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Magnetic Metrolink
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The light
rail system is attracting new investment that is reviving once faded
neighborhoods while adding value to already healthy ones.
By Peter Downs
As quietly as cars glide along its rails, MetroLink is changing
the face of metropolitan St. Louis. From the University of Missouri–St.
Louis (UMSL) in the west to Southwestern Illinois College in the
east, the light rail system is attracting new investment that is
reviving once faded neighborhoods while adding value to already
healthy ones.
UMSL, which got its first development plan after MetroLink opened,
is gearing its expansion around three MetroLink stations: the two
that are on campus and the North Hanley Road station, which abuts
the campus. The university made the stations the foci of its property
acquisitions. It put new student apartments near one station. The
performing arts center is under construction adjacent to the North
Campus stop. And, says university spokesman Bob Samples, university
administrators are in “very serious discussions” with representatives
of the Bi-State Development Agency about jointly developing a hotel
and conference center at the North Hanley station.
The university was going to expand and thrive with or without MetroLink,
though not necessarily in the same way. Further east in St. Louis
County, however, another MetroLink station has become the catalyst
for the redevelopment of an impoverished older suburb and its abandoned
industrial complex. Reinvestment activities already completed or
begun near the Wellston station exceed $35 million.
An advisory panel of the Urban Land Institute reported in 1995 that
the Wellston station “offers St. Louis an opportunity to recover
an important regional asset: a close-in location for industry.”
That report galvanized the state and St. Louis County governments
to commit resources to update the area’s antiquated infrastructure.
These included $10.6 million for the reconstruction and the extension
of several streets in the area, and $2.5 million to connect houses
and housing sites to the sanitary sewer system.
Sewer mains ran under the streets, but according to Jackie Thompson,
vice president of real estate and community development for the
St. Louis County Economic Council, the homes never had been hooked
up to sewers.
Since then, Moog Automotive invested $6 million in a corporate campus
in the area, and Inter-Global invested $1.2 million to establish
a lighting products assembly plant there.
A small business incubator soon will join a variety of job training
programs in the initial $12 million building in a portion of the
old Wagner Electric complex next to the station. That building is
the anchor of the 15-acre Cornerstone Industrial Park, where site
remediation and clearing is almost complete. Next to that, the county
has begun assembling land for another industrial park, the 25-acre
Wellston Industrial Park.
“With MetroLink providing access to job seekers, we think these
are attractive sites for businesses needing entry level workers,”
Thompson says.
Other investments spurred by MetroLink, she says, are the construction
of a 16,000-square-foot developmental child care facility and the
construction of 62 detached single-family houses, with plans by
four developers for the construction of another 120 houses. All
of that housing together represents an investment of another $9
million in the area.
Living near a light rail station is attractive in other areas, too.
Daniel Feinberg, real estate broker, Feinberg Associates, says the
light rail stations at Delmar and at DeBalivere have increased property
values in the renovated housing in those areas. He has seen prices
for three bedroom townhouses jump nearly $100,000 in just a couple
of years. He admits it is hard to say how much of that is due to
MetroLink, but adds that the light rail “is a good sales tool for
the areas...we know that people buy there for a reason.”
New housing may be the major type of development along the St. Clair
alignment that is to open in the spring. McCormack Baron & Associates
is developing 170 new rental units by the Emerson Park station in
East St. Louis, and another developer is adding single-family homes
to the mix.
“Having taken the developer out to see Emerson Park, we are at least
partially responsible for that [development],” says John Roach,
a real estate consultant for Bi-State. The agency is marketing development
opportunities around light rail stops fairly aggressively. In addition
to site visits, it produced a 93-page book in 1999 called “MetroLink
Communities,” which details neighborhood characteristics and redevelopment
opportunities around each station.
Another housing development is under construction in Swansea, Ill.
next to the Memorial Hospital station. Called Carrington Place,
it is a 51-acre gated community centered on a six-acre lake and
9,400-square-foot clubhouse. The 91 building sites will accept either
attached garden homes, starting at $230,000; or detached single
family homes, starting at $350,000. Ron Randle, developer, R&R Development,
says the MetroLink station adds value to the project as part of
the ‘no hassle’ lifestyle he is selling. “People can go to work
at Barnes Hospital or downtown without hassling with traffic or
parking,” he says.
Belleville leaders also look for new residential development keyed
by the Scheel Street station to spark the redevelopment of a deteriorating
neighborhood near downtown Belleville. Bi-State is helping Belleville
with the land acquisition, Roach says, and the city recently picked
a developer for the area.
Roach says a residential development by McBride and the Jones Company
near the Southwestern Illinois College station also is a product
of MetroLink, “since the developer came to us and we cooperated
in the purchase of the land.”
Meanwhile, commercial developers are beginning to take advantage
of MetroLink as well. According to Richard Baron, president of McCormack
Baron & Associates, the developer of the Cupples Station renovation,
the MetroLink stop there was pivotal to the decision by Starwood
Hotels and Resorts to locate a Westin Hotel downtown. They consider
their direct connection of MetroLink to Lambert–St. Louis International
Airport gives them a competitive advantage over other downtown hotels,
he says.
And The Pageant music club near the Delmar Station, which often
is called an attempt to expand the vitality of University City’s
Loop District eastward, is just as much an attempt to connect MetroLink
to the Loop. Developer Joe Edwards recognized that MetroLink has
the potential to greatly expand the number of customers coming into
the Loop, except, as the Urban Land Institute noted, that there
was a perception that the couple of blocks between the light rail
station and the Loop were unsafe. The Pageant and other new retail
can transform that perception, and by connecting the MetroLink stop
to the Loop, open a new door for business in the Loop.
Other new construction, such as the convention center hotel and
new research laboratories at Washington University Medical Center
would have happened anyway, but also make use of their nearby MetroLink
stations. Yet more projects are in the planning stages in towns
such as Washington Park.
Like transit agencies elsewhere in the country, Bi-State is actively
promoting such “transit-oriented development,” because it benefits
Bi-State as much as the cities where the development creates. Turning
transit stations into destinations, for home, work, or play, yields
the transit system a larger base of riders and ticket revenues.
Peter Downs is a free-lance writer and editor of Construction
News & Review. |
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