Maybe housing shouldn't be priority in redeveloping downtown St. Louis.

While civic boosters call downtown St. Louis "the heart of the region," few residents of the metropolitan area view it that way. Instead, they see downtown as the place where sports teams play and where the Gateway Arch looms up as a symbol of the region. Despite its status as one of the most striking urban monuments in the world, the city that it signifies has a downtown that has long ceased to be a vibrant center.

Retailing has dispersed to suburban malls. The development of the St. Louis Centre shopping mall in the 1980s obliterated many street-level business locations that had contributed to the unique character of downtown. St. Louis Centre's trajectory-early success, now failing - shows how hard it is for a traditional mall in the downtown to compete with the suburbs. The St. Louis Galleria has free parking, more stores than St. Louis Centre, and is strategically located at the junction of two interstate highways. It's near the county seat and very near the areas of highest median income and highest property values in the metropolitan St. Louis area. The one kind of retailing succeeding in downtown is Union Station, a festival mall that brings activities indoors, off the streets.

Although St. Louis's city hall is located downtown, the local government center serving the largest part of the metropolitan population, St. Louis County, is six miles west in Clayton, integrated into a major satellite business district. Corporate headquarters have been marching steadily west along highway 40, forming a corridor with two anchors, Clayton on the east and Chesterfield on the west. Cultural institutions are essential to St. Louis's vitality, but except for the shuttered Kiel Opera House, whose renovation is curiously opposed by civic leaders, the major ones are not located in the downtown either, with the science, history and art museums located in and near Forest Park. St. Louis University and the Grand Center are closer, but not within walking distance.

In many cities a major campus or two contribute to downtown street life, but in St. Louis even the two public urban universities are miles away.

If downtown St. Louis is going to experience a renaissance, an urban culture will have to be created out of whole cloth, without the supporting cluster of institutions that, in many cities, nurture a lively street life and cultural milieu.

The task is daunting because the infrastructure of St. Louis' downtown is not ideal for a revived urban culture. Downtown St. Louis is dominated by stadiums, office towers and indoor shopping malls which turn away from the street, creating a magnificent skyline view for passing motorists and airline passengers, but providing little stimulation to the pedestrian on a downtown sidewalk. According to Roberta Gratz and Norman Mintz, St. Louis is a city "where so much of the one-time urban fabric is gone ... a city that believes real progress is defined by demolishing old and building new, St. Louis continues to let much of what is left of its notable older commercial buildings crumble away." They add, in St. Louis, "A corporate center exists, for sure, rebuilt, clean and dull. Business districts, like downtown St. Louis, lack a steady flow of people on the street to give them life."

Most downtown evening activity occurs in isolated nodes, inside the Union Station shopping center, the America's Center complex, the Kiel Center, Busch Stadium and the Trans World Dome. These large facilities are connected to each other and to outlying park ride lots by MetroLink. However, all of these facilities, like the Gateway Arch, have separate parking, are near interstate highway ramps and provide little incentive for walking downtown. The little late-night activity that there is in downtown St. Louis occurs in the club district along Washington Avenue and in Laclede's Landing.

Some intersections downtown do not have crosswalk signals, and the walk from the Arch grounds or Laclede's Landing to the downtown core is especially treacherous because of I-70 and its access ramps which separate the riverfront area from the downtown core. Many other downtown streets, particularly Market street, Olive street and Tucker Blvd., are too wide to encourage street life. Because pedestrian traffic is so light, businesses outside the major nodes cannot stay open after 6 p.m., so that after dark the downtown has the desolate and ominous feel of a noir movie.

It is commonly thought that the only way to turn this situation around is to bring housing to downtown. The St. Louis 2004 organization has placed high on its list for downtown revitalization plans "developing 2,004 units of market-rate housing and resident amenities." Likewise, the major goal of downtown St. Louis redevelopment planners since 1993 has been to "expand significantly the amount of housing in and adjacent to downtown." Living downtown is being actively promoted by the Downtown Now! team, a group of consultants hired by the St. Louis Development Corporation. The strategy of Downtown Now!, sometimes called the Mayor's Downtown Development Action Plan, focuses on a market-driven program to make downtown St. Louis "a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week urban center, a sustainable community where people live, work, shop and enjoy a full range of recreational activities in a safe, pedestrian-friendly environment."

