While we’ve all seen the doom and gloom news reports about the state of the real estate market , it is a fact that St. Louis is really better off than most metropolitan areas according to Forbes . While I can tell you as a real estate professional that this year has been slow, we are actually doing better than most cities. St. Louis developers have struggled as evidenced by the shut down of Taylor Morley and Pyramid Companies, as well as the public troubles of Saaman Realty. However, St. Louis has a reasonably low inventory of vacant new construction compared to cities in the West and South that have thousands of speculative neighborhoods sitting empty, especially in the city and near by suburbs. Downtown St. Louis has been overbuilt, but developers have responded. Properties originally planned to be condos or lofts are being developed as rental housing, like The Lawrence Groups Park Pacific development, or commercial space. Also, projects that were proposed have been cancelled or put on hold like Pyramids COs Leather Trades Build. If you buy a property today are you going to be able to sell it for a huge profit next year of the year after? Probably not. But I do think that St. Louis property values will begin to rise significantly sooner than most of the country. Right now prices are favorable and interest rates are low, so I think that there are definitely some great long term deals to be made.
According to a release by the St. Louis Business Journal , Missouri and Illinois officials have agreed to build a new Mississippi River Bridge at a cost of $640 million. There are four lanes, two in each direction, planned for this bridge, which will link Missouri and Illinois just north of the Edward Jones Dome.
I’m happy to see that our elected officials in Missouri came together for a plan to build this bridge. The federal government has pledged $239 million dollars for the project, which would have expired if there was no agreed upon plan. The original plan was for a signature bridge, an architectural gem, that would have been a regional identifying landmark. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is an example of a signature bridge. While this type of bridge would have been ideal, it would have cost double the amount of this project.
It appears the current proposed bridge will effectively link Missouri and Illinois commuters and allow the Illinois side of the region to continue to grow. It is important for Illinois to be able to expand, in order to keep St. Louis CIty as the center of the region. If St. Louis is going to be a world-class city again, Downtown St. Louis will need to be strong. A strong Downtown has been linked to a strong overall region. St. Louis has expanded predominantly to the West, Wentzville is 42 miles from Downtown St. Louis. In Illinois Pocahontas is 42 miles east of St. Louis. If you’ve even heard of Pocahontas, IL you know there is a tremendous amount of developable land between St. Louis and Pocahontas. Clearly demand for land in Illiinois will continue to rise. It is essential that this area be linked to St. Louis, and this new bridge will help accomplish this.
Hopefully, when detailed plans are released they will show that this bridge is will also be linked to North St. Louis. Previous plans showed the bridge linking with Highway 70, with an exit at Cass Ave. The exit was planned to be landscaped and provide opportunity for businesses to form that could access the increased customer base the highway would provide. This would help develop that portion of North St. Louis.
