Marquette Building renovation
Photos from www.Builtstlouis.net
Marquette Building and the St. Louis skyline.
The Marquette Building on Broadway in downtown St. Louis.
Ownership shuffle may revive Marquette
By Charlene Prost
Of the Post-Dispatch
03/17/2004
The Marquette Building downtown, mostly vacant for years, is about to be revived with housing and other uses, after some ownership shuffling - from the New York owners, to a branch of the YMCA and, finally, to a St. Louis architectural and interior design firm.
After buying the 19-story building in 1999 for less than $1 million and trying unsuccessfully to renovate or resell it, Tahl-Propp Equities donated it to the YMCA branch, said owner Joseph Tahl. As other tenants moved out, the Y branch remained open in the 91-year-old building at 300 North Broadway.
Tahl said his company will take tax deductions, based on an appraisal that valued the Marquette at $5.3 million, "and we are perfectly satisfied with that."
Mike Normile, the YMCA's senior vice president for finance, said the donation came as a pleasant surprise, but added, "We're not in the business of owning and operating buildings."
So, Normile and his associates worked a deal with the Lawrence Group, which owns and plans to renovate the Security Building next door. The firm also had been Tahl's architect for the Marquette renovation plan.
Stephen Smith, Lawrence Group president, said a group of principals there will pay $4.9 million to the YMCA and take charge of reviving the Marquette. As part of the agreement, he said, the YMCA will pay rent over the next 40 years, long enough to wipe out the mortgage.
"We will make a loan payment every month; they will pay us rent every month. And the amounts are basically the same," Smith said.
In the next few months, Smith and his associates will pull together financing and other details for a $35 million facelift, a figure that includes the purchase price.
What's coming for the Marquette, originally designed by the noted architectural firm of Eames & Young, is the same redevelopment plan Smith's firm created for Tahl: The lower two levels will be renovated for retail and commercial space, the YMCA will remain on two floors and the upper stories will be converted to about 140 apartments or condominiums.
"We're leaning toward apartments ... primarily market rate, reasonably priced," Smith said, with "a lot of windows and great views of the Arch and into downtown."
Construction should start by early next year and take about 16 months, he said. In the meantime, the firm will do any exterior repair work needed and remove scaffolding that Tahl put in place.
Normile said the scaffolding has hurt the Y's membership roster.
"We're down to 1,540 members," he said, but with renovation on the way, "we think we can boost that number significantly."
One of the last snags with Tahl's plans for the building came after the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis bought a parking garage next door to the Marquette as part of an $80 million expansion. The parking division of the St. Louis treasurer's office, which sold the Marquette to Tahl, originally built the garage to provide parking for his building. But with the Marquette redevelopment stalled, the division sold the garage last year to the Federal Reserve, a move Tahl tried unsuccessfully to block in court.
Smith said he's resolved the parking problem. He said he's working with hotel entrepreneur Charles Drury to reserve spaces in a new garage Drury is building in the same block. Drury is renovating the nearby Merchants-Laclede building as a Hilton Hotel. "That garage will support parking for the Marquette, the Security and the Hilton," Smith said.
The Lawrence Group plans to start work soon on more than $9 million worth of improvements at the Security, an 1890s building where the firm has had offices since 1991.
With all the projects under way in that part of downtown, Smith and Tahl said, the time is right to move forward with the Marquette.
However, Tahl said he and his partner decided to focus on projects in the New York City area. "We've had our hands full here," he said, "and neither of us was willing to make a commitment to move to St. Louis for two years to get this done."
Tahl said that when his company bought the building, interest rates were much higher, and that made financing more difficult. In addition, he said, there weren't many others who were buying and renovating older buildings in downtown for housing at that time.
"Since then, we've seen a dozen or more of these projects get done, and the environment for this to work is so much better than it was then. I think Steve and the Y will have tremendous success with the Marquette," Tahl said, " and we wish them well."
The Downtown St. Louis Partnership's latest survey of downtown housing shows that when someone builds it, people come, said James Cloar, president and chief executive.
"I don't think we are getting too much housing downtown," he said. "If you look at what's been built since 2000, the overall occupancy is 83 percent."
Among the roughly 4,000 units of market-rate housing downtown, 700 were built since 2000, Cloar said. In addition, 500 more units are under construction now with another 800 scheduled to get under way by year's end. That figure does not include the units planned at the Marquette.
Reporter Charlene Prost
E-mail:
cprost@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8140
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