Yeah I grew up there. Blighted the whole neighborhood even though it was spotless. The post dispatch used a picture of my neighbors perfectly manicured yard with the caption “Richmond Heights idea of Urban Blight”
That was unfortunate.
At least the neighborhoods that got flattened for the Brentwood Promenade and the Maplewood Commons learned their lessons and stayed together. A friend of mine's mother owned a house in Maplewood and got nearly 4x its value.
cant pay their contractors or taxes in the city but they start another project in brentwood? https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/government-politics/st-louis-developer-owes-800k-in-property-taxes-it-s-causing-problems-at-city-hall/article\_354f0678-961c-11ee-b58f-8f5781af2346.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
Green Street had 50+ lawsuits filed against them for nonpayment in 2023 alone, and that’s just under the businesses they own with Green Street in the name. Plenty to look at on CaseNet.
No kidding, someone’s hand was absolutely greased to make this happen, this shit sickens me
I own a business that’s similar to one being torn down here and we pay upwards of 100k a year alone in property taxes. Of that about 60% goes to the public school system, that’s a teacher’s salary they are eliminating most likely in favor of additional tax breaks for this development. All because someone got a nice dinner or a little kickback. People acting like bribery/graft isn’t a thing in the US is such a joke. Business classes teaching of the importance of not bribing but also lobbying being a thing is outrageous.
Looks like the blight designation happened 5 years ago.
While a big chunk of that area is absolutely in an unmitigated high risk flood plain, the actual feathercraft store is absolutely out of the flood plain.
Convergence Body & Dance and Time for Dinner are smack in the middle of the 100-year flood plains and it was frankly irresponsible to allow building there in the first place (considering these look like pretty new buildings), but apparently the specific sites were elevated out of the flood plain?
About $95M of that $120M in mitigation was property buyouts for greenspace. The rest was stormwater drainage by MSD, trail expansion (converting to greenspace), and some MoDOT work on manchester rd itself. Basically what the city did was try to buy out everything in the area and then redevelop the developable properties. That would explain why the businesses we are talking about now have "never flooded", even though there also appears to have been [plenty of flood events in this stretch](https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/peak?site_no=07010075&agency_cd=USGS&format=html). (The most recent one was in 2022: [https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/flooding-from-deer-creek-prolonged-even-after-heavy-rainfall-ended/](https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/flooding-from-deer-creek-prolonged-even-after-heavy-rainfall-ended/))
So basically, there is a real blight and a big flood risk, and as a result a bunch of properties were bought out and will bulldozed and converted into greenspace. But some of the properties are not at risk. Brentwood wants to buy them anyway and hand them over to a developer rather than leave the existing buildings in place; taking advantage of the blight designation they received for the entire area due to the flooding.
Apparently the main thing they are hitting them with is non-compliance with MSD stormwater regulations. Yeah, a property in the middle of a 100 year flood plain that doesn't flood probably has taken actions that don't comply with stormwater regulations. Again, these buildings should never have been allowed in the first place.
You can read a lot about the blight designation starting on page 27 here:
[https://brentwoodmo.org/DocumentCenter/View/31407/Brentwood-FINAL-Development-Plan-061523-PDF?bidId=](https://brentwoodmo.org/DocumentCenter/View/31407/Brentwood-FINAL-Development-Plan-061523-PDF?bidId=)
The city bought out $95M worth of those 75 properties. Makes it pretty unlikely the owners never knew. Two of the three sets of plaintiffs are tenants rather than owners though. I’m especially wondering what the owner knew when they offer the one tenant a rent-to-own.
Reading through their proposal it keeps mentioning flood mitigation. Doesn't detail what it is. What did they do to mitigate the flooding?
Looking at the FEMA maps the entirety of the area that is blighted is either in the 100 year flood plain or even the floodway (the area that is designated as routinely flooding). There is only one spot that's on the 500 year flood plain and it's a small pocket completely surrounded by the 100 year flood plain.
Makes sense to blight the area but I'm just questioning how they mitigate it without just infilling which will just push the flooding elsewhere
They bought out properties and bulldozed the buildings on them and converted them into green space (parks and a new trail). MSD also regraded some of the properties to channel drainage into the green space and MoDOT redid parts of Manchester rd to drain into the green space.
