The Birth of Downtown North

The area around Madison and Monroe, for a while now, has seemed to be the hotbed for development in Kirkwood. As far back as 2004, with the construction of the massive Kirkwood Plaza development, all the way through to today with the development of the Hutton, the final of Savoy’s three condo developments along Madison, and perhaps culminating with the tremendous success of the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center, the portion of Downtown Kirkwood just South of the tracks has been ground zero for a growing sense of place in our town.

That growth was born out of the opportunity provided by underutilized land. Parking lots, big box stores, and industrial land had the potential to be transformed into higher and better uses. And so it was. Very rapidly. And I till think the area has a bunch of potential. Starbucks tried and failed to develop the Kirkwood Glass building so it’s safe to assume something will come along there again eventually, there are surface lots and industrial uses all around the KPAC that could use infill, and if the Grant’s Trail extension eventually comes to fruition, demand for more housing in the area is only going to grow.

But now, the most obvious places for that urban infill have already been developed, and what remains are the harder eggs to crack. This is happening just as demand to live and hangout in Downtown Kirkwood has risen to historic highs. So developers still looking to cash in on that, look around for the next place where land is plentiful and under developed. And I think their eyes might have started to settle on Downtown North.

Define Your Terms

So what I want to do in this article then is outline the state of the neighborhood, update some of the developments currently under way in the area is currently undergoing and then outline a vision for what the area might become. But first, we should define what we’re talking about. When I refer to Northern Downtown (or the Banking/Financial District or Downtown North, or some sort of fun acronym in the style of Brooklyn’s DUMBO or Denver’s RiNo), I’m generally talking about everything North of Adams, South of Essex, East of Clay, and West of Taylor.

Residential Density has us on the Cusp of Greatness

Now the conventional wisdom of new urbanism is that it is more important to make a small area urbane than to spread half-assed urbanism across a broader area. I’m a proponent of that belief as well, but I want to make the case that Northern Downtown Kirkwood is much closer to already being an urban place than it might appear upon first glance at its sprawling parking lots and low-slung buildings. If we look at the Multi-family Map, we can see that NDK is surrounded by fairly dense housing at its periphery. It’s also home to a pharmacy and a bus route, the type of amenities that start to make a place not absolutely dependent on vehicle ownership.

And yet, the main drag along Kirkwood Rd., from Bodley to Adams, is almost entirely devoid of urban-oriented development or housing of any kind. So even though the pieces are there, pieces that lend themselves to the creation of vibrant urban spaces, those pieces are cut off from most of the rest of Downtown’s amenities by a wasteland ruled by cars. So because of one bad stretch of road, critical urban mass is never achieved. But that seems like it could be on the cusp of changing.

In the Pipeline

That’s because right along that main lifeless drag, we’re about to plop down the largest mixed-use infill project since Kirkwood Plaza was built in 2004. I speak of course, of The James, the 152-unit apartment and retail development that is expected to be completed by the Summer of 2024.

That transformational project is then accompanied by a ton of smaller more incrementally transformational developments. First, while The James is under construction, the UMB Bank branch that formerly occupied the site —and which will move in as one of the tenets once the project is complete— opened a temporary location at the corner of Clay and Washington in order to maintain service to its customers in the interim. That temporary structure is by no means impressive. BUT, it was constructed on what was formerly an unused surface parking lot so by its very existence I think you have to classify it as a slight improvement in density. And, after two years of proving its economic value, I’m hoping the owner of the lot will embrace more permanent development.

Commerce Bank

The other big banking development is the looming construction of a new building for Commerce Bank at the southeast corner of Kirkwood Rd and E. Washington and the demolition of their existing building on the southern half of the block.

That project should also prove to be an improvement in and of itself as the renderings show a more urban-oriented design including the elimination of the bank’s drive through and better street-front activation. But even more exciting is the prospect for what might be in store for the portion of the block Commerce is vacating.

