Yes. There was someone on the Skylineporn subreddit calling this “typical STL blight”, but this is a major fire that literally just happened. There was a big project planned for here that is having to pivot some, but sounds like it will still go ahead. It’s disappointing, but won’t look like this forever.
Mercy, but people will just fall all over themselves to take a big steamy #2 on our fair city. Don't let reality get in the way when unfounded sentiment will create the desired outcome.
Demolition by neglect really needs to get cracked down on; if your property is being neglected to get “free” demolition; it should be taken and used for public good. These buildings are a danger to public well being, and when fire risk makes insurance prohibitively expensive it becomes a lot of other people’s problems
Look I’m not saying that these particular buildings were going to have demolition by neglect happen to them (though; it is a lot cheaper to build from scratch than preserve the outer architecture, and having been inside one of them I know for a fact that the exterior was covering a husk beforehand ); just that these types of problems have happened all over the city repeatedly. The vess building north of the Edward jones dome and basically every building in the lot north of the lumiere casino for example to name a few
Oh, I’m not arguing that demolition by neglect isn’t common (and probably standard operating procedure) in St. Louis. I’m just saying that in this case the developer had already drawn up plans for using the buildings, and while not conclusive, it seems that they have lost time and money with the buildings burning down.
True that the developers said their plan was to repurpose them, but their failure to secure them makes me question how serious they were about the project.
From what I can tell, it’s a lot more difficult to secure large abandoned buildings than it might seem. I mean, there’s a single-family house in TGS that keeps getting boarded up and a single squatter keeps getting inside and causing other mayhem, driving the neighbors nuts. So without constant eyes on it, it must be damn near impossible to keep people out of a multi/building complex of this size. I mean, the city couldn’t keep people out of the railway exchange until they put up metal plates.
Yeah, that's fair. I mean, it was only a $1.2 billion project. I'm sure they considered having a security guard present on the premises, but just couldn't make the numbers work. /s
You would think. Trust me, there are many, many people super frustrated by how this all went down, and I’m sure there are people higher up on the pay scale than us asking these questions.
Because the govt could sell it for cheap to someone that wants to do something with the property rather than a rich asshole sitting on half the blighted properties in the city for decades, waiting for an area to turn around so they can make a profit and ironically keeping the area from turning around for that much longer.
I hear you but there aren’t enough taxes to repair these things. It’s a real problem and the only fix is a combination of philanthropy, business reinvestment and cooperation from the city.
Thousands of neglected properties across the city drive down property values and drive up insurance costs. That’s a detriment for people who live in the city because it destroys an ability to accumulate wealth and makes the cost to insure less wealth more expensive. This makes it harder to get people moving into the city
Having to put out fires and deal with collapsing buildings wastes resources that governments could be spending on other things. Do you think firefighting isn’t an expense? What about time spent on legislating building codes that could be spent on more productive things? That’s a cost that we wind up paying.
Thousands of abandoned buildings disincentivize places from having more productive use, and places without productive use wind up being breeding grounds for tons of social problems. If there is nothing to do in a given part of town many young people will inevitably wind up engaging in antisocial behavior. That behavior has costs that we all wind up paying.
People won’t want to go to a city that looks like it’s falling apart. Tourism benefits the city, and worse locations wind up costing the city reduced tourist revenue that could benefit the city
The damage that fires have on the local area is also bad; when industrial material burns the pollutants can be especially damaging to public health, which has medical costs in the long term.
If the city seizes control of the land it can direct what use the land has and use that for long term planning. Any city that wants to thrive has to have long term strategic thinking for use of its resources , people, land, industries, etc… Because the city has such large problems seizure of land makes more sense for drafting a long term strategic plan.
2 vacant buildings on my 1 way street burned down in south city. Also another 1 on the street behind me. I hope they catch the person/s whos setting them cause its getting to close for comfort. Also im wondering if they will come tear them down or will they be here and crumble and get worse.
This is from that massive fire a few weeks back right?
Yes. There was someone on the Skylineporn subreddit calling this “typical STL blight”, but this is a major fire that literally just happened. There was a big project planned for here that is having to pivot some, but sounds like it will still go ahead. It’s disappointing, but won’t look like this forever.
Mercy, but people will just fall all over themselves to take a big steamy #2 on our fair city. Don't let reality get in the way when unfounded sentiment will create the desired outcome.