The idea that housing may drive the revival of the downtown has some plausibility. In 1998, the Brookings Institution reported "a population boom happening in many downtowns across the country," ranging from projected downtown population increases of one percent for Los Angeles to over 300 percent in Houston between 1998 and 2010. Comparisons among cities using the Brookings' figures are hazardous because they were not based on a standardized definition of downtown; each city was free to use its own. This does not undermine the basic point, however - housing seems to be coming back into downtown areas, and it may be an essential ingredient in reviving the urban core for some cities.

And there is, in principle, a market in St. Louis. Living downtown is convenient for people who work downtown. Former warehouses remade into loft apartments in downtown St. Louis provide a more stimulating living environment than conventional apartments. The unique forms and vast expanses of natural light made possible by the spaces inside historical warehouses such as those along Washington Avenue in St. Louis are attractive to artists. Because artists are considered an avant-garde group, often the areas where artists settle become attractive to young professionals because they are interesting, exciting districts of intense activity.

Current housing in downtown

To determine how many people now live in downtown St. Louis, it is, of course, necessary to define just what amounts to the downtown. The Downtown Now! planning team in 1997 defined downtown St. Louis as "bounded by Cass Avenue, Chouteau Avenue, the Mississippi River and Jefferson Avenue." These boundaries form a rectangle of about four square miles. Using these boundaries, Downtown Now! found that 8,226 people were living in downtown. The 1998 Brookings Institution report used almost identical boundaries, but came up with a somewhat lower figure of 7,860. Brookings also projected that the downtown population by 2010 would rise to 10,360.

The citywide neighborhoods' planning map was developed in 1989 by the St. Louis Community Development Agency (CDA). CDA defines Downtown, or the Central Business District, as the area west of the Mississippi River, north of Chouteau Avenue, east of Tucker Boulevard and south of Cole St., Interstate 70 and Carr Street. The CDA's definition of downtown also includes the Downtown West neighborhood, which is the area south of Cole Street, west of Tucker Blvd., east of Jefferson Ave. and north of Chouteau Ave. This is a far more defensible definition of downtown than the more expansive one employed by Downtown Now! and by Brookings. Carr square, Columbus square and Old North St Louis, all north of the America's Center but south of Carr Street, are spatially, socially and economically isolated from the downtown core. They consist primarily of historical two- and four-family residential buildings, public housing complexes and market-rate, low-rise apartment complexes. They are mostly African-American, and mostly low-income. Cole Street forms a formidable barrier in that sense.

As of the 1990 census, 3,687 people lived in the CBD and Downtown West, as defined by the CDA. This is less than one percent of the 1990 population of the City of St. Louis (396,685), and about one-tenth of one percent of the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) 1990 population of 2,492,525.

Most of these residents were single and childless. Ordinarily, such as profile in a downtown would lead to the guess that they were Yuppies, but not so in St. Louis. Median incomes were substantially lower than the metropolitan average, indicating that downtown St. Louis was not a prestigious address. The population was also older than the average; the 55-to 64-age range dominated, particularly west of Tucker where there were several age 50-plus apartment buildings. Seventy-one percent of downtown residents east of Tucker and 93.5 percent west of Tucker lived in buildings of 50 residential units or more. There were fewer than 10 owner-occupied houses in both neighborhoods.

The problems

St. Louis faces a classic chicken-or-egg dilemma if it wants to use housing as a strategy for downtown development. Downtown St. Louis's core area suffers from a lack of the retail services and amenities needed to attract and retain residents. How do you entice people to live downtown in the absence of services and amenities? How do you attract service businesses and build amenities without a resident population to use them?