That’s because the new Commerce branch was originally envisioned as the smaller half of a much larger project. Right around when the aforementioned James came up for its vote at City Hall, a 125-senior unit mixed use development came before the council. I supported the project at the time because I thought it to be a harbinger for the fate of The James. If 300 N. Kirkwood Rd went down, so too would the similar (but slightly smaller) project one block-over. I was ultimately proven wrong in that thinking, as the council put a lot more weight on the senior-orientation of the project than the density than I expected, and voiced a preference for more active (younger) residents Downtown.

The question now becomes whether or not the council members that voiced that preference (and their successors) are willing to back it up whenever the James 2.0 is proposed for the lot with votes. It would be hard to approve The James and then deny something very similar right next door, so I’m hopeful, but that logic has obviously failed me before, so we’ll see!

A Couple More…

There’s two other developments that I want to touch on briefly while we’re up here. First, at 144 W. Adams, we should soon be getting some missing-middle housing in the form of a three-unit apartment building that has been approved for the lot. It’s not huge, but it is fine-grained residential infill, so we’ll take it.

This winter there was also an announcement that Sugarfire Smokehouse would be coming to the northern portion of Downtown on the two lots formerly occupied by Kirkwood Pizzeria (the old Fortels), a spa, a framing shop, and Greentree Cleaners. As part of that plan, Sugarfire had decided to demolish the southern building and use the space for outdoor seating while the northern building served as the restaurant itself. Then, this spring, Sugarfire announced that the cost of the conversion had become prohibitive and that they no longer planned to come to the site, leaving a newly vacant lot in their wake.

Now it’s my hope that Sugarfire’s change of heart will turn out to be a blessing and somebody will develop the lot in a much more intensive way than the BBQ chain had planned. Preferably something mixed-use and built to the curb rather than fronted by an expansive parking lot.

What the Future Can and Should Look Like

So those are the projects that are in the works (and a little speculation about what could be next), but if we take a longer-term view, that still feels like it would still be understating the area’s potential.

The Local Businesses to Lead-Tenets Pipeline

Convincing the Prapaisilp family, owners of Global Foods, to demolish and rebuild their building sans massive surface parking lot, out of some sense or urban altruism probably isn’t in the cards. Instead you have to wait until they’re ready to rebuild on their own and push for better design. But the Global Foods building was built in 1958, and eventually that day will come. And can you imagine if when it does, they decided to partner with a developer and do something like The Orion Apartments in the Central West End except swap out the Whole Foods for Global Foods? They could literally print money.

And then you start looking around and it turns out a lot of these buildings are old and sitting on land that is zoned for a much higher level of potential productivity. The building owned by Walgreens was built in 1997, the US Bank building was constructed in 1966, and the Alpine Shop build was built in 1960.

Ideally, one by one, the incentives will start to align for the owners of these projects, and we’ll get modern, modest mixed use buildings with Alpine Shop, Walgreens, US Bank, and whoever else as lead tenants. These property owners will probably wait to see how the leasing out of The James goes, but if all goes well, we might see a lot of people trying to cash in.

How a Place for Cars Becomes a Place for People

Did I include a section on transportation just to pitch my Frisco Trail idea again? Basically, yes. But here’s the thing, once you start building densely, the transition from cars to walking, cycling, and transit comes naturally.

More people means more traffic and in order to avoid traffic, residents shift to other methods of transportation. But this area has some accelerants aiding its transition too. First, there’s a 49 bus stop right in front of The James which means that if anyone was even remotely tempted to try out the bus there is a very low barrier to entry to 154 units-worth of residents. The James development also brings with it a mid-block crosswalk across Kirkwood Rd, as well as curb bump-outs at the intersection of Washington and Taylor. Those improvements mean that getting to Walker Park and the YMCA, (and the library, and the Farmer’s Market, and the Kirkwood Performing Art’s Center, and maybe one day Grant’s Trail), easier and safer to complete by foot, and so maybe at the margin, a couple more people choose to hoof it than drive.

