Sav-A-Lot in the Gate District

Contemporary suburban designs typically don't inspire me.  Nor do they tend to add vibrancy or help form a sense of "place" that defines an area.  Yet, if the tenants of these boring contemporary strip malls bring convenience and respectable, clean stores that cater to the needs of the MIX of people living in the area (read:  highest and lowest demographics in an area), then they can serve a purpose that benefits the surrounding neighborhoods and just might add to the property values within the area.

The sea of strip malls and surface parking lots in the suburbs is part of the reason I live in St. Louis.  It is fun to live in a city that has character, and St. Louis has that in spades.  However, the city is not immune to succumbing to lazy, auto-centric planning that is so common in the 'burbs.  You'll see it rear its ugly head in nearly all part of the city.  One such auto-centric development that I've been following is the former National/Schnucks/Foodland building just north of I-44 at 1605 S. Jefferson in the Gate District Neighborhood.  This suburban property complete with a huge setback and sea of surface parking sits directly across from Lafayette Square, one of St. Louis' nicest neighborhoods.

This used to be a ~45,000 square foot grocery store opened by Kroger.  National bought it out and then Schnuck's who divested it in March, 1996.  It was sold to Family Co. of America and became a Foodland.  Folks I've spoken to who've lived in this part of the city much longer than I said the grocery store got pretty ghetto and was eventually destined for closure.  The store finally closed in 2004 when it failed to get neighborhood support for a liquor license.

The property was no doubt an eyesore.  The only thing uglier than suburban set backs, massive surface parking lots and cheap-as-possible contemporary building materials and no-design standards is empty said structures of such low quality.  Steve Patterson did 2 excellent posts on the properties in this area.  Read them here and here.

Here's what the site looked like, courtesy of UrbanReviewSTL.com:

 the old National/Schnucks/Foodland

massive surface parking lot

view of the thoughtless design and weird/dark entrance

So, when news that the property was purchased and would be re-developed by Green Street Properties and designed by local firm UIC...people in the area got excited.

The Post-Dispatch reported on this property back in November, 2011:

A grocery is high on the list of potential tenants, said Green Street's Phil Hulse, though the neighborhood likely can't support a full-size, stand-alone supermarket there. Hulse said he expects to split the building among tenants, and plans to put up a second retail building of 5,000 to 8,000 square feet. He said he's in discussion with a variety of retailers, but wouldn't name specific tenants yet. "There's certainly a lot of voids in that market," he said. "We're out speaking to a fairly diverse group that would play well to surrounding community and would do well there."

To help fund the $6.6 million project, Green Street is asking the City of St. Louis for $1.36 million in tax increment financing, and to establish a Community Improvement District on the site, which would levy an extra 1 percent sales tax and raise $340,000. The TIF was set for a public hearing in January and will need approval by the Board of Alderman. Hulse hopes to start construction in the spring, and finish in late summer.

A second phase would involve buying an existing retail building next door and rehabbing it - though Hulse said he doesn't yet have that building under contract.

Read the full story here.

So we subsidized this developer to the tune of >$1M...lucky them.  Let's see what became of the property and what Green Street was able to land for us to improve this vitally important part of the city.

Keep in mind this part of the city is a major sway area that can swing the pendulum toward quality contributors to the city such as Lafayette Square and Compton Heights, parts of Fox Park, McKinley Heights, the burgeoning Lafayette Avenue corridor between Jefferson and Grand.  This area is brimming with potential and needs to start aiming higher on all future developments than what the 1970s-1990s ushered in.

Additionally, this part of the city was deemed a "food desert" by the USDA, so obviously food options were needed to serve the many residents that live in these parts.

Hopes were high.  Let's aim for a development that will elevate the city, right?

Fast forward to a public meeting organized by then Alderman Kacie Starr-Triplett to engage the neighbors on Green Street's proposal.  There was a short presentation by UIC.  The building was going to be largely reused, yet stylistically re-fashioned.  I'm sure they'll do good work based on their previous work in the city.  OK, I'm listening, hoping for the best when the tenants were announced.

Then Green Street unveiled what we had all been waiting for.  A fitness club (Blast), okay, that's nice...a stand alone sandwich shop (Subway...interest fading) and then the bomb was dropped....Sav-A-Lot was to be the "anchor tenant".

What?  We subsidized a Sav-A-Lot?

This low-end discount grocer aims at the lowest demographic in the area.  They cater to cheap junk food, processed dry foods, discounted canned and frozen prepared foods and their fresh selections at the Loughborough and Jefferson location (just down the street) are days away from rotting.  This place is not good.  Trust me, I used to frequent the Loughborough location when I had little ones who drank 2 + gallons of milk a week (they had the cheapest milk in town).

