the project presented a revised version of the proposal. The new version has the driveway covered by a roof and the facade of the new structure continuing to the corner of the intersection along Locust. There would be an opening in the facade from the Locust sidewalk to the covered driveway area, and along 10th street the structure would be completely open. While this is an improvement over the initial proposal, it still contains the unnecessary driveway, which leaves the entire 10th street side of the project dedicated to the automobile.

Directly north of the proposed hotel driveway entrance is an alley and the Renaissance Hotel parking garage, which has a large truck driveway leading to the underground loading dock and a pair of driveway entrances for the garage itself. This means if the hotel driveway entrance is built replacing the building at 923 Locust, there will be nothing but solid driveways (and the alley) along the east side of 10th Street from St. Charles Street south to Locust.

Driveways could stretch from St. Charles Street all the way to Locust

During Q & A after presenting to the board, Virvus Jones explained that parking for the hotel would be had at either the 9th Street garage or the Renaissance garage, but that they did not really expect many cars... so why build a driveway in front of the hotel entrance? Prior to voting, several board members expressed concern about the driveway (having seen photos I supplied of Indigo Hotels in other cities without driveways in front). Mary One Johnson however called the large covered driveway at the Renaissance "elegant"! While the Robert's Companies are not bound by law to return to the board with a final design, there seemed to be some indication that might do so voluntarily.

The "elegant" covered driveway at the Renaissance

After the meeting, Mr. Jones thanked me for my input, and agreed that more retail along 10th Street in place of the driveway would bring more revenue to the project. He indicated that he would talk to the Roberts about the possibility of not doing the driveway.

Street. There would be some additional storefront and demising walls needed, but the Driveways do not produce rent income. Also, since the commitment has already been made to roof over the entire site, there is not much added cost to change the driveway space to additional retail. It would simply be a matter of moving the curved glass wall out to 10thadditional retail revenue would outweigh this nominal cost. The Robert's have already included retail in their plan, and have the opportunity to build one of the more "urban friendly" Indigo Hotels in the country if they make the right decision and build more retail instead of an auto oriented entrance.

Cutting Corners - Another Driveway Plaza for Downtown?

Just a few weeks after the announcement that yet another parking garage will be built Downtown on the site of the current US Bank plaza/driveway at 7th & Locust, The Roberts Brothers are proposing a similar but smaller driveway/plaza cutting away the corner of 10th & Locust just three blocks west.

US Bank Plaza at 7th & Locust

The proposal includes demolition of two buildings at the northeast corner of the intersection. 923 Locust at the corner has a false stucco and half timbered exterior that has been on the building for several decades, and 919 Locust, a four story structure with a buff brick facade which was built in 1916. City records list the corner building as being constructed in 1890. Several cast iron columns which appear to be original are visible at the ground floor.

An Indigo Hotel, which is the same flag that the Roberts are using to re-vamp the MCM Days Inn at Lindell & Euclid, would occupy the historic Scruggs Vandervoort Barney Annex at 917 Locust, the small Moderne faced building at 913 and a new two story structure containing lobby would be built occupying the 919 site. Most of the corner 923 site however would remain un-built and occupied by a circle drive off 10th Street.

My issue with this proposal is not preservation of the buildings, it is about urban design. Neither building is of spectacular merit, and while the building at 919 adjacent to what would be the hotel tower in the Scruggs Annex is an attractive building, it's floors are far out of alignment with the Annex, which would make it difficult to tie the buildings together. The issue though is about holding the corner of the intersection in a dense central business district environment. If the proposal called for a new structure built to the corner of the intersection, I would not have a problem with it.

The western half of the CBD of Downtown St. Louis has been so badly eroded by parking lots, plazas, driveways, and needless building setbacks (at&t buildings) that only one other intersection between 8th and Tucker besides 10th & Locust retains four buildings built up to the corner at the intersection. This occurs at 9th & Washington (The Old Post office was historically set back on all sides). This proposal would continue this erosion and set bad precedent for future developments.

