ST. LOUIS, MO - Describing it as a stealth project would be a stretch, considering it's costing about $70 million and is under construction six days a week in the middle of downtown St. Louis. Yet Mike and Steve Roberts have been quiet about promoting Roberts Tower, the 25-story luxury condo tower going up next to their Mayfair Hotel. Sales efforts have been minimal despite the fact the tower will be the first new residential high-rise downtown since the Mansion House complex was built in the 1960s.
Steve Roberts, a principal of Roberts Brothers Properties, said the major push to sell the tower's 55 condos will be under way by spring, with move-ins beginning in early 2010. Roberts said that by keeping prices and even floorplans on the QT for now, his company is avoiding the mistake of developers who announce projects' details only to have to change them once final building costs are set. "We'll be watching the market very carefully over the next six months," he said. "Some developments sold residences based on prices that turned out to be unrealistically low. We won't make that mistake."
Roberts Tower is to be loaded with "green" features. Residents will have a doorman and concierge service from the adjoining hotel. Planning began five years ago, when residential development downtown was beginning to build. Site work got under way in August 2007. Heavy construction began this year. Roberts said his company secured financing from PNC Bank of Pittsburgh long before credit markets dried up.
The tower's glass-and-steel design is by Trivers Associates, the St. Louis firm that tweaked the initial work done by Core Architects of Toronto. Alberici Construction is building the tower at 411 North Eighth Street on a site only 60 feet wide and shoehorned between the Mayfair and the Old Post Office plaza, also under construction. Roberts lamented that the narrow site limited the project's size. "We would have loved to have made the tower larger," he said.
Roberts Tower is the last downtown residential high-rise project left unbowed by the turmoil in the housing and credit markets. Gone are plans for Skyhouse, a 22-story tower slated for the corner of Washington Avenue and 14th Street. Also canceled is a 15-story condo building the Lawrence Group had planned as part of its residential conversion of the former Missouri Pacific Railroad headquarters.
Roberts said that while canceled condos cut competition, numerous dead projects in one area also frighten lenders. Still, he said canceled, altered or stalled projects, including conversion of the former Dillard's building, would have added 500 condos to the market. "If 10 percent of those folks still want to come downtown, we have the project for them," Roberts said.
As it is, a more-than-anticipated amount of buried debris from structures formerly on the sites of the tower and adjacent plaza made underground parking too costly. Residents will have valet parking from the Ninth Street Garage, said Aliah Baker, the Roberts Brothers' marketing manager. The tower's sales office has been open only sporadically, but Baker said a newly hired company vice president is in charge of marketing the project.
Roberts said he sees signs of loosening credit, adding that he and his brother get queries about downtown's left-for-dead proposals. "We have been approached by all the folks who have been with some of the projects that have not been successful," he said. "Our view is that if the right opportunity comes, we'll certainly participate."
Source: STLtoday.com