The places smell horrible upon entry and they don't exactly add to the city in any meaningful way.  They are not pleasant places to shop.  They don't say: "wow, I want to live around this place".

I was not alone in my disappointment at the meeting, the neighbors:  white and black, young and old, Gate District/Fox Park/Lafayette/McKinley Heights, you name it everyone was pissed at worst, disappointed at best.  You could see it in the eyes of everyone in the room, maybe even the developers.  Try and think of a lower-end grocer...what would it be?  Aldi's is a step up for Pete's sake.

I can see subsidizing a Culinaria, Trader Joes, a Field's Foods Hub type concept (which is going in on Bohemian Hill, opening this winter, just east of here on Lafayette Ave).  But subsidizing a freakin' Sav-A-Lot?  The rug was pulled out from under the room.  The public comments ranged from anger to utter disappointment to the usual, hey its better than nothing lackeys.  But it appeared too late.  The deal was done.

Why, do we make these decisions over and over?  We aim to appease the lowest common denominator in the equation.  Just say no until something that will elevate the area comes to the table.

I realize Trader Joe's doesn't like St. Louis' numbers, but it would have been PACKED.  It would have done great, and the ghetto potential would be MUCH lower than a Sav-A-Lot.  It would have brought in people from all over the city, Downtown, South Grand, you name it.  THAT would have been worth subsidizing with our tax dollars.  That would have elevated property values.  That would have gotten the eye of potential new home owners...not a Sav-A-Lot.

Again, I'm all for subsiding quality development that will elevate the options and property values.  Stuff that'll draw home owners and quality renters to the area...not crap.  I get doing this for IKEA, not Sav-A-Lot.

This will not elevate the area by any means.  But, now that the building renovation is complete, I've got to say it looks pretty darn good.  And that alone will allow many to tout this as a success.

There was also talk of a hardware story (Ace); that would have been awesome too.  Nothing yet.  Back in May, 2012 KSDK reported on the development:

There are also plans for a hardware store, coffee shop, fitness gym and bank.

No hardware store, no coffee shop, no bank (or is HR Block the "bank"?).

The other stand alone building is now a Family Dollar store which has saturated the STL market of late.  There is a brand new, way more urban-designed one just down the street from this one in the McKinley Heights neighborhood which replace a shuttered Burger King (a step up) across from Trader Bob's Tattoo and the Way Out Club.

Sav-A-Lot is the lowest end discount grocer in our market.  They will be the "anchor tenant".  The Blast fitness is nice, we are members, it is okay.  There is an HR Block (who uses these things) that is largely vacant most of the time (except income tax season) and other vacant storefronts.

Now again, UIC did a respectable job.  It has good pedestrian access from Jefferson, decent from Lafayette.  Heck, it might be the coolest, sleekest suburban styled strip mall in the city...but the end result is still a Subway (which already existed in the now Family Dollar building).  A Wing Stop...check out their menu HERE. Take that food desert....more junk food...a discount fitness club, HR Block and a damn Sav-A-Lot.  Thanks a lot...here's $1M Mr. Developer...we can't have nice things.  Thanks so much for considering the city of St. Louis where anything is better than nothing.  Damn shame.

But as I said, the building looks pretty damn sharp for new construction.  Here's the Subway/Wing Stop:

fast food complete with a drive-thru window

 small outdoor seating areas

And here's the Sav-A-Lot, HR Block and Blast! Fitness building:

The various colors and building materials bring added life and interest to a formerly awful building.

The dark, hulking National front entrance was opened up and looks much better from the street and close-up; lots of windows along the front open up the building.

They also cut windows into the north wall allowing a lot of natural light into the gym.  There are treadmills on the inside facing out through the windows and they planted new trees along the north wall.

My hope is that the area continues to improve, the Sav-A-Lot eventually goes out of business and we get a new, better tenant.

There was little downsizing of the massive surface parking lots surrounding 3/4 of the main building.  But, they planted quality trees (many oaks and birch) and the lot is designed to minimize run off.  This breaks things up a bit from just a solid lot as it was before.

Trees planted along the property between the fast food shops and the filling station

The pluses are many and the building went from an eyesore with zero design to the the interesting re-skinning of the building and other contemporary touches that now exist.  Nice work.

While Green Street and UIC continue to do great work in the city (See Sheet Metal Workers/Dyna Labs building at Chouteau & Jefferson) and the amazing UIC investments in Botanical Heights and awesome designs and plans for DeTonty Street in Shaw, the tenants will be the thing most people will use to judge whether this is good or bad for the area.

What do you think?  Worth the tax subsidy? A plus, minus or neutral for folks in the Lafayette Square, Gate District, Fox Park, Compton Heights and McKinley Heights?