The proposal is up for review by the City's Preservation Board at their monthly meeting next Monday, October 27th at 4:00pm. Preservation Board meetings are held at 1015 Locust (one block west of the proposal site), suite 1200. Meetings are open to the public and anyone can sign up to give testimony for or against any agenda item. I encourage anyone with an opinion about this to show up and speak.

The developer will likely claim that Indigo is requiring the driveway in front of the hotel. Like many similar hotels in it's class, Indigo's new-build prototype does have a driveway at the entrance, yet in several cities Indigo Hotel's have opened in existing structures, and in one case a new building, which are all built up to the property line without a driveway in front of the entrance. These include: Atlanta; Chicago; Dallas; Nashville; Rahway, New Jersey and Ottowa, Ontario.

Hotel Indigo - Nashville

Hotel Indigo - Dallas

Hotel Indigo - Chicago

Hotel Indigo - Atlanta

Hotel Indigo - Ottowa

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see Indigo go into this location, as it would bring desperately needed activity to Locust Street. I feel however that the hotel can be done, and in fact would be better without cutting out the corner of the block for a driveway.

The Century - Four Years Later

It was a little after 5:00 exactly four years ago as I was sitting in a late afternoon meeting in what was then Paric's office at the corner of 9th and Olive when the pounding started. The floor tremored slightly under our feet. It was the beginning of the demolition of the Century Building. The pounding continued seemingly non-stop for three and a half months until the afternoon of February 3rd, 2005 when the final section, the center wing of the E shaped building which had been reduced to what looked like a giant game of Jenga, came crashing down. The loud rumble and earthquake like jolt inducing a few shrill screams through our 6th floor office in Frisco Building across the street.

Four years later several floors of the 1000 parking spaces that were claimed to be needed to serve the Old Post Office and surrounding buildings sit empty on a regular basis. Although it was announced with great fanfare several months ago that Schnucks will open in the ground floor space, construction has yet to begin on the build-out. The Old Post Office itself, which we were told would be activated day and night by throngs of new Webster University students, as well as retail and restaurant spaces throughout the ground floor reminds me more of the days in the late 1980's after the last renovation had long fizzled.

The still empty "future" Schnucks space

The East entrance is closed due to to perceived security issues. Webster does occupy the entire 1st lower level, but there does not seem to be the level of activity one would expect at a college satellite campus. While the Library and Pasta House provide an activated north end, the entire south half of the first floor was turned into office space, which adds nothing to Olive Street and leaves the enlarged plaza area (which took away valuable street parking) dead and empty. Apparently the building management does not want anyone hanging around on the interior either since the giant atrium space in the center of the first floor contains not one, that's right, zero! furnishings. Not one bench, not one table... please pass through and get out!

Ironically, on this fourth anniversary of the destruction of the original half of the flagship Scruggs Vandervoort Barney department store, the Post announced that this week Centene is to start demolition of the first Vandervoort's branch store in Clayton, the Harris Armstrong masterpiece known to most in my generation at the Library Limited Building. On the west half of the block, in stark contrast to the lifelessness of the 9th Street Garage, final touches are being completed on The Syndicate. Like the Paul Brown, The Syndicate renovation was designed to accommodate most if not all of it's parking needs within the existing building.
So four years later, we must ask ourselves: Is the Old Post Office District better off today? Was the "garage mahal" and the destruction of the Century really needed?

6124 Enright - A victom of the Loop's Success

Behind the soon to be completed Moonrise Hotel in the Loop stood this simple modern building. The building was designed by and housed the offices of the architectural firm of Murphy & Mackey. Murphy & Mackey was one of the more innovative firms in St. Louis during the modern era, and brought us such landmarks as the Resurrection of Our Lord Catholic Church, The Climatron (based on Buckminster Fuller's concept), and Washington University's Olin Library (which has been horribly altered).

The building on Enright however was very reserved and somewhat utilitarian in nature. The covered driveway led to parking in the rear (a nice urban solution to the parking access issue).
The rear of the building shaded by a continuous canopy faced south to the parking lot. There was an entrance at the first floor off the porte cochere and a more prominent entrance at a mid-level between the floors on the east bay.
The main entrance framed by a glazed wall and a small paved area. The yellow awning is an obvious addition, in fact the original canvas awning shading system can be seen still intact under the brow of the canopy. The metal staircase at the northeast corner was added in 1995 according to City records.

