Council Passes on $60m Investment & 362 Parking Spaces from NOVUS

I’ve written 95 stories since I started Kirkwood Gadfly back in 2017. Of those 100 stories, my three stories covering the Jefferson RFP responses the city rejected rank 2, 3, and 8 in terms of numbers of views. Why? Well, my theory goes a little something like this: Kirkwood residents have repeatedly indicated that their primary concerns regarding the city are:

• The poor quality of city roads
• A lack of available parking in Downtown Kirkwood
• An increasing shortage of attainable housing options that:
  • Prevents young adults from living in the community they grew up in
  • Prevents lifelong residents from aging in place, and
  • Prevents the city’s employees —teachers, fire fighters, and police officers— from living in the community the serve

Each of the seven proposals the city received in response to the Jefferson RFPs would have helped on all three of those fronts at a cost of $0 to the city, and yet, for some reason, all seven were rejected out of hand by our elected officials. That basic cognitive dissonance and the failure of the city council to articulate why they had found those proposals lacking —hen pressed for an explanation, all the council members have been able to muster is to dismiss all seven proposals as “terrible”— makes for a kind of mystery. And people love mysteries.

So today, we’re going to again investigate a new chapter of that mystery by looking at another one of the rejected proposals. I’ll give you the facts, some analysis, and you can tell me if you agree with the Council’s assessment of terribleness. First, in case you’ve missed any of our first three installments, you can catch them here:

• IPG Boutique Hotel & Parking Proposal Rejected by City
• IPG Part 2: Council Rejects Another $33m of Investment
• PJ’s Rejected Proposal Shows the High Price of NIMBYism

The NOVUS Proposal

Our third response comes from NOVUS —the developer behind Terraces of Kirkwood, Laumeier Place and the 19 new townhomes recently approved in Des Peres— and CORE10 architecture —the firm behind Downtown Kirkwood projects the Aria, the Madison, the Hutton, and the Barclays.

At a high level, their plans called for the same general concept on both the East & West Jefferson lots: two five story buildings, each featuring 31 condos, a 181 parking spot underground parking garage, and 8,000 sqft of street-front retail space:

Those 181 parking spots would fulfill the off-street parking required by the zoning code for both the retail (22.8 spots required by code, 41 spots provided) and residential (46.5 spots required by code, 68 provided) components of the project, and then add additional 72 parking spots on top of that. Between both buildings, the developer planned to provide 222 more parking spots than required by the zoning code.

The proposed density and height of the two buildings are both within the limits permitted by the existing code. The only variance requested by the developer was for a small setback encroachment on the eastern lot.

The floor plans for each level are available on the slideshow below:

In order to achieve this parking capacity, each building would have included a three level garage, stretching from below ground to the second floor. The ground level of the garage would have been fronted by retail space to help activate the street front.

NOVUS estimated that the project would have cost $50-$60m in hard costs.

Objections?

The respondents to the RFP were not required to provide actual renderings of the project so beyond the general massing depicted above, we can’t say what exactly this project would have looked like. NOVUS did point to the 42-unit mixed-use Aria project, also designed by CORE10, as a design reference, which seems like a smart move. The Aria was met with overwhelming approval by the Council, including by now Mayor Liz Gibbons.

The fact that the final design aspects of the project were yet to be determined means that the Council could have easily steered the proposal in a direction that they liked had they so chosen. Instead of wielding that influence and working with the respondents to turn good projects into great ones, though, they took the easy way out, abdicated their basic responsibilities, dismissed all the proposals terrible and threw the baby out with the bath water.

Instead of ~$150k in additional tax revenue going towards the city and its schools, 362 new parking spots in Downtown Kirkwood and 61 new families living and dining, shopping, and working in Downtown Kirkwood, we get… well nothing. No tax revenue, no parking relief, no housing relief, just another heaping helping of the status quo.

I also want to emphasize that there has been a considerable amount of diversity in the three proposals we’ve covered so far. We’ve seen developers propose rental apartments and owner-occupied condos, boutique hotels and parking garages, small retail spaces and large ones. And the other four proposals that I have yet to write up featured more diversity still.

If you object to all of the above, the problem is not that every project that the respondents proposed was “terrible,” the problem is that for the Council, there was never a correct answer in the first place.