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Rebuilt to Suit

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Vince Schoemehl, president and CEO of Grand Center, Inc., likes what he has seen from Johnson and his cohorts and sees development of the Locust Business District as key to the city's well-being in the long term. "Somehow we've got to connect downtown to midtown in the same way that midtown has connected to the Central West End, the way that it has connected to Washington University," says the former St. Louis mayor. Schoemehl calls the Locust Business District the "last critical synapse. Then you have a solid base up and down the center, which extends like a spine, and then supports development to its north and south. Having this central nervous system in place is really going to be critical to the long-term success of the city."

Johnson eventually branched off into architectural consulting and formed a new company, Renaissance Development Associates; today Miller, Hartman and Robert Beckermann's brother Michael carry on with Integration Development. (Robert Beckermann took his own life in January 2006.) "We have projects right next door to each other, and there's some overlap [with Johnson]," Michael Beckermann says. "To a certain extent we're working together, and to a certain extent we're each doing our own stuff."

To date Integration and Renaissance have completed 17 of the 37 projects that constituted phase one of their vision. For phase two, Johnson foresees a condo development that might accommodate a new home for the recently shuttered live-music stalwart Mississippi Nights.

(Johnson cautions that the latter requires further negotiation, explaining, "If we can't work out the incentives package with the city, then the Mississippi Nights project won't happen." Mississippi Nights co-owner Jim Huck says it's too soon to speculate about where the club might rise again, though he's interested in Johnson's proposal if the numbers add up. Huck says other potential locations are under consideration but declines to identify them.)

Looming over any project in the district is the imminent completion of the basketball Billikens' new home, Saint Louis University's Chaifetz Arena.

The arena will hold 10,600 people, many of whom will require places to park. One SLU-owned lot, located at the southwest corner of Compton and Olive a block from Auto Row, has already been earmarked for the arena.

The question that remains is what the university intends to do with the other two dozen properties it owns along Olive, Locust and Washington.

Saint Louis University spokesman Jeff Fowler declined to comment for this story about the university's development plans. Peter Pierotti, the school's director of development, did not return repeated phone calls requesting comment. Additionally, many Locust residents and property owners in the Locust Business District are loath to talk, fearing possible repercussions.

Still, an October 2006 presentation Kathleen Brady, SLU's vice president for facilities management, delivered to the university's Student Government Association offers a glimpse into university officials' mindset.

Pointing to a map of SLU and its area holdings, Brady related the university's plans. She discussed the process of assembling land for the arena, the failed negotiations to put the final piece in place and the subsequent decision to locate the basketball venue south of Olive.

"So the question was what to do with this property here," Brady said, pointing to the intersection of Locust Boulevard and Josephine Baker Boulevard. Brady told the students SLU was thinking of relocating of its departments of fine arts and performing arts into a complex in that area, in order to better integrate the programs into Grand Center. She predicted a synergetic relationship between students and area artists and musicians. "The buildings up on Locust," she said, "we're hoping they'll be renovated with retail on ground floor and probably residences or office space above." Directing the students' attention to the livery stable at 3401 Locust, she explained that the university was holding off taking action, preferring to "wait and see if the theater department can move up there."

Not long after the meeting, a YouTube user uploaded Brady's presentation to the video-sharing Web site, where St. Louisans curious about the future of midtown can still access it.

The livery stable, though, won't be around much longer.

In early June Locust residents and property owners got ahold of a May 17 letter from Brady to Alderwoman Marlene Davis and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.

"I'm happy to report that contrary to the rumor that we had plans to demolish seven of our properties north of Olive, we're only doing one," Brady writes. "We've received bids for the demolition of 3401 Locust."

On Thursday, May 24, Davis introduced Board Bill 129, which would essentially turn over to SLU an alley that separates the livery stable from another university property directly to the north, in order to create a surface parking lot a block wide. The following week SLU applied for a demolition permit.

Says Davis: "They changed their mind. They are going to tear the building down." Does the alderwoman favor the decision to demolish? "I have no reason to be one way or the other," Davis responds. "They are private owners, and they can do what they choose with the property. I have no designs on putting a development there or anything."

But others did have designs. Jassen Johnson dreamed of transforming the livery stable into office space and condos. "SLU basically out-trumped me on it," he says, recalling the day two years ago when the university aced him out. According to one neighbor who asked not to be named in print, another prominent local developer had drawn up plans — on spec — to further the idea of a university theater district. It had as its centerpiece a renovated livery stable.

The building is one of a handful in the district that predate the automobile. Initially it served as a sort of prehistoric parking garage for the horses owned by residents who lived in the neighborhood's stately homes. When the dwellings gave way to auto row, the stable was renovated as a salesroom for the Salisbury Motor Company.

"It's a building that could certainly become yet another active and vital part of the Grand Center area," says Carolyn Toft, executive director of the Landmarks Association of St. Louis. On June 3 the nonprofit group placed the stable on a list of 2007's "Eleven Most Endangered Buildings." Toft says she can't fathom why the university would tear it down for parking, reeling off a litany of arguments against doing so: "There's public transit, [the new arena]'s right on bus lines, it's close to MetroLink, Saint Louis University has tons of garages, there's endless street parking. What is this?"

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