ST. LOUIS—As reported yesterday in GlobeSt.com, Dominium, a Minnesota-based development firm, has just launched a renovation of the century-old Arcade Building in downtown St. Louis and aims to transform it into a mixed-use space for university classes and 80 market rate and 202 affordable apartments.
Although the 18-floor, 500,000-square-foot building at 800 Olive St. sat vacant for years, Dominium officials remain quite confident that their project will help complete the revival of the neighborhood around the Old Post Office, which had been filled with vacant and underused buildings.
“This is our third affordable housing project in St. Louis,” Jeff Huggett, vice president and project partner for Dominium, tells GlobeSt.com, and these efforts illustrated the demand for this type of product. The company renovated the Leather Trades and Metropolitan Artist Lofts into 86 and 72 affordable rental units, respectively, “and both leased up in less than 30 days. The Arcade is the same, just on a somewhat larger scale.”
Dominium believes the Arcade's new affordable units, and the over 13,000-square-feet of artist studio space that the company plans to add, will attract artists and transform the downtown into a new creative hub. In the Twin Cities area, the firm also renovated Schmidt Artist Lofts and, as reported in GlobeSt.com, is currently transforming the former Pillsbury flour mill, once the world's largest, from an abandoned structure into 251 units of affordable rental housing, also tailored toward local artists.
“One of the things that drew us to the Arcade is the windows,” Huggett adds. “Usually, buildings from this era have lots of small windows,” making it difficult to attract renters. “But the Arcade has huge windows, just like you'd see in a modern apartment building.”
The bottom portion of the Arcade was one of the nation's first indoor shopping promenades. Webster University will lease the Arcade's first two floors and a 55,000-square-foot mezzanine for classes, a 170-seat auditorium, community kitchen and an art gallery. This will expand Webster's downtown campus from 33,000-square-feet to 85,000-square-feet, including its space in the renovated Old Post Office.
Dominium officials say that Webster will move in as early as December 2015. The developers will complete construction on the remaining space by January 2016. US Bank invested $77 million raised through its investments in federal New Markets Tax Credits, federal and state historic tax credits and federal low-income housing tax credits.
“This is probably one of the most beautiful buildings in the city's downtown,” Huggett says. And residents will not only have an affordable place to live, but spectacular views of the famous Arch and the Mississippi River. “We hope to have a large portion of the building leased before completion.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
