Last week I wrote up how Double Eagle won the Public Works sweepstakes. Ahead of this Thursday’s City Council public hearing on the Double Eagle proposal, I wanted to explore the other proposals that the Council passed up.
The Public Works RFP process unfolded in two stages. Initial bids were submitted by five applicants —Double Eagle, Keeley, Ridgehouse, Savoy, and Mehlman— as part of the initial RFP. The Council then offered feedback and received revised submissions. Some of the applicants offered a menu of proposals for the Council to choose from. You can access the full suite of submissions that I acquired via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Google Drive here.
The clearest indication of the Council’s thinking came from Keeley’s second application, which reprinted the Council’s individual points of feedback:
- The City prefers that a hotel is included in this project.
- The city prefers a majority of owner-occupied units for any residential component proposed.
- The developer should not be constrained by current codes related to structure height and unit density but should consider the contextual architectural design necessary to enhance the character of downtown Kirkwood that was referenced in the original RFP.
- The developer should consider including the surface parking lot of KPAC (not originally part of the property offered) into the proposal; however, careful phasing would need to be planned so as to not affect the operations of KPAC and, at a minimum, the existing amount of public parking must be maintained with a preference for additional public parking being provided.
- The developer should consider including the request of incentives in order to increase the purchase price to benefit the City. Please note, a request for Tax Increment Financing (TIF) will not be considered.
- The developer should consider including structured parking to minimize the amount of surface parking.
- Please note, the City Council will have involvement in the architectural review of this project and there is preference for more traditional architectural design found throughout downtown Kirkwood.
If you click on one link in this article, I encourage you to click on this one and read through Keeley’s responses to each of these points. While we don’t have access to the responses of the other applicants, Keeley’s give a very good sense of the overarching tradeoffs guiding the process.
Below I’ll give a brief overview of each project’s fundamentals, but here’s the overall summary of the responses the Council originally received as well as the revised proposals that were submitted after getting the Council’s feedback:
Onto the projects!
Keeley
Keeley Properties envisioned 233 homes unfolding over two stages. The first stage would see the construction of 32 for-sale townhomes and a 150-unit multifamily building fronting Fillmore. Phase 2 would have featured a 51-unit addition on that building and the construction of a 477-stall parking garage to be shared by residents and KPAC patrons. The plan also included an optional third stage that would develop the KPAC surface parking lot into a boutique hotel or, more likely, a 24-unit mixed-use apartment building with ground-floor retail.
The Keeley’s plans also included multiple public pocket parks, and, for my money, the best integration with —and buildout-of— Kirkwood’s street grid.
Ridgehouse
Ridgehouse Development, the same firm that responded to an RFP for the two city-owned Jefferson parking lots a couple of years back with an offer of $2 million (only for the Council to reject all proposals), submitted a proposal for 30 for-sale townhomes, two 100-apartment buildings and 9,000 sqft of retail. That retail would have fronted a 654-space parking garage located behind KPAC. All told, the project would have included 760 total parking spaces. Critically, the plans did not call for a through-street as requested in the RFP.
Savoy
Savoy Properties, the developer behind 4Hands, and the highly regarded Hutton, Barclay, and Madison condos along West Madison Ave in Downtown Kirkwood, submitted by far the most retail-heavy of the bids. Their proposal called for a 100-room hotel on the current KPAC surface lot, and 62 homes spread across villas, townhomes, and mixed use buildings. Both the mixed use building and the live/work homes would have included sales-tax generating ground floor commercial space for a total of ~15k square feet.
These varied structures would be centered on a new water feature that was to be integrated with the adjacent creek that flows by KPAC and would have doubled as a storm runoff retention tool. Trails and paths were also to have been included.
Mehlman
Mehlman Homes Reality, which does not seem to have submitted a revised proposal, submitted a plan for a 126-room hotel (a Marriot A-Loft or similar brand) with 15,000 sqft of retail alongside 27 villas. 148 parking spots were included in the proposal.
Boutique Hotel: If Not Here, Where?
Ultimately, Kirkwood received —and ultimately rejected—three proposals that included hotels. This news comes after the same Council passed on multiple hotel proposals on the two city-owned Jefferson lots a little more than a year and a half ago. Those decisions are a bit paradoxical given the heavy emphasis city leadership has put on luring a hotel to the Downtown in recent years.
Our best insight into the Council’s reasoning comes from the multiple responses noting that the required inclusion of a hotel would lower the price they were willing to pay the city for the site. Further, according to the materials included in the Keeley application, there is broad industry consensus that for a boutique hotel to be successful in Kirkwood, it would need to be located on a higher traffic corridor like Kirkwood Road.
There are not a ton of sites that directly fit the bill, but one possible fit would be the site of Kirkwood Glass at the corner of Kirkwood Rd and Monroe, next to the Aria and a block away from KPAC. Back in 2020, Kirkwood Glass partnered with Starbucks to try to bring a drive-thru location to the site that the previous iteration of Kirkwood City Council thankfully unanimously rejected in early 2021. Perhaps the dynamics have changed, but it seems like it could be a win-win if there are any enterprising young hoteliers out there reading this.
Thoughts
Upon reviewing each of these proposals, I remain disappointed. The Council chose a plan that essentially repeats the same building over and over again over a plan that refelects the granular variety of Downtown Kirkwood. This was a chance to make a new, iconic, trail-side neighborhood in Kirkwood and we opted, instead, for a condo complex surrounded by parking lots. Here’s to hoping the window for feedback has not yet closed.