Projects worth watching in 2010
Downtown Macy’s
Bruce Development Co. and developer Rick Yackey plan to buy the Railway Exchange building at Seventh and Olive streets as part of a $112 million project to rehab the office floors of the largely vacant, 21-story structure.
Macy’s will shrink its store to the building’s three lower floors.
Company executives are mum on the remodeling’s details. But store employees say they’ve been told work will begin soon after merchandise inventory is completed this month.
Park Pacific
The Lawrence Group plans to pick a contractor this month to convert the former Missouri Pacific railroad headquarters into 230 apartments and office space.
Construction could be under way by spring, but gone is the $109 million project’s original plan of a condo tower next to the 1920s railroad headquarters. Instead, a parking garage will go up on what is now a vacant lot.
Also gone is the original plan to fill most of the building with condos, because of a dormant market.
Central Library
The St. Louis library system’s nearly century-old centerpiece downtown will close by midyear for a $74 million renovation that could last as long as two years.
The Grand Hall will be restored, but much of the rest of the building will get a gut rehab.
The remade library will have an auditorium, a cafe and a reading room with comfy seating, according to the St. Louis Library Foundation, which is raising money for the renovation.
Cass Gilbert was the library’s architect. He also designed the Supreme Court building in Washington and the landmark Woolworth and New York Life buildings in lower Manhattan.
St. Louis Centre area
The plan to reconfigure most of the former shopping mall as a parking garage should get under way this year.
The $220 million project to bolster the area near downtown’s America’s Center involves redoing the failed downtown mall, rehabbing the adjoining One City Centre office tower and putting apartments and an Embassy Suites hotel in the Dillard’s building. Construction of the Embassy Suites should begin this year.
Work has already begun on remodeling One City Centre’s upper floors for the Lewis Rice & Fingersh law firm. LarsonAllen, a Minneapolis-based accounting firm, will move its local office to the building this year from St. Louis County.
Centene Corp. headquarters
The health plan operator expects to open its $186 million, 17-story headquarters this summer. Centene opted for the Clayton site after a plan collapsed to locate in Ballpark Village downtown.
A major tenant in the glass-exterior Centene building will be law firm Armstrong Teasdale, which is moving from downtown. The firm will occupy the top four-and-a-half floors and a part of the concourse level. Centene is among the firm’s major clients.
Westin Hotel
Last June, R.J. York Development got permission from Clayton officials for a one-year delay to start construction of a 245-room Westin Hotel and parking garage at Maryland and Central avenues guaranteed online personal loans. The company still plans to start building the $100 million project this summer.
Construction of the 15-story hotel and a parking garage will take a year.
Schattdecor AG
Schattdecor of Thansau, Germany, a printer of decor paper used in laminate furniture and flooring, is building its first North American plant in Maryland Heights. The plant will cost $69 million and employ 107 people when it opens late this year.
Schattdecor bought the Maryland Heights site in 2008 but delayed the start of factory construction until November.
Personnel Records Center
Work has begun on the $105 million National Archives and Records Administration’s National Personnel Records Center in Spanish Lake.
The center, opening in May 2011, will replace a similar facility in Overland and preserve 800 jobs.
The government will lease the center from the developer, Molasky Group of Las Vegas. The center holds the military records of 57 million Americans.
Hillsdale housing
A neighborhood of abandoned houses has been cleared and construction is beginning on 37 single-family houses that are part of an ambitious effort to boost housing within the Normandy School District. Beyond Housing, a nonprofit housing advocacy group, will lease the houses.
E.M. Harris Construction recently took over the $9 million project from the Meyer Co., which went out of business. Beyond Housing hopes over the next decade to build or rehab 1,200 houses in the Normandy district, where nearly three-fourths of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches.
Completion of the Hillsdale houses will be spread out from May to the end of 2010.
Old Clayton Schnucks site
Signs point toward replacement of the vacant Schnucks grocery at Clayton and Hanley roads with a $116 million office, hotel and retail complex this year. Developer Ryan Woods plans an eight-story office building, a hotel, stores and a parking garage.
Schnucks allowed its 50-year lease on the site to expire in 2003. After it left, a high-rise condo development was the most frequently mentioned possibility before Woods presented his plan last summer.
Common among the 10 projects are tax abatements, tax credits, tax increment financing and other forms of public assistance.
The Park Pacific project, for example, has a $56 million HUD-backed mortgage.
Richard Ward, vice president of Zimmer Real Estate Services, said HUD loans will remain "a big influence" in commercial lending through 2010. He added that "the bottom of the trough" in the nation’s commercial building market might be now.
"We won’t really feel better about the commercial market until later in 2010," he said. "The future will happen, but it’s not here yet. That’s a Yogi Berra saying."
Filed under: technology by Wolf