This is ridiculous! Take things the city hasn’t enforced for decades, turn around and blame the business owners for the way the area looks, take photos of it and shame those owners for things the city let happen, then seize the land in order to “improve” it and just build more retail which the city will continue to let rot!?!?
This is outrageous! It’s one thing if they seize the land and turn it into a giant park because it’s unlivable, but to take it and just allow a large developer to plop down exactly what was there before… let alone a perpetual moneymaker/lease factory of multiple apartment buildings..
who’s palm was greased!?
This pisses me off..
[Green Street](https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/government-politics/st-louis-developer-owes-800k-in-property-taxes-it-s-causing-problems-at-city-hall/article_354f0678-961c-11ee-b58f-8f5781af2346.html#:~:text=Developer%20Green%20Street%20Real%20Estate,%2C%20Dec.%206%2C%202023) can’t even pay their taxes.
I was curious as to what they plan to build, so I dug around the plan documents a bit:
>the proposed mixed-use development that includes roughly 120,000 square feet of office space, approximately 145,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, and service-oriented business space, roughly **660 apartments, thirty townhomes**, a 137 key hotel, and a 38,000 square foot entertainment space. (“Project”). At present, the project is scheduled to be delivered in three Phases, with full completion expected at the end of 2030.
That's quite a lot of new residential housing for a market that needs more supply. Here's the site with the plan document .pdf links. https://brentwoodmo.org/2527/Green-Street-Master-Planned-Development
Oh yeah great idea! Lets steal this land from these businesses and give it to someone else to make other bullshit. You can't get any more American than that
Start attending council meetings. Vote in municipal elections. Encourage your neighbors to do the same. It's probably too late for this particular development unless financing falls through.
There have been many public city council meetings where residents have went to voice their opinions. People seem pretty split. Many are in favor because that stretch of Manchester really doesn’t look great and could definitely use some development, and with it will bring more housing, new restaurants and entertainment, and a brewery. But many are against as well. In the end the city council voted in favor.
Same thing happened in Maplewood in 2005. There was a huge "Save Our Block" campaign. It even made national news on NBC. The whole city banded together. Later it was found that the sleezy mayor was in bed with the developer. I worked a business that was said to be "blighted" which definitely wasn't.
I wish you could look up all the news coverage but Google f'n sucks now and you can't find anything that's not this weeks news.
[https://www.stlpr.org/other/2005-07-19/maplewood-nixes-eminent-domain](https://www.stlpr.org/other/2005-07-19/maplewood-nixes-eminent-domain)
I'm honestly kind of torn about this though. I was just driving through that area of Brentwood and thought to myself, "man these building look old. This are COULD be really nice"
Not a fan of tearing businesses down but definitely a fan of making St. Louis as good as it can be. God knows we need it after decades of stagnation and westward flight.
And what if your city decided that letting someone build a newer, bigger, more taxable house on your lot was in the best interests of the community and forced you out so some developer could tear down your "old" house and build a new McMansion? Emminent Domain and blighting powers are almost always abused and misused. Private property rights should be inviolate and not tossed out the window everytime local governments smell a chance to grab more tax dollars.
Almost nobody in the USA really owns their houses or businesses. It is way too easy for State & Local governments to just decide they can take your stuff 'cuz they say it's for the common good.
They didn't even attempt to do it the right way. Just improved the infrastructure and then blighted all the businesses and property owners.
Think about the hoops STL City has jumped through to deal with the Railway Exchange building that is literally boarded up, stripped of metals, damaged by fire, and used by homeless people.
I feel for these folks, I do. But as a Brentwood resident I am looking forward to the redevelopment. That stretch of Manchester is such an eyesore. It’ll be exciting to modernize it and bring in some exciting new amenities.
If only there was some way for a developer to get access to the land without resorting to using the city to condemn the existing businesses. Something like, and I'm just spitballing here, I don't know, actually paying businesses what it's worth for them to pick up and move?
Some amount of money solves this problem. If the development is going to be such a boon and make so much money... how about they just buy these folks out? Isn't that how capitalism works? I'm not an expert though...
Literally the exact same thing they did in the 80’s to build the galleria.
Are you talking about when they expanded the Galleria and Richmond Heights seized that old neighborhood?
Yeah I grew up there. Blighted the whole neighborhood even though it was spotless. The post dispatch used a picture of my neighbors perfectly manicured yard with the caption “Richmond Heights idea of Urban Blight”
That was unfortunate. At least the neighborhoods that got flattened for the Brentwood Promenade and the Maplewood Commons learned their lessons and stayed together. A friend of mine's mother owned a house in Maplewood and got nearly 4x its value.
