202 Homes Proposed for Former Public Works Site

Well folks, after nearly a year of waiting, the results of the Request for Proposals on the former Public Works site have finally surfaced via this week’s Planning & Zoning agenda. The selected proposal comes from St. Louis-based Double Eagle Development and calls for 202 homes across six four-story buildings, accompanied by 247 parking spots.

Double Eagle’s description of the project states:

Within this development, the streets and sidewalks will be pedestrian friendly, including
gathering spaces, art installations, and robust trees/plantings. The homes will feature
ranch and townhome layouts, covered direct entry front porches, private attached garages, and elegant finishes. This professionally managed community will feature state of the art amenities including a pool, fitness center, lounge, grill stations, and professionally maintained grounds. Each of the six buildings will incorporate architectural elements that reflect the historic architecture of Kirkwood’s beautiful homes while incorporating contextual modern features.

The project also calls for a new through street connecting Taylor to Fillmore running through the middle of the site.

In order to facilitate the project, the city has proposed a brand new zoning code: R-7 Planned Multifamily that will run concurrently with the project through the approval process.

Some Thoughts

On the whole, I find this proposal fairly disappointing, but let me say what I like about it first: The through street is a great addition to the connectivity and walkability of Downtown Kirkwood’s street grid and I commend city staff for including it in the RFP. That’s about it.

Now, we are still waiting on a ton of details here, so perhaps the project winds up looking entirely different, but I’m very confused how it took a year for the Council to arrive at this particular proposal.

Perhaps the most immediately disappointing feature of the project is the absence of any sort of hotel, the inclusion of which was listed as a requirement in the original RFP. This omission makes the Council’s rejection of several boutique hotel proposals they received for the two city-owned parking lots on Jefferson all the more painful.

I also believe the exclusion of any sort of ground-floor retail in the proposal (indeed, retail is altogether disallowed by the new R-7 zoning district the site will assume) to be incredibly shortsighted. While the site is removed from the retail core of Downtown Kirkwood, that seems less likely to be the case in the near future. First, the site will be home to hundreds of new residents who’d be inclined to patronize neighborhood businesses. Second, the Grant’s Trail extension will soon run right along Fillmore, passing directly in front of three of the development’s buildings. The failure to use this project to provide an initial stop for trail users arriving in Downtown Kirkwood and eager to contribute to the city’s sales tax base strikes me as inconceivable. I guess folks will have to stop in Oakland for a beer at Perennial instead.

I also resent that we’re getting six blocky structures, at least four of which will be more or less identical to another building on the site. Carving the property up into smaller pieces to be developed in phases by different entities, each with their own visions would yield a much more human-scaled project.

Finally, while the fact that the buildings are at least oriented towards the street saves the project from adopting an entirely suburban typology, the extensive surface parking is more immediately reminiscent of the type of multifamily developments you typically see in West County. Had the city been willing to accept either a slightly lower parking count or enough additional density that the developer could afford to do some structured parking instead of so much surface parking, the massive expanse of asphalt in the middle of the bottom quadrant of the proposal could’ve been used for something like a town square; a place ringed by apartments and restaurants where longtime residents and new residents alike would’ve enjoyed spending their time.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about this project, including what it will look like and how much money the city will get for the site (remember the city had a goal of using this development to offset the $12 million it paid for the new public works site), but suffice it to say, I think we’ve got a long way to go. More to come.