This bench appeared to "grow" out of the paving.

The interior of the building was as straight forward as the exterior with exposed waffle slab ceiling and exposed brick at the end walls.
The one element of this simple building that stood out was a pair of narrow stained glass windows in the middle of the west wall. Inside, these windows were the only glazing in two private offices.

Detail of one of the windows below. Were these windows the work of Emil Frei, who created windows for a number of churches by Murphy & Mackey? I am not sure if these windows were salvaged or lost in the rubble pile.
Below is a portion of a much less ornate art glass window which flanked the first floor entrance off the porte cochere.

The building was demolished in fall of 2004 to expand the parking lot behind the Pageant. The expanded lot serves many of the newer developments in the Loop in the last several years, including the Pin-up Bowl, the soon to be opened Moonrise Hotel, the Regional Arts Commission, and several other retail/office buildings on the south side of Delmar which do no have much of their own parking.
The photo above shows the building prior before demolition, and below shows the enlarged parking area. The sad thing is that the small footprint was replaced occupied an area of only 12-18 parking spaces. In other words, the building could easily have been spared and the new parking laid out around it. The photos also show Wash U's clearance of several industrial buildings on the north side of Enright.

In addition to the building, an entire row of mature trees stretching almost the entire block were mowed down only to be replaced by saplings. These trees at least would have done a good job of screening the surface parking from the street.
Today this is the view from Skinker and Enright, a sea of asphalt with the new Moonrise Hotel rising in the background. Hopefully in the future this part of the Loop will be so successful that demand will dictate the construction of new mixed use buildings lining Enright with a garage behind. Such a concept has been proposed at least a few times on the large lot in U City off Kingsland, but has yet to come to fruition. With the Metro station only a couple hundred yards east, maybe it could happen here first.

Moonrise Hotel rises in The Loop

The Moonrise, a new 7 story 124 room boutique hotel is rising in The Loop on the site of a former funeral home at 6175 Delmar between the Pageant and the Pin-up Bowl. The funeral home was demolished to make way for the hotel, but the historic front of the building is being re-constructed as the lower facade of the hotel, with the tower rising behind. A restaurant will occupy the area that would have been the former front rooms of the funeral home, and a rooftop bar and outdoor terrace atop the hotel should provide spectacular views of the City.

The Moonrise will be one of the only examples that I aware of in St. Louis where a historic facade is preserved or re-built as part of a new larger structure. This practice, which is more common on other larger cities is known as facadism. The practice is often controversial due to the fact that all the interior portions of the building are typically destroyed. In this case however, like many funeral homes, only a few front rooms could have been argued as having any historic significance, and here these were not really overly ornate.

As the photo above partially shows, beyond the first 20 feet of the front of the funeral home was a plain flat roofed brick box with no ornamentation.
The Moonrise Hotel is the brain child of Joe Edwards, who is responsible for most of Delmar's rejuvenation east of Skinker and the extension of The Loop district east to the Delmar MetroLink station. This project is example of what is unfortunately a fairly rare occurrence in St. Louis. While a historic building is demolished, the most significant portion is re-built and becomes part of a new landmark structure.

The materials of the new tower are not luxurious. The exterior will be a mix of EIFS and brick, but unlike many newer hotels of this size, the building does not try to achieve false grandeur by adding over-scaled goofy cornice elements at the top of the building. The building is unabashedly modern in contrast to the funeral home facade. The one element of whimsy will be the tower which instead of clock faces, will display the current phase of the moon. Notice in the photo above that the streetscape trees and lighting is protected out of harms way, and an accessible covered walkway is provided during construction... also rarities in St. Louis.
The main entrance and lobby will be located behind the rebuilt facade with a drive off Delmar in the same location as the original drive of the funeral home. A tunnel through the rear wing of the L shaped plan will lead to the large existing shared parking lot to the north.

