Kirkwood has issued a request for proposal (RFP) for two prominent city-owned lots in Downtown Kirkwood according to a newsletter from Council member Liz Gibbons.
The two lots, 107-115 W Jefferson, and 125 E Jefferson are both zoned for B-2 General Business, the city’s most intensive use. The eastern lot sits right next to the popular Mission Taco Joint, while the western lot is the site vacated by the demolition of the Mel Bay Music Store in 2012.
While the RFP was issued on November 3rd, it has been given almost no publicity by the city, which instead chose to privately distribute the RFP to developers of interest. The deadline for submitting a proposal via the city’s procurement site is listed as 12/18 at 2:00 am, only one week from now.
The two lots should garner significant interest as long as developers have had sufficient time to organize a proposal (a prospect made much trickier by the current interest rates) and the off-street parking requirements don’t prove to be too costly a constraint.
The RFP also stipulates additional “preferences,” for what the proposals should include:
- Include a mixture of commercial and residential uses subject to the requirement for commercial frontage on the ground floor.
- The development of the W Jefferson Parking Lot should incorporate at least the same amount of public parking that currently exists on the lot. (~74 spots)
- The development of the E Jefferson Parking Lot should incorporate at least the same amount of public parking that currently exists on the lot. (~70 spots)
- Include the installation of, and subscription cost to utilize, the City’s current parking monitoring system (“Park Kirkwood”) for the public parking spaces provided for within each development.
- Incorporate innovative building design that enhances the character of downtown Kirkwood.
Developments on these lots are required by the zoning code to feature ground-floor commercial use so (1) is essentially already mandated. And because mixed-use is mandated, buildings here can be up to 55 feet tall (~5 stories).
Numbers (2) and (3) are slight expansions of the minimum amount of parking required in the zoning code, which stipulates 1.5 off-street parking spots be provided per apartment/condo and 0.5 spaces be provided per hotel room in the downtown core, with additional spots required based on the type of commercial uses that are proposed: One space per every 100 sqft of restaurant space or one space per every 350 sqft of retail space is required, for example. If one of the lots was developed into a 20-room hotel with 12,000 sqft of retail on the bottom floor, the code would only require 44 parking spots, while the RFP is looking for 70+ spots to be included.
Number (4) is a requirement that any parking spots have to have the sensors that the City of Kirkwood had installed (for free, in a proof-of-concept by the Chesterfield-based company Fybr) in most of its downtown on-street parking spots. Those sensors then give real-time updates to the free “Park Kirkwood” app that tells you which spots are currently available. I covered that project in my article on the City’s parking lots which I already linked to, but here’s the direct link to an NPR interview with City Administrator Russ Hawes on the project. Now, this requirement is going to add to the cost of any project on these lots (which are already going to be at the margin in terms of financial feasibility for developers), so I don’t love it. But the requirement could be made significantly less burdensome if the city used this actually pretty cutting-edge technology it’s been gifted to implement dynamically-price parking (where the price would go down if lots of spots were available and up if very few were).
Number (5) is essentially a requirement that the project look good, which, fair enough.
The Bottom Line
Anyway, hopefully, more homes (or maybe even a boutique hotel?) will be coming to Downtown Kirkwood here soon, but less exciting possibilities remain in the mix. The city has long signaled that it would be interested in developing a new parking garage North of the railroad tracks, and a deal to offer both lots free of change to a developer interested in building on one of the lots and adding structured parking to the other remains a distinct possibility. This story is still developing and more will be added as it becomes known.
Where are we going to park? Those lots are always full, especially on weekends and evenings. Are there plans for another parking garage anywhere?
There is plenty of street parking, people just pick the lots as it’s the easiest solution. I use the one next to the library pretty regularly but worst case just park a block down the street if I had to
I wouldn’t say there is plenty of street parking. Kirkwood is hard-pressed for public parking, especially for those who can’t walk 3 blocks to get where they need to go.
Haha, is your comment for real or just trolling? 😆
While our parking studies have shown that the perceived parking shortage is more of a perception problem than an actual shortage, I do agree that developing these two lots with no additional parking would be a problem. Fortunately, though, any potential development on the lots will include a significant parking component: 1.5 spots for every unit of housing plus additional requirements for each of the commercial uses, so I expect us to end up with more parking spaces in downtown post-development rather than fewer. Obviously we’ll have more demand for parking too, but that’s the sign of a healthy, growing city.
The reason why I always say that there is always the bus because downtown Kirkwood is served by MetroBus route number 49 Lindbergh. Not many stops from that route but it does serve some. The bus stops at Adams, and it also stops near Pioneer Place (southbound) or by Jimmy John’s (northbound). It also stops at Woodbine, and there is a stop at Walgreens (southbound) and at Alpine shop (northbound). If you are flying here, and want to save some cash, instead of renting a car, get an adventure pass from the MetroLink ticket machine or a 7 day pass. Metro also offers a service called Call-a-Ride as they can take you right to where you want to go.
These parking lots should be left!
The RFP will require the developer to replace the existing parking spaces FYI. Approximately 73 spaces per lot. This will require some element of structured parking within the proposed development(s).
I missed that, I’ll update the story! Thank you!
So where are they going to put 73 spaces public parking plus the 1.5 parking spaces per unit? Developers don’t make money off parking spots, they make money off residential square footage. So presumably they would want to build up. The B-2 height limit is 5 stories. What height do you think would be appropriate in these locations?