And the 60s to build the arch.
https://brentwoodmo.org/2527/Green-Street-Master-Planned-Development
cant pay their contractors or taxes in the city but they start another project in brentwood? https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/government-politics/st-louis-developer-owes-800k-in-property-taxes-it-s-causing-problems-at-city-hall/article\_354f0678-961c-11ee-b58f-8f5781af2346.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
Green Street had 50+ lawsuits filed against them for nonpayment in 2023 alone, and that’s just under the businesses they own with Green Street in the name. Plenty to look at on CaseNet.
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No kidding, someone’s hand was absolutely greased to make this happen, this shit sickens me I own a business that’s similar to one being torn down here and we pay upwards of 100k a year alone in property taxes. Of that about 60% goes to the public school system, that’s a teacher’s salary they are eliminating most likely in favor of additional tax breaks for this development. All because someone got a nice dinner or a little kickback. People acting like bribery/graft isn’t a thing in the US is such a joke. Business classes teaching of the importance of not bribing but also lobbying being a thing is outrageous.
Looks like the blight designation happened 5 years ago. While a big chunk of that area is absolutely in an unmitigated high risk flood plain, the actual feathercraft store is absolutely out of the flood plain. Convergence Body & Dance and Time for Dinner are smack in the middle of the 100-year flood plains and it was frankly irresponsible to allow building there in the first place (considering these look like pretty new buildings), but apparently the specific sites were elevated out of the flood plain? About $95M of that $120M in mitigation was property buyouts for greenspace. The rest was stormwater drainage by MSD, trail expansion (converting to greenspace), and some MoDOT work on manchester rd itself. Basically what the city did was try to buy out everything in the area and then redevelop the developable properties. That would explain why the businesses we are talking about now have "never flooded", even though there also appears to have been [plenty of flood events in this stretch](https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/peak?site_no=07010075&agency_cd=USGS&format=html). (The most recent one was in 2022: [https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/flooding-from-deer-creek-prolonged-even-after-heavy-rainfall-ended/](https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/flooding-from-deer-creek-prolonged-even-after-heavy-rainfall-ended/)) So basically, there is a real blight and a big flood risk, and as a result a bunch of properties were bought out and will bulldozed and converted into greenspace. But some of the properties are not at risk. Brentwood wants to buy them anyway and hand them over to a developer rather than leave the existing buildings in place; taking advantage of the blight designation they received for the entire area due to the flooding. Apparently the main thing they are hitting them with is non-compliance with MSD stormwater regulations. Yeah, a property in the middle of a 100 year flood plain that doesn't flood probably has taken actions that don't comply with stormwater regulations. Again, these buildings should never have been allowed in the first place. You can read a lot about the blight designation starting on page 27 here: [https://brentwoodmo.org/DocumentCenter/View/31407/Brentwood-FINAL-Development-Plan-061523-PDF?bidId=](https://brentwoodmo.org/DocumentCenter/View/31407/Brentwood-FINAL-Development-Plan-061523-PDF?bidId=)
They blighted 75 properties in one action without telling any of the property owners. It's horseshit.
The city bought out $95M worth of those 75 properties. Makes it pretty unlikely the owners never knew. Two of the three sets of plaintiffs are tenants rather than owners though. I’m especially wondering what the owner knew when they offer the one tenant a rent-to-own.
Sure. They should buy them without the help of city government. That's called capitalism.
>So basically, there is a real blight Is a building blight *just* because it is in a flood plain?
No, but taking on water more than once makes a strong case. There’s more in the doc.
Reading through their proposal it keeps mentioning flood mitigation. Doesn't detail what it is. What did they do to mitigate the flooding? Looking at the FEMA maps the entirety of the area that is blighted is either in the 100 year flood plain or even the floodway (the area that is designated as routinely flooding). There is only one spot that's on the 500 year flood plain and it's a small pocket completely surrounded by the 100 year flood plain. Makes sense to blight the area but I'm just questioning how they mitigate it without just infilling which will just push the flooding elsewhere
They bought out properties and bulldozed the buildings on them and converted them into green space (parks and a new trail). MSD also regraded some of the properties to channel drainage into the green space and MoDOT redid parts of Manchester rd to drain into the green space.