New windows going in the re-built portion of the funeral home. The completed Moonrise Hotel is scheduled to open in April 2009.

Update: Drury Hotel would spare Lambskin Temple

Last night at a packed church in Forest Park Southeast, Drury Development presented a proposal to build a new hotel at the intersection of Kingshighway and Highway 40. In contrast to what was reported in the West End Word last week, the Lambskin Temple would not be demolished for the hotel. Most of the development land would come from surplus land that is leftover from reconfiguration of the 40/Kingshighway interchange. A spokesperson from MODOT was on hand and confirmed that they are in the process of seeing determining how the land would be decommissioned. She did say that they have agreed to return a triangular piece of land back to the City that was originally part of Forest Park prior to realignment of Kingshighway.

The proposal presented last night calls for two 16 story towers each containing 345 rooms. The east tower closer to the highway would be built first, then if it is successful and there is additional market demand, the second tower would be built. A three level below grade garage would contain most of the parking, although the site plan appears to contain some surface parking. Someone threw out a number that the total development could be around a $100 million investment.

Charles Drury stated that this would be the finest hotel of their holdings. He said that there would be a mix of room rates and levels from those affordable to families with children, to rooms that would "beat any Ritz Carlton".

Unfortunately to access the hotel, five to seven homes would be acquired and demolished in order to widen an existing alley behind the Lambskin Temple and other buildings along Kingshighway. The new access road would enter at the recently closed intersection of Oakland on the east side of Kingshighway. Drury said they would be fine with an access point directly into the front of the property from Kingshighway, but doubted that MODOT or the City would want that so close to the new interchange. This is something they should pursue further and could avoid demolition of homes.

The other issue with the access plan is that currently the neighborhood is closed off from Kingshighway, and apparently likes it that way, as many residents expressed that they did not want the through traffic. The issue then is how to handle circulation at the ends of the streets if they are blocked off from the new road.
The meeting was held in the beautiful Calvary Christian Church the end of Gibson. Under the plan presented, the church property would be acquired. In keeping with Drury's laudable past preservation efforts Downtown, including saving the Fur Exchange as it had begun demolition, Charles Drury proposed that the church sanctuary would become the lobby of the second tower, which would contain nicer rooms. The church would apparently be raised off its foundation, moved aside, then placed back atop the new underground garage (not an inexpensive endeavor!).

Stained glass windows at the rear of the church, and the beamed ceiling below

Timothy Drury held up a rendering of an earlier concept that has fortunately been scrapped that called for a single large continuous building creating a wall in front of the neighborhood. It kind of reminded me of a PoMo version of one of the Pruitt Iago towers. Another rendering of that plan is below. The triangle of green space is presumably the area MODOT has agreed to give back to Forest Park.
The Drury's stated that it is very early in the development process, and they have traffic studies, City and MODOT negotiations and approvals yet to be had, as well as acquiring mush of the land. The is good, because the while the proposal would be a great investment in the City, it needs to be done in a manner that does not turn its back on the neighborhood. The site plan needs serious help, as it presently looks like a very unfriendly place to be on foot. Both the CWE and FPSE are great walkable areas, and you should feel comfortable walking to and from the hotel buildings to Forest Park, the hospital complex and the surrounding areas. The towers themselves also could possibly use some work, although the detail was difficult to make out on the screen. Trying to fake the architecture of the historic surroundings is probably not the best approach. A good cue could be taken from BJC's Center for Advanced Medicine that fronts Forest Park Blvd., which while possibly influenced by some past styles, is very much rooted in the present without being a ticky tacky piece of roadside architecture like Drury's recently opened Chesterfield hotel. The proposal though overall was better than I expected, and a good start.

Update: Drury FPSE Hotel Plan Meeting is Tuesday, Aug 19(tomorrow), Not Today

Apparently the West End Word published the wrong date for the meeting where Drury's hotel plan for Kingshighway and Oakland will be presented. It is tomorrow, Tuesday August 19th at 7pm - same location stated earlier, the church located at 1034 S. Kingshighway (at Gibson). A neighborhood resident who commented on my post made me aware of the error.