Now's your chance to comment and tell me how anything is better than nothing and I'm just a whiny yuppie :)

Whatever, these tenants suck...but maybe, just maybe we'll get a better use to a decent looking re-skinned strip mall in the future.  If Sav-A-Lot goes down the tubes, maybe a better grocer will step up and add to the charm of city living vs. shilling low end crap that we need like a hole in the head.

***Update December 15, 2015***

So I wanted to check in and provide an update on this strip mall after a couple year's have passed.  The BlastFitness closed which is a bummer, I really liked that place. It has remained vacant since it's closing.

The Sav-A-Lot is awesome and I go there all the time. I was too quick to judge based on my experiences at the Jefferson/Cherokee and Loughborough/Morgan Ford locations. Their fresh food is sometimes better than the higher-end, more expensive place down the way.

The HR Block is not even open/staffed unless during tax season, or by appointment.

There is now an African-American hair supply store, and they had to install bollards in front of it to prevent cars from driving though the front to steal merchandise. There are also metal gates that are pulled down over the front windows when the business is closed.

So after giving it a couple years, was this worth the tax subsidy?

St. Louis Art Museum's $160M Expansion

On Saturday, June 29, I took part of my family to visit the new east building expansion of the St. Louis Art Museum (SLAM).  This $160M expansion had us pretty excited as the SLAM is a national treasure...and we've missed the collections that were not on display during the construction.

If you have followed the Grand Opening as I have, you've probably read what the pundits are saying.  Largely a mixed bag of tempered praise to mild disapproval.

Anyhow, this is my take as a casual observer of the building itself and the galleries within.

Not unlike the recent $70M renovation of the Central Library, I was anxious to see this historic addition. 

Now to me, art, architecture, writing and music are all about feel. It's amazingly powerful to get a feel from a song or a painting or a book or a building. I'm a simpleton, but the feel of a place can change a so-so experience into a great one.  Yet, buildings have soul only if the things within them have soul.  I feel the venue usually affects the performance or showing...the general experience overall. 

When I walked into the recently renovated Central Library...I got the

rush of pride and excitement and awe

. THIS is why I live in St. Louis...this is why I'll continue to brag about this city...we just pulled off something amazing and unforgettable at that library. I just want to BE in that space it.  I drove home and insisted that my family go see it and we were all in awe together, ages 6-42.

Upon first visit, this new building does not make me feel the same way. Although, some of the artwork I've never seen before certainly did.  My wife and kids were excited about the works on the walls or in the middle of the floors, but they didn't say anything about the building...nothing, they just wanted to talk about the art.  They are usually vocal about the place too, not today.

Maybe that's the point...the expansion was not meant to compete with the 1904

Cass Gilbert

 Beaux Arts gem to the north. This expansion seems to respect the original.  And I think that's all it takes to understand why it isn't really a blow your mind kind of expansion.

I walked away not underwhelmed, not overwhelmed...just happy to live in St. Louis and enjoy an art museum whenever I want...for free.  Happy to see new installations that my kids will have as part of their up-bringing...mixed with the old classics from my fond memories.  Happy that we once welcomed

Max Beckmann

to live and work here and be appreciated here forever.

Most of all, I've got to give props for the...get ready St. Louis...underground parking lot!!!  No, we don't have a disgusting parking lot mucking up our old classic stock a la the Park Pacific. 

WTF

Underground parking! $15.00...a reasonable fee for those who don't want to walk; after all, admission is free.

The landscape is awesome as well.  The structured use of various species of birch is PERFECT for my liking as we are a river city and these elegant riverside, bluff natives are oft painted in European and American art.  They'll look good in the winter too.

7 year old liked the view in this room

The pundits are calling the addition "quiet and reserved". Gaudy, revolutionary or bold are certainly not words that came to my mind, so I guess I agree. Sleek and modern are the words I would use to describe the feeling I got. The space made me happier from the inside than the out, which I guess is the point.

So that's my humble 2 cents.

Now let's see what the pundits have to say.

From

ArtDaily.org

:

David Chipperfield’s design for the more than 200,000-square-foot East Building presents a contemporary counterpart to the Museum’s neo-classical 1904 Main Building. Awarded LEED Gold status by the U.S. Green Building Council, the design organically links the two buildings, and a new Grand Stair provides a seamless transition between the main and the lower-level galleries and visitor amenities. Museum visitors may use the fully accessible new entrance to the East Building or the existing Sculpture Hall entrance to the Main Building, where the original floor plan has been restored as part of the expansion project.