Demolition by neglect really needs to get cracked down on; if your property is being neglected to get “free” demolition; it should be taken and used for public good. These buildings are a danger to public well being, and when fire risk makes insurance prohibitively expensive it becomes a lot of other people’s problems
The developers weren’t planning to demolish these buildings, though. They were going to repurpose them. So this is a setback, not a win.
Look I’m not saying that these particular buildings were going to have demolition by neglect happen to them (though; it is a lot cheaper to build from scratch than preserve the outer architecture, and having been inside one of them I know for a fact that the exterior was covering a husk beforehand ); just that these types of problems have happened all over the city repeatedly. The vess building north of the Edward jones dome and basically every building in the lot north of the lumiere casino for example to name a few
Oh, I’m not arguing that demolition by neglect isn’t common (and probably standard operating procedure) in St. Louis. I’m just saying that in this case the developer had already drawn up plans for using the buildings, and while not conclusive, it seems that they have lost time and money with the buildings burning down.
True that the developers said their plan was to repurpose them, but their failure to secure them makes me question how serious they were about the project.
From what I can tell, it’s a lot more difficult to secure large abandoned buildings than it might seem. I mean, there’s a single-family house in TGS that keeps getting boarded up and a single squatter keeps getting inside and causing other mayhem, driving the neighbors nuts. So without constant eyes on it, it must be damn near impossible to keep people out of a multi/building complex of this size. I mean, the city couldn’t keep people out of the railway exchange until they put up metal plates.
Yeah, that's fair. I mean, it was only a $1.2 billion project. I'm sure they considered having a security guard present on the premises, but just couldn't make the numbers work. /s
You would think. Trust me, there are many, many people super frustrated by how this all went down, and I’m sure there are people higher up on the pay scale than us asking these questions.
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Because the govt could sell it for cheap to someone that wants to do something with the property rather than a rich asshole sitting on half the blighted properties in the city for decades, waiting for an area to turn around so they can make a profit and ironically keeping the area from turning around for that much longer.
Because that's what taxes are for?
I hear you but there aren’t enough taxes to repair these things. It’s a real problem and the only fix is a combination of philanthropy, business reinvestment and cooperation from the city.
I mean I could think of a half dozen reasons:
Thousands of neglected properties across the city drive down property values and drive up insurance costs. That’s a detriment for people who live in the city because it destroys an ability to accumulate wealth and makes the cost to insure less wealth more expensive. This makes it harder to get people moving into the city
Having to put out fires and deal with collapsing buildings wastes resources that governments could be spending on other things. Do you think firefighting isn’t an expense? What about time spent on legislating building codes that could be spent on more productive things? That’s a cost that we wind up paying.
Thousands of abandoned buildings disincentivize places from having more productive use, and places without productive use wind up being breeding grounds for tons of social problems. If there is nothing to do in a given part of town many young people will inevitably wind up engaging in antisocial behavior. That behavior has costs that we all wind up paying.
People won’t want to go to a city that looks like it’s falling apart. Tourism benefits the city, and worse locations wind up costing the city reduced tourist revenue that could benefit the city
The damage that fires have on the local area is also bad; when industrial material burns the pollutants can be especially damaging to public health, which has medical costs in the long term.
If the city seizes control of the land it can direct what use the land has and use that for long term planning. Any city that wants to thrive has to have long term strategic thinking for use of its resources , people, land, industries, etc… Because the city has such large problems seizure of land makes more sense for drafting a long term strategic plan.
Bricks for sale !!
That made me laugh. Thank you.
Can’t believe the big bad corporate businesses are gentrifying the riverfront! This wouldn’t happen if we just expanded the metro link! /s
Can confirm.
2 vacant buildings on my 1 way street burned down in south city. Also another 1 on the street behind me. I hope they catch the person/s whos setting them cause its getting to close for comfort. Also im wondering if they will come tear them down or will they be here and crumble and get worse.
Unfortunately will look the same a year from now.
Bet?
You seem confident. Do you have any new information or updates? Or reasons to believe the project will deliver? I'm genuinely curious.
Construction on a new building starts q1 2026
I had heard that. It's warehouse? I was hoping you had some bigger news about other dates moving up or something.
Neat photo. There’s nearly no visible context to indicate the current era; this could almost be believed to have been taken 100 years ago.
(Other than graffiti, and I’m guessing utilities in a higher res version.)
LOL. Well played
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That's not where Artica is.
😕
Is this left over from the tornado?
No, big warehouse fire
Did somebody say free bricks?
Ha! you win the internets today!
St Louis is just IRL Revachol
TIL what Revachol is.