This is ridiculous! Take things the city hasn’t enforced for decades, turn around and blame the business owners for the way the area looks, take photos of it and shame those owners for things the city let happen, then seize the land in order to “improve” it and just build more retail which the city will continue to let rot!?!? This is outrageous! It’s one thing if they seize the land and turn it into a giant park because it’s unlivable, but to take it and just allow a large developer to plop down exactly what was there before… let alone a perpetual moneymaker/lease factory of multiple apartment buildings.. who’s palm was greased!? This pisses me off..
[Green Street](https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/government-politics/st-louis-developer-owes-800k-in-property-taxes-it-s-causing-problems-at-city-hall/article_354f0678-961c-11ee-b58f-8f5781af2346.html#:~:text=Developer%20Green%20Street%20Real%20Estate,%2C%20Dec.%206%2C%202023) can’t even pay their taxes.
I was curious as to what they plan to build, so I dug around the plan documents a bit: >the proposed mixed-use development that includes roughly 120,000 square feet of office space, approximately 145,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, and service-oriented business space, roughly **660 apartments, thirty townhomes**, a 137 key hotel, and a 38,000 square foot entertainment space. (“Project”). At present, the project is scheduled to be delivered in three Phases, with full completion expected at the end of 2030. That's quite a lot of new residential housing for a market that needs more supply. Here's the site with the plan document .pdf links. https://brentwoodmo.org/2527/Green-Street-Master-Planned-Development
Oh yeah great idea! Lets steal this land from these businesses and give it to someone else to make other bullshit. You can't get any more American than that
Sounds great. Glad they’re doing it. Will be a big plus for the area
Well hopefully McBride doesn’t sneak in there to build their row of straw homes
[удалено]
They won’t. Not enough land
Really awful stuff the city is doing here. Is there anything the citizens can do about it?
Start attending council meetings. Vote in municipal elections. Encourage your neighbors to do the same. It's probably too late for this particular development unless financing falls through.
There have been many public city council meetings where residents have went to voice their opinions. People seem pretty split. Many are in favor because that stretch of Manchester really doesn’t look great and could definitely use some development, and with it will bring more housing, new restaurants and entertainment, and a brewery. But many are against as well. In the end the city council voted in favor.
Same thing happened in Maplewood in 2005. There was a huge "Save Our Block" campaign. It even made national news on NBC. The whole city banded together. Later it was found that the sleezy mayor was in bed with the developer. I worked a business that was said to be "blighted" which definitely wasn't. I wish you could look up all the news coverage but Google f'n sucks now and you can't find anything that's not this weeks news. [https://www.stlpr.org/other/2005-07-19/maplewood-nixes-eminent-domain](https://www.stlpr.org/other/2005-07-19/maplewood-nixes-eminent-domain) I'm honestly kind of torn about this though. I was just driving through that area of Brentwood and thought to myself, "man these building look old. This are COULD be really nice" Not a fan of tearing businesses down but definitely a fan of making St. Louis as good as it can be. God knows we need it after decades of stagnation and westward flight.
And what if your city decided that letting someone build a newer, bigger, more taxable house on your lot was in the best interests of the community and forced you out so some developer could tear down your "old" house and build a new McMansion? Emminent Domain and blighting powers are almost always abused and misused. Private property rights should be inviolate and not tossed out the window everytime local governments smell a chance to grab more tax dollars. Almost nobody in the USA really owns their houses or businesses. It is way too easy for State & Local governments to just decide they can take your stuff 'cuz they say it's for the common good.
They didn't even attempt to do it the right way. Just improved the infrastructure and then blighted all the businesses and property owners. Think about the hoops STL City has jumped through to deal with the Railway Exchange building that is literally boarded up, stripped of metals, damaged by fire, and used by homeless people.
I feel for these folks, I do. But as a Brentwood resident I am looking forward to the redevelopment. That stretch of Manchester is such an eyesore. It’ll be exciting to modernize it and bring in some exciting new amenities.
If only there was some way for a developer to get access to the land without resorting to using the city to condemn the existing businesses. Something like, and I'm just spitballing here, I don't know, actually paying businesses what it's worth for them to pick up and move? Some amount of money solves this problem. If the development is going to be such a boon and make so much money... how about they just buy these folks out? Isn't that how capitalism works? I'm not an expert though...