To be successful, downtown residential developments need retailers willing to serve them. The current residents of the Loft District "are just very strong people," according to Tim Tucker, a downtown St. Louis property developer. They are willing to endure the lack of convenient services in return for reasonably priced housing which is in "a location unique in the St. Louis metropolitan area."

According to Blake Brokaw, a Washington Avenue Loft District club owner quoted in the Riverfront Times, "We call ourselves a loft district, but there's not that many lofts. Unless you're an artist or want to drive to the ghetto Schnucks, why would you come downtown to live? There's no shopping, very little place to park, no laundromat, nothing like that. We need to make it more of a neighborhood. Make it a little more livable." The 1994 Development Strategies downtown worker survey mentioned that "a convenient supermarket must be developed in or very near downtown in order to assure the success of future (and, perhaps, present) downtown housing developments."

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in 1998 that "John Coines has shuttered his Upper Crust restaurant [in the Central West End] ... He plans to reopen as an outdoor cafe and 'semi-organic food' market at 16th and Washington in the loft district 'as soon as the plumbers are finished,' sometime in early '99." This is the type of retail establishment that will be important to downtown housing. If businesses other than lunchtime-only restaurants and nightclubs do not open downtown, it will be impossible to attract any significant residential population to downtown St. Louis. Although a dozen or so clubs are located on the Washington Avenue and Locust Street corridor, there are only a few restaurants, Erlich's dry cleaners, Amitin's Books, Levine Hat, the Mossa Center furniture and gifts, several clothing and shoe stores, the Elephant Walk African gift shop and a beauty salon. There is retail on Washington Avenue, but it is not clear whether it is the remainder of a once-vital district, or the beginning of a revitalized district. It is unlikely the retail district on Washington Avenue will develop rapidly enough to support a significant influx of resident population.

John Boul, of the St. Louis Mayor's Office, has expressed the view that housing will not be built downtown as a result of market processes alone. "I don't know of a formula or mechanism for starting businesses in an area where the owner doesn't think they'll survive ... Once we see the convention hotel completed, things around the [old] post office coming around, it will attract those ancillary businesses. I don't see any way that they could grow but naturally. As the residential base grows, so will the amenities." Indeed, this assumption underlies all the recent studies supporting a housing strategy for revival.

The studies

Three major studies were completed regarding downtown St. Louis housing during the mid-1990s. These included a 1994 survey of downtown workers by Development Strategies, a February 1998 market potential study based on census data and Internal Revenue Service mobility data supplied by Zimmerman/Volk Associates, and a July 1998 phase-two market potential study by ZHA, Inc.

The 1994 survey by Development Strategies was conducted on behalf of Downtown St. Louis, Inc. (which has now given way to Downtown Now!). It indicated a market of "at least 8.0 percent of the 92,000 downtown employees ... interested in living downtown, or about 7,360 people. This is a substantial number on which to base a further planning and financing program." that survey, an area north of Union Station and just west of Plaza square was the most preferred location for living downtown. Interestingly, this is the area that was residential until the urban renewal era. The study was vague on the precise mix of public effort and private financing that might be necessary.

A February 1998 study by Zimmerman/Volk Associates suggested four target areas for housing development downtown: the Laclede's Landing/Riverside North area, Washington Ave. Loft District, Cupples Station and the area around the Eugene Field House south of Busch Stadium. This study, based on mobility data for a draw area composed of St. Louis City and County, Jefferson County, St. Charles County in Missouri and St. Clair County in Illinois, determined that "approximately 9,300 of the [530,000] qualified draw area households represent the potential market for new housing units" in downtown St. Louis. Of those draw area households, "approximately 4,200 comprise the pool of potential renters/purchasers of new housing units at the proposed Laclede's Landing [and Riverside North] neighborhood; nearly 2,000 for rental and for-sale lofts and apartments in the Washington Ave. Loft District; 1,900, the potential market for rental apartments at Cupples Station; and more than 6,300 households for various housing types at the Eugene Field House neighborhood." In total, then, 14,400 "draw area" households were identified. Downtown would have to entice an extraordinary proportion of them to move to make a downtown housing strategy work.

