STLrainbow

Here's a rendering of the apartment building in the Cortex District getting underway. The original plan was to also include an office building on the site.

After some more thought, I'm rescinding this as a Fill-In Friday post. The developer cleared the site of multiple commercial buildings quite awhile ago... so long ago I forgot about that. So I'm calling this Demo and Delayed Replace and not true infill.

Oh, wow, congrats and how nice to be a blue city in a blue state! I hope it works out well.

large grassy field with a construction trailer in the background. An office building and other buildings are also in the distance.

Some fill-in for your Friday. A building permit has been issued for an apartment building in the Cortex District. iirc about 170 units with 10% restricted to rents at 60% AMI or below. (The project is heavily subsidized with TIF.)

Baltimore has SOI now? I remember in @evarosen.bsky.social Voucher Promise it didn't at the time. (STL City had it but the state prohibited it after KC and others also started to enact SOI. I'm not sure how much difference tho due to lack of enforcement.)

Going on an apology tour.

More and more people are!

Between producing this guy and the other guy, we should unplug St. Louis area private schools until we figure out what's going on.

that's fantastic!

Not sure; but I think the STL region might show at least a bit better comparative results the past few years under the new Census Address FIle product than under the Building Permit Survey since there's been a lot of multi-fam deliveries, much of which was conversions.

going back even further, before the tornado, I remember @tonychiado.com and I were scratching our heads on Skinker-DeBaliviere losing population in the 2020 Census despite seeming high demand. Not quite sure I understand the market over there.

hmmm. I also looked at The Expo and it has about 80 units available. That seems like a lot esp. with the Hudson across the street offline. I think we need to get some researchers out there to figure out what's going on!

I'm very curious about the rental situation in that Skinker-D/DPlace/CWE area post-tornado... do we have any ballpark idea of how many multi-fam buildings/units are offline? I'd also think it would be hard to find places for rent like these. Or maybe the market wasn't affected too much?

This 3D model by the NYT of the proposed East Wing ballroom really makes clear how out of scale it is with the rest of the complex...

did you see that 25% vacancy rate for downtown mentioned in the article? The Cushman report also has Midtown at 19% vacancy.

The article imo also overplays NIMBYism and underplays demand factors in a slow growth region. We'd have more building if we had higher demand. And as far as STL City goes, it had a multi-fam boom that brought 1000s of units online since 2020. A slow down in this current climate is expected. 2/2

The data used in the article on permits issued for new construction is relevant info, but it doesn't provide an accurate picture of actual housing production. Here's a good backgrounder on the issue and how a new Census product can provide a better picture. 1/ www.niskanencenter.org/new-census-d...

FEMA says it won't pay to demolish a majority of tornado-damaged properties in St. Louis St. Louis sought permission for the federal agency to pay for demolishing vacant condemned properties, second homes and some commercial properties. The denial means St. Louis will have less money to s...

Disasters expose the fault lines that existed long before the storm. But federal recovery policy often treats those fault lines as invisible. When the rules say a building was already broken, the disaster disappears from the equation—and so does the funding to fix it.

www.stlpr.org/government-p...

Keep in mind when it comes to housing production, residential conversions like the church project aren't counted in the Census Building Permit data even though they are "new" apartments. That's significant for cities like STL City, where conversions account for a large share of housing production.

Some units in the church conversion are now listed. 1 bed/1 ba @ $1,500/month & 2 bed/1 ba @ $1,800/month. (iirc it's an 18-20 unit redevelopment; no tax abatement.)
www.zillow.com/b/4242-shaw-...

I can see golf cart traffic jams with folks taking these back to The Hill and Soulard etc.

🧐

Still very early in the year but it's really incredible how low homicide numbers are becoming in many large cities.

Through 3/1 it looks like NYC had 16, Philly 16, and D.C. 10.

Meanwhile, in Missouri, much smaller Kansas City MO had 20 and STL City had 14. (But both down a bit from 2025).

The background hum of children’s laughter.

Death toll from Iran school bombing reportedly rises to almost 150 Strike on girls’ elementary school in south of Iran has killed 148 people and injured 95 others, according to Iran state media

"They were girls who went to school to learn, with hopes and dreams for their future. Today, their lives were brutally cut short." -Malala

Sunday in Shaw

- Conversion of Mt. Olive Church to Apartments progressing (after a 🔥)
- Long, long vacant split-use brick baller on busy S. Grand under rehab (multi-fam permit issued)
- Framing going up on the Green House Venture Education Center
- Brick infill single-fam well underway.

More tiny homes for veterans to be built thanks to new donations A big donation will help build more tiny homes for veterans in the Metro in north St. Louis.

Nice segment on housing for vets with a cute caturday cameo.
(Channel 4 may or may not know what a dog looks like.)
www.firstalert4.com/2026/02/28/m...

51 children dead. Each one a universe.

Rev Wright was not wrong

The first deaths announced from the US-Israeli strikes on Iran: dozens of school girls. They hit an elementary school in Hormozgan.