The façade of the East Building features floor-to-ceiling windows and 23 monumental panels of dark polished concrete, with highlights of Missouri river aggregates. Inside the galleries, innovative coffered ceilings made of light concrete provide abundant but controlled natural light, supplemented with artificial illumination which is managed by a computerized sensor system that automatically adjusts to changing light levels throughout the day. Wide-plank white oak floors and stainless steel floor vents are designed to provide a distraction-free setting for the works of art.

From

The Art Newspaper

:

Improving the quality of visitors’ experience, modernising the original building and marrying new and old were key parts of the project. Brent Benjamin (director SLAM) praises Chipperfield’s “deep respect” for the Gilbert building and his sensitivity to its setting, a park bigger than New York’s Central Park. The extension, which is built into a hillside, is largely underground. Clad in polished concrete panels that incorporate Missouri River stones, the wing features views of the surrounding park, a restaurant and provides facilities museum visitors now expect, including a car park. Another first for the museum is a “real coat check”, Benjamin says. He praises the “wonderfully quiet and reserved” setting for art that the architect has created in the new wing. The galleries have distinctive coffered ceiling but are otherwise pristine white cubes.

From

the Architectural Record

:

Known for his rigorous design approach, Chipperfield was appointed unanimously by Museum commissioners in 2005 to design an expansion to SLAM. No stranger to merging old and new, Chipperfield received the prestigious Mies van der Rohe Award in 2011 for his restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin. But unlike his other cultural projects in the U.S.—for the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, and Alaska’s Anchorage Museum expansion—that feature predominantly glass facades, the St. Louis project, in what is perhaps its boldest design statement, is defined by dark, massive panels of polished concrete that contrast sharply with the light-colored masonry of the existing Beaux Arts structure.

The other defining feature of the one-story “pavilion in the park,” as Chipperfield calls it, is the 4’-deep concrete coffered ceiling containing skylights that provide daylight to almost all of the new building’s 21 galleries. Used primarily to display modern and contemporary art, the flexible galleries accommodate temporary walls and feature under-floor air distribution and hidden building services. HOK served as architect-of-record, working with Chipperfield’s office to achieve LEED Gold accreditation. Paris-based Landscape Architect Michel Desvigne is designing the museum campus, including a future sculpture garden, in phases.

The 211,000-square-foot addition—more than half of which comprises below-grade parking for 300 cars—increases the museum’s total gallery space by 30 percent. It also allowed for the renovation and reinstallation of 68 galleries in the Cass Gilbert building. Chipperfield’s intervention there was minimal, save for a new Grand Stair in the main entry leading to that structure’s lower level.

Chipperfield’s project is marked by deference to an illustrious past, both architectural and symbolic, but it is clearly a building of its time. It remains to be seen if his elegant restraint will bring the increased recognition this world-class institution in an oft-overlooked American city seeks.

Just like the Central Library's new addition, I was in awe of how the north entry connects the old and new with just a small strip of glass.  This addition marries the old and new in another imaginative way, with a stone sculpture called "Stone Sea" by British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy.

The connection from the exterior 

sculpture between old and new sections

Here's what

Fox 4 News in Kansas City had to say

:

There are no rules set in stone when trying to connect the present with the past. But British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy might have set the bar with his piece — Stone Sea.

“Which is literally as he says eloquently, To draw fluidity from static stone.” said Tricia Paik, assistant curator of modern & contemporary art at the St. Louis Art Museum. “So you have this whole sea of arches, 25 arches weighing 300 tons. Not the weight of water of course and he’s given an extraordinary gift to the city of St. Louis with this project.”

A project the St. Louis Art Museum commissioned as a permanent way to bridge David Chipperfeild’s new East building with the Cass Gilbert designed Main building.

“We rest, St. Louis and the Midwest rests on a bed of rock of limestone,” Paik said. “This is a stone of marine origin. So many centuries in the prehistoric era this was once a sea an inland shallow sea.”

This is a rare inside look at this marriage of something new with something old. These stone arches are the same bedrock used to build the 1904 original building.

“We had a wonderful art critic come in and he gave a very great word to describe which Andy loved which is episodic,” Paik explained. “You experience it in moments and you actually experience it throughout our new expanded campus.”

Most will experience the installation from indoors or looking down from this outdoor courtyard. Over time Mother Nature will change the complexion of these arches.

“It’s a work that’s responding to nature,” Paik said. “From the sun, rain, darkened clouds, it’s going to be brightly lit on some days, shadow as we are here right now. So it’s going to be something that will change with time.

Anyhow, art is subjective and beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and I think this is a beautiful addition to Forest Park and St. Louis.

Do you agree?

 7 years old: we are not two we are one

9 years old:  painting the painting

There is also an information desk, coat check, gift shop, snack shop and full restaurant.

light snacks available

fine dining upstairs

What's your take?