Private developer to build student housing near SLU
By tbryant@post-dispatch.com">Tim Bryant
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Friday, Jan. 02 2009
Where the thirsty college crowd once sustained Laclede Avenue's thriving bar row, St. Louis University is adding student housing managed by a private developer.
Campus Apartments, a Philadelphia company that specializes in student housing, will erect the complex and market it to SLU students. A company official said the university's growing enrollment should ensure the project's success.
A couple of bars remain on that stretch of Laclede near the university, but the area has withered as a night-time destination for students. Campus Apartments plans to buy Laclede Street Bar & Grill, 3818 Laclede, and several adjoining properties, including the SLU parking lot at Laclede and Vandeventer avenues. Humphrey's, a mainstay at Laclede and Spring Avenue since 1976, is outside the new project's footprint.
The company plans to build a four-story, 135-unit building for about 500 students. It hopes to complete the $38 million project by September 2010.
Warren Burke, Campus Apartments' vice president for development, said SLU's surging enrollment — over 12,000 this year — means the company should have no difficulty filling the project's one- and two-bedroom suites. He told the city's Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority at its meeting last month that the company hopes to have city approval in January of 10-year tax abatement and a mixed-use rezoning so that construction may begin.
The complex will be on the south side of Laclede between Vandeventer and the
former Fifth House bar location, which is boarded shut. Behind the new building
but accessible from Laclede will be a 400-car garage. Campus Apartments plans
to transfer the entire project's site to SLU, then take it back through a long-term ground lease. Details are still being negotiated.
The Laclede project is not the first for Campus Apartments in Missouri. Its two
complexes in Columbia are aimed at University of Missouri students. SLU's vice president of development, Kent Porterfield, said the company's plan
to open the Laclede project in 18 months represents "a pretty aggressive"
schedule. Opening by the start of fall classes in 2011 might be more likely, he
said. But he said discussions begun with company representatives this fall were
going well.
"We certainly have been talking with them and we have strong housing demand
right now," Porterfield said. Adding to the demand is SLU's requirement that beginning this fall, freshmen live on campus or in university-approved housing. In 2010, freshmen and sophomores must live in such housing. Porterfield said the requirements could
produce the need for 200 more beds, adding that existing campus housing a "is at 99 percent occupancy." "That's a good problem but it does have its challenges," he said.
In addition to LCRA, Campus Apartments has been working Central West End
Midtown Development to support the project. The organization gave its
preliminary approval in December but asked the developer to add "green" building components to the project. Dan Krasnoff, CWEMD's executive director, said the company's plan to include retail space fits his group's goal to make the area pedestrian friendly. "We want a neighborhood where people are able to walk and get their services
within a few blocks of their homes," he said.
Still, Campus Apartments' project will obliterate much of the former bar row. Humphrey's will remain but gone will be the buildings that housed the Billiken Bench Club, Pastori's and Laclede Street Bar & Grill, which opened in the 1970s as Caleco's. Much altered by a succession of owners, the Laclede Street Bar building went up in 1894. Efforts to reach the bar's owners were unsuccessful.
Laclede Street Bar & Grill, however, might re-emerge. Burke said it could reappear in the new building's retail area facing Vandeventer. Relocation was under discussion but no deal had been reached, he said. A couple of regulars said the move would be OK if the bar retains its enjoyable happy hour and weekend karaoke. Sophia Lawrence, 24, who often stops by after work downtown, advised against big modifications. "If they change the name, the place wouldn't be the same," she said. A co-worker, Matt Metz, 27, said he understands the owners must do what is best for the business. "I love the bar but they've got to do what they've got to do," he said.
D2 assisted this project through completion of a cost benefit analysis provided to public entity participants
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