I’m a huge NIMBY so I’m probably the wrong person to ask! Every home you allow makes the price of homes overall a little more affordable (unleashing economic growth in the process) so for me, an aesthetic preference for shorter buildings Downtown doesn’t trump all the benefits of denser economic development. Still though, I wish the city would reduce parking requirements and legalize point-access buildings so that we could get the same density with much smaller building footprints.
Also quick clarification: The 73 spaces is not in addition to the 1.5 spots required per unit. If the site gets something 50 units, the 1.5 spots-per-unit requirement would become the binding constraint, not the 73 spaces required here.
The way I am understanding this it IS in addition to. The RFP has a “City’s Preferences” section, and within it reads the following:
The development of the W Jefferson Parking Lot should incorporate at least the same amount of public parking that currently exists on the lot.
The development of the E Jefferson Parking Lot should incorporate at least the same amount of public parking that currently exists on the lot.
The key word here being “public” as that defines parking that is designated solely for public use as opposed to parking designated to added uses, ie: hotel, condos, retail, etc.
With this in mind a developer will likely need to build a below grade parking structure with surface parking and retail at grade with an additional 4 stories above that.
Okay, I think you’re right again! Although I would say I don’t think there’s anything that says you have to set aside some spots specifically for your tenants so theoretically you could just say, “I met the rfp requirement and the zoning code requirement via these 74 spaces, anyone is free to use them, including my tenants,” but the city would likely frown on that and not pick a proposal that made that case. I still think that it’s likely the city looks at the total parking spaces across the two lots collectively rather than treating the two as individual cases (a big stand-alone parking garage on the one lot and just enough parking to serve tenants of a new mixed-use building on the other.
(Quote)…….”and a deal to offer both lots free of change to a developer interested in building on one of the lots and adding structured parking to the other remains a distinct possibility.”
What is meant by “free of change?”
Basically, the city would trade the lots to a developer in exchange for the developer paying to construct a parking garage for the city. The city wouldn’t make any money on such a transaction but 1) would get an incredibly expensive parking garage free of charge 2) the city would gain additional property and sales tax revenue from whatever gets developed on the lot
I literally see the “shark tank” aka lot in question, five days a week. I call it the shark tank because people circle and circle hoping to find a spot. When they can’t, they park illegally at the apartments adjacent from it. One train at the station will leave Kirkwood Rd backed up making it dangerous and hard for emergency vehicles to get through. Alllllll of these ideas for growth and nothing to help the current residents and businesses with an already overwhelming parking issue. But let’s add more people right!?!
Parking and driving have real costs (time, air pollution, accidents, climate change, etc). Ideally, by allowing denser developments in Downtown Kirkwood, fewer people will need to rely on a car (they can walk to dinner, a concert at KPAC, work, etc) thus reducing per-capita demand for parking and reducing those costs. I think your framing is a little backward: If, for example, we bulldozed all the businesses in Downtown Kirkwood, there would be plenty of spots to park, but no one would want to come. Alternatively, if all the spots in Downtown Kirkwood are filled (multiple studies have shown they’re generally not), that indicates that the businesses located there are doing really well, not that they’re struggling!
How is the City making any money off this. The West Jefferson lot cost the City $1.2 million. What’s in it for the residents?
Isn’t another name for dense economic development a slum? (Pruit Igoe).
The city isn’t making any money off the lots that currently occupy the site (in fact it costs the city money to maintain these lots). Allowing development on the site would allow the city to collect property tax revenue from the developments every year in perpetuity and would allow the city to collect sales tax revenue from patrons of any businesses that land there. Any potential residents (or guests if it were to be a hotel) that would be shopping or dining in Kirkwood would mean even more sales tax revenue for the city to reinvest in amenities and services. The failures of Pruitt-Igoe stemmed from its concentration of poverty in a single location and a lack of upkeep by the housing authority; any developments on these two lots would be private developments of market-rate units and thus would not face either of those challenges. By your definition Manhattan, Paris, Monaco, and Geneva would all be considered slums. In reality, they are some of the richest, most amenitied places in human history. Density, in and of itself, is not the issue.
Basically Kirkwood MO is getting more urbanized by the day so that people can have a little bit of an urban vibe and culture without dealing with the criminals and thugs that you see in the City of St.Louis. Also look at Carmel Indiana (an Indianapolis Suburb) see how they don’t have a parking issue and yet they’re getting more urban by the day.
There’s an inherent tradeoff between subsidizing cars (by requiring parking) and Kirkwood’s walkability though. As density is added, places naturally become more walkable (more businesses in walking distance, more customers to support those businesses, etc), but not if we put our thumb on the scale in favor of driving as a mode of transport (cars take up a ton of space which forces things to be more spread out in order to accommodate their storage, and means we have to add capacity to our roads to accommodate the increased traffic of a larger population). If we cut the red tape, the market will efficiently allocate the amount of parking we require and our walkability will naturally scale up with our population.
The solution to fix this issue for both sides is build parking garages as well as underground parking so that Kirkwood MO can still have some Urban vibe and culture and still have enough room for parking.
You could require developers to include a bunch of parking but that parking costs a lot of money (underground parking is incredibly expensive). Developers will attempt to recapture that expense by making the housing more expensive than it otherwise would be, which is not ideal. From my pov the two main options are to allow developers to add density beyond what the zoning code currently permits (more units cross-subsidizing the parking we’re making them build means lower per-unit costs), OR don’t require a set amount of parking at all and let developers build the amount of parking they think their project needs in order to lease out all the commercial/residential units. I prefer option #2 because I think subsidizing driving beyond what the market requires is bad for walkability
Thats true my friend that is true.