[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

What's weird though is that, despite being 36 years old now, it's still one of the youngest office towers in downtown st. Louis.

And when it became vacant 10 years ago, it was only 26 years old; it wasn't some decrepit century-old dinosaur that needed $100M+ to modernize ancient building systems.

It hasn't quite been 10 years just yet. AT&T fully vacated the building in 2017, but it has sat completely empty since. You're also right about its age. One Metropolitan Square was completed shortly after 909 Chestnut, and it's still sitting at about 92% full a few blocks away. It's the tallest skyscraper in the city, although only the third largest office building in terms of square footage.

Honestly, the only new construction class A office space that downtown has produced in 20+ years was the PwC Pennant Building completed in 2019 next to Busch Stadium and Ballpark Village, and it's only 11 stories.

Just about all of st. louis' significant urban office buildings constructed over the past three decades have been built out in Clayton.

I often wonder about how much healthier downtown st. Louis might be today if downtown Clayton had never become a thing.

my guess is that this building would've almost certainly not sat vacant for so long if there was no Clayton.

In terms of skyscrapers and highrises, yes, Clayton has stolen the city's thunder in terms of office space construction. St. Louis is still seeing office infill though, the trouble is that there's still more options than just downtown. A lot of office infill is still going in and around the Cortex district, which straddles the Central West End and Midtown.

There's also ongoing conversions of downtown St. Louis' prewar office buildings into new office, but many of the larger buildings have also relied on residential conversion, hotels, etc. For a residential example, the Butler Brothers Building is going to become apartments. It's roughly 700,000 sq ft. For a straight up office update / conversion, Square has completely gutted the old St. Louis Post-Dispatch Building and their office opened last year, I believe.

Originally Posted by SAN Man

$9.2 million for a 1.4 million sq ft. skyscraper?! $6.50/square foot. A typical mid century ranch house here goes for about $700/square foot. Something must be really wrong with the building. How can something like that sit around for that long at that price?

It lost $5 million in value over last year alone. Something is up, or the bond holders have finally given up and just want to unload the thing. At the rate things are going though, the skyscraper is about to be the same price as a mansion next to Forest Park.

Jokes aside, it will cost money to update the building, but the real problem is apparently the complete and utter lack of parking. There's a limited number of spots included with the building, but when AT&T occupied the tower there was a skybridge connecting it to its neighboring building that had the parking garage that served the building. AT&T retained control of the garage that was meant to serve a 44 story skyscraper, and the skybridge also got torn down.

So this means employees are going to have to street park, park in a nearby public garage, or, heaven forbid, take the MetroLink that has a stop a block away at 8th and Pine. For car centric St. Louis, these are apparently unattractive options.