Interesting article from St Louis that touched on several points that I and others often talk about pertaining to development in Tulsa's core.
Investing (with zoning and or transit, infrastructure and "amenities" projects, educational/research projects, etc. ) in certain areas or corridors to encourage high quality urban, pedestrian/transit friendly development with the result that these areas then have a high enough concentration of high quality development to then create a snowball effect of energy and development radiating out from them. Success breeding success. (Our tendency is to "scattershot" projects over a wide area without much concentration and precious little synergy resulting)
Protecting old building stock which is now attractive to new development.
Urban living is becoming more and more attractive to more and more people. We are on the trailing edge of this trend having a city that still has most, by far, of it's area set up as car oriented zoning along with even a downtown that has NO pedestrian/transit friendly zoning!?
Exerts from the article- my bold
St. Louis and some inner suburbs lost population during the last decade, but countering that trend is the robust corridor that begins at the Arch and runs eight miles west.
Yet this is where St. Louisans fill offices, run companies, conduct medical research, visit museums, attend plays and concerts, dine, study, go to court, ride mass transit and launch startups. They live in grand old homes, vintage or modern high-rises, lofts and modest houses.
In short, it’s where St. Louis succeeds as a city. And it’s growing, led by a boom in life-science research and health care.
As elsewhere, St. Louis is benefiting from the changing perception that cities are good places to live.The 2010 census shows that the corridor’s population approached 60,000, an increase of more than 10 percent since 2000.
Sarah Coffin, associate professor of public policy studies at SLU, and other urban experts said the
corridor’s growing vitality will continue to attract new residents who prefer to walk more and drive less.“People’s tastes are changing about how they want to live and where they want to live,” Coffin said.
She and others said the presence of Ikea, which plans to open a store at Forest Park and Vandeventer avenues in 2015, will show that the corridor can lure a retail heavyweight.
“Ikea will change the tenor of the entire area,” Coffin said. “Before Ikea, (city officials) would say yes to any developer for almost anything. Now they can ask developers for streetscape improvements and other amenities. We used to be happy to have table scraps.” (Sound familiar?)
Zack Boyers, chief executive of St. Louis-based U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corp., said
the corridor’s future is bright because its anchor institutions are investing in themselves. A result is a “virtuous cycle” of more residents, workers, commercial activity and investment, he said.
PULL OF TRANSIT
Like many older U.S. cities, St. Louis developed along its streetcar lines. The streetcars are gone, but the MetroLink system traverses the east-west corridor with rail transit. The Central West End station, the system’s busiest, serves the BJC and Washington University School of Medicine complex, which is in the midst of a $1 billion construction spree.
The Partnership for Downtown St. Louis is pushing a plan to increase the area’s rail transit options with a streetcar line between downtown and the Central West End. Boyers, chairman of the partnership’s board, said the streetcar would be an important new connector.
“The idea of a streetcar and fixed rail is not only important transit but is also a signal to developers that this is where we’re going to focus,” he said.
Peter Pollock, an urban planner and fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, in Cambridge, Mass., said
the presence of mass transit encourages development in the St. Louis corridor.“As assets of access and transit and all these fantastic activities happen along this corridor, it’s no surprise that additional players would want to be in the corridor,” he said.
He pointed out that a similar corridor exists in Cleveland, where a nearly seven-mile bus rapid transit line on Euclid Avenue links downtown to University Circle, a hub of medical facilities and arts institutions. Cleveland officials have said that since the bus line began service in 2008, the formerly run-down Euclid corridor has experienced $3.3 billion in new construction and $2.5 billion in building rehabs.
CORE10 relocated from Clayton in 2010. Stephens said most of the firm’s clients saw it as merely a move from one side of Forest Park to the other, adding that the rejuvenated park is the linchpin that connects the city to points west.
He said the Central West End’s
“fantastic building stock” is a factor in the residential growth, enhanced by the stability of BJC and the St. Louis County government center in Clayton.
Webber, who spent 22 years at the University of Chicago before moving to St. Louis in 2008, said
the concentration of business, education and culture centers along St. Louis’ central spine forms the region’s identity and provides much of its employment.“For many of the major attractions, the last decade has been a time of strength,” he said. “If you compare St. Louis to other cities, they’re quite geographically disparate but they have the effect of driving demand. And the progress of the Cortex development in the past two years has been remarkable.”
‘TERRIFIC BUILDINGS’
Parts of the Central West End provide hard-to-top urban vibes, added Webber, who directs the university’s building projects.
“Walking down Euclid (Avenue) in the Central West End compares very favorably with the urban experiences of about anywhere in the country,” he said.
Successful cities do more than attract couples with kids, Webber added. They are magnets for young, creative, college-educated people who crave a wide variety of things to do.
“What core cities sell to residents and visitors is density — the opportunities and experiences of density,” he said. “Cities can’t compete with backyards and barbecues. What they can compete on is restaurants and music venues.”
And coffee.
Blueprint Coffee, recently opened in the Delmar Loop, draws the crowd that will pay several dollars for lattes and other hand-crafted coffee drinks.
Mazi Razani, 26, who formerly managed a coffee bar near Washington University and is now one of Blueprint’s owners, fits the demographic of young, college-educated businesspeople drawn to city living. He resides in the corridor neighborhood of Skinker-DeBaliviere and says he is a committed urbanist.
“I don’t know if I would have made it out in Chesterfield,” he said. “Seeing the high rises makes me feel like I’m in a city.”
Jeff Winzerling, co-developer of a
project to fit 50 apartments in a 1940s factory west of SLU,
In Grand Center, for example, the
Centene Center for Arts and Education was an early 20th-century showpiece for the Knights of Columbus. On Lindell Boulevard,
the Moolah Temple of the Mystic Shrine, built in 1912, is now a movie theater, a bowling alley and apartments.“What we’re seeing now is that the terrific buildings left behind are attractive to a new generation of development,” Winzerling said.
Underway now is a burst of new construction or building rehabilitation just south of the park and west of SLU.
Experts said that central corridor development is promoting overdue growth elsewhere, particularly south to the Botanical Heights and Shaw neighborhoods and through the Forest Park Southeast area to the Grove entertainment district.
“We’re finally creating a lot of opportunity in housing choices and job choices for people,” Coffin said.
“The idea of building off success instead of leaving it as an isolated instance is taking shape,” he said.
http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/anchors-and-transit-spur-growth-of-st-louis-corridor/article_f095688e-11b9-5819-9bc7-14292595c47a.html