More Work to Do

Do we still have a lot of improvements to make? Yes! And I will now enumerate them.

North Kirkwood Rd as currently designed is way too wide and way too fast to be enjoyable to walk (or bike down). The easy fix here it to narrow it from its current four lanes down to three lanes —one in either direction, and a center turn lane— to bring it in line with Kirkwood Rd in the rest of Downtown north of Argonne. This road diet would likely decrease traffic even as it improved safety. Cars coming to a dead stop in a moving traffic lane at least leads to traffic jams, and often leads to outcomes worse than traffic jams. So narrow the road and give people a turn lane. Then use the two-lanes worth of extra room for bike lanes (to connect to the Frisco Trail, have you heard about my idea for the Frisco Trail?) or on-street parking. I imagine some of this road-diet wisdom will be unlocked once we have a look at how dangerous a mid-block crosswalk across four lanes of traffic actually is, but ideally we’d anticipate the danger and make the change before we put people in harm’s way.

Then there’s the case of the dueling gas stations on the North side of the Kirkwood Rd and Washington intersection. Gas stations are obviously bad for walkability since cars are constantly driving across the sidewalk to get in and out of them. This is a truth which is not lost on the city either: The current B-2 zoning explicitly disallows gas stations as an approved use, these two have just been around so long that they’re grandfathered in.

There’s not really anything to be done about these two, especially in light of the fact that Altus, the developer of The James attempted to buy out Tom’s Service station to make for a more cohesive footprint for The James and the owner flat-out refused. But there time will come, and when it does, hopefully it will allow for some fine-grained development on these small prime corner lots that helps to bridge Downtown North to Downtown proper. Speaking of bridging the two neighborhoods, there’s one more villain in the story of Downtown North’s transformation that we need to cover before we get out of here…

AT&T

In addition to the large surface parking lots that front big box stories in downtown North, there are also several parking lots completely unconnected to a building. They sit on their own plots and go entirely unused. These unused surface parking lots in Downtown North are essentially all owned by just one company: Southwestern Bell. Now, Southwestern Bell is just a subsidiary of AT&T, so that means that if we want to see action on those lots, all we have to is get the attention of the largest telecommunications company in the entire world.

Unfortunately, I don’t think they’re very likely to care all that much that a couple of their lots in suburban St. Louis have appreciated considerably in value over the last couple of years.

But, who knows, clearly someone got their attention. The temporary location of UMB Bank that we talked about earlier sits on top of one of their lots. So maybe someone on City Council picks up the phone and calls Mark Schleyer, AT&T’s Senior VP of Corporate Real Estate, or maybe one of you just happens to know him or whoever on his team who is in charge of their St. Louis holdings. And maybe, in no uncertain terms, you advise Mr. Schleyer and his team that he either shit or get off the pot. Because Kirkwood is going places. And we don’t have time for a little old telephone company to slow us down.

A Quick Note…

On an unrelated note, at its last meeting City Council voted to up-zone 10414 Big Bend Rd. from single-family to R-MM (Residential Missing Middle) which will allow up to six townhomes by-right. The owner of that property cited The Townes at Geyer Grove as their inspiration for the move. I’m very excited about these little wins that never become cultural touchstones and instead pass quietly (which is part of the reason why I didn’t write about it). I’m even more excited about the densification occurring along Big Bend because of the bus route that runs down its length. It might not quite be transit oriented development, but it is a step in the right direction. Good on everyone for getting this one done.

Anyway, that’s it for today. Thanks for reading! I hope everyone got out and and enjoyed the Route 66 Cars & Guitars fest this weekend. If you didn’t use your time standing in the middle of Jefferson to reflect on a) what Jefferson is and what it could be and b) the fact we could and should open streets in Downtown Kirkwood more often on the weekend, I would encourage you to do so now!

I’ll see you very very soon, I think I might have a couple bangers up my sleeve!