A study conducted in July 1998 by ZHA, Inc. delved deeper into the potential Zimmerman/Volk claims about the market. ZHA concluded, "None of the downtown market-rate housing development projects evaluated are feasible without public and/or private subsidies and incentives." Of those subsidies, "only the Historic Preservation Tax Credits appear to offer returns that meet the feasibility requirements for all projects eligible for the incentive, but few projects are eligible for this incentive." Thus ZHA determined bundling various types of incentives would be necessary for downtown housing developments to be feasible, and that a clearinghouse organization should be established to coordinate such funding plan.

On Laclede's Landing and Riverside North, a variety of "incentive bundles" could be used depending "in which specific area the cohesive Laclede's Landing neighborhood should be developed." In the Washington Avenue Loft District, "currently available Historic Preservation Tax Credits alone can dramatically improve the projected feasibility for the adaptive rouse rental and for-sale loft development projects." New construction in the Loft District, though, would need "tax abatement, patient equity and zero-interest construction loans." Cupples Station adaptive reuse, too, "appear[s] to achieve feasibility through the use of Historic Preservation Tax Credits alone," although other incentives may be necessary there.

ZHA recommended that the Eugene Field House area "should be strongly considered for residential development only after the downtown housing market has matured." Since "market conditions do not currently support residential development in this area without extraordinary incentives," ZHA recommended the Eugene Field House area development be held back "until such time as reasonable incentives can produce sufficient housing development." ZHA effectively eliminated from consideration the market of 6,300 households proposed by Zimmerman/Volk, taking the estimated potential for downtown St. Louis housing, in three concentrated districts, to be 3,000 new households.

Downtown Now! planners insist the downtown action plan must be market-driven. According to Downtown Now!, the first phase of new downtown residents will be risk-tolerant households, primarily SINKs (single income no kids) and DINKs (double income no kids), mostly in their 20s and 30s, interested in the urban lifestyle and employed in professional occupations. Artists will continue to be part of the Loft District population, although some may choose to move farther west along the Washington and Locust corridors, to cheaper studio spaces in smaller industrial buildings. Some 50-plus empty-nesters will probably be attracted too, since many already live downtown.

The Downtown Now! public workshops revealed an overall downtown plan focused on five districts: Laclede's Landing, Riverside North, the Washington Ave. Loft District, the Old Post Office square or CBD Core and the Gateway Mall. At the July 1998 public workshop, a total of 3,386 housing units was proposed for these focus areas downtown:

* 100 loft apartments and 144 new apartments on Laclede's Landing;

* 480 new apartments, 150 new condominiums and 190 new townhouses on Riverside North;

* 700 rental lofts, 300 for-sale lofts, 200 new apartments, and 100 new condominiums in the Washington Avenue Loft District;

* 390 lolls and 560 new apartments (in phase II of the downtown plan) for the Old Post Office square/CBD Core; and

* 72 luxury high-rise condominiums overlooking the Gateway Mall.

Most of these 1,742 housing units would be constructed in phase I of the plan, over a five-year period from 1999 to 2004.

The Downtown Now! plan would substantially speed up the current pace of housing construction downtown. According to a Post inventory of September 1998, 377 apartment units were being constructed downtown, plus an unknown number in a renovated Cupples Station and some extended-stay hotel rooms. These included the Mark Twain Hotel at 9th and Pine Streets, which was renovating space for 238 low-cost, single rooms for extended stays; the renovation of the Marquette Building at 314 N. Broadway at Olive, for 130 apartments and 10 penthouse apartments, the renovation of the Edison Brothers warehouse at 400 South 14th Street for 80 condominiums and some hotel suites.

Apartment renovations were also being undertaken by McCormack and Baron at Cupples Station and 9th and Spruce Streets. Along the Washington Avenue corridor, several developments were in various stages of work, including the Sporting News building (originally the Emerson Electric Co. factory) at 2018 Washington Avenue, which would have 84 rental lofts, the Merchandise Mart Annex at 10th Street south of Washington Avenue, with 34 rental lofts, a renovation of 1627 Washington Ave., which would produce 16 rental lofts for graduates of Washington University's fine arts programs and 10 other rental lofts, and a renovation of 1224 Washington Avenue, to have 13 rental lofts. These projects are important test cases for the market for housing in downtown St. Louis; they do show that there is interest in development, at least during a period of nationwide economic prosperity.

It seems unlikely that the market alone will bring much housing into downtown St. Louis. Even public financing is not likely to turn the corner. Although it is hard to get specific financial figures, it appears the cost of "gap financing" necessary for enticing developers may be too high to be practical. Gap financing may not result in substantial ultimate local economic benefit (i.e., increased retail sales downtown), because housing downtown is unlikely to attract enough residents. The economic benefit and general feasibility studies for housing downtown have yet to be completed by the various consultants charged with that task. The numerical data are very weak supporting downtown housing development. The Zimmerman/Volk study from February 1998 uses mobility data for metropolitan St. Louis to infer that people would be willing to move to downtown St. Louis. The United States is a highly mobile culture. The fact that people in the St. Louis metropolitan area move frequently is not surprising. It is a non sequitur to claim a particular level of mobility means downtown St. Louis can attract certain percentages of that mobile market. Yet that appears to be a key part of the Z/V "proprietary target market methodology."

Downtown housing does not even benefit from a coordinated marketing campaign. The St. Louis Development Corporation and the CDA cannot take on the task because they do not have a source of local funds, and they are not allowed to engage in marketing with federal dollars. Instead, a private foundation is being established. called the City Living Foundation, but it is unclear how much this organization will engage in promoting downtown housing. The Downtown St. Louis Partnership, which promotes the general idea of having people live downtown, does not actively engage in marketing campaigns. Metropolis St. Louis, a group that promotes young people living in the city, has sponsored tours of different downtown living options. The St. Louis Core newspaper is an unabashed promoter of living, working and playing in downtown St. Louis. Without more coordinated and better-funded efforts, however, it is hard to see how marketing will reach much of the population targeted by Downtown Now!

Downtown housing may not be as important as strengthening residential neighborhoods in the one to two mile-wide band surrounding the downtown, areas in which there already is or could be some degree of retail and service base. Several of these organizations already have active resident organizations. Lafayette square, LaSalle Park and Soulard have been successfully restored, rehabilitated and considerably gentrified. Peripheral areas of those neighborhoods, like the Gate District and the Darst-Webbe redevelopment area, are being strengthened with new construction and rehabilitation. The St. Louis Place, Old North St. Louis and JeffVanderLou areas should be considered for new developments. Downtown St. Louis and its surrounding neighborhoods need each other. According to Chris Dornfeld, architect, "Without downtown the neighborhoods become just an older version of [suburban] Chesterfield." Although this may be an exaggeration, it is clear that a stronger downtown St. Louis can help adjacent neighborhoods attract residents.

Rethinking the housing strategy

Housing cannot be the leading strategy for the revival of downtown St. Louis. A large amount of housing is not absolutely essential to the revival of downtown St. Louis. In all but a few U.S. cities, the turnaround of downtown occured when it was made hospitable to tourists and suburban commuters. This was done in two ways. Big investments were made in such big-ticket items as convention centers, sports stadiums, festival malls and renovated waterfronts. Cities also subsidized historic districts, entertainment districts, and cultural districts. Parks, museums, and performance halls constitute the current wave of investment. All these components are necessary to create the elements making up an urban culture than defines the central cities as different from the suburbs, or from anywhere else, for that matter.

It is also essential to create the "connective tissues" - vest-pocket parks, safe pedestrian crossings, street furniture, wide sidewalks, and cleaner streets - that tie the separate pieces together. Where the spaces for urban culture have been knit together, tourists and suburbanites flock into the cities to experience an urban culture as exotica. In St. Louis, as in many other places, downtown housing will follow, not lead, the urban renaissance.

Joe Frank is a graduate student at the University of Missouri St. Louis

Dennis Judd is professor of political science at University of Missouri St. Louis