News and Finance

A developer finding new uses for a 1920s streetcar garage and an abandoned rail yard is helping reverse decades of decline along north St. Louis’ industrial riverfront.

Green Street Properties of Clayton is redoing the one-time streetcar property for a truck-tire company based in Indiana and a construction services contractor moving from midtown. The old rail yard is slated to get warehouses totaling several hundred thousand square feet of space.

The two projects cover 45 acres and could eventually represent a $46 million investment. Both sites between Interstate 70 and the Mississippi River are within a 3,000-acre industrial zone that city development officials estimate is as much as one-third underused.

For many years, the area has withered as employers built more efficient factories and warehouses on cheaper suburban land. In response, the city provides tax breaks for developers who assemble properties for industrial revitalization. After a long wait, it appears the pace of activity is picking up.

"The north riverfront is re-emerging as a desirable place for manufacturing, warehousing and related businesses due to its highway access, rail access and barge access," said Barbara Geisman, deputy mayor for development.

Green Street’s projects at the rail yard and the former streetcar garage are getting $4.9 million in tax-increment financing and $1.3 million in community improvement money. The projects also will get about $2.6 million in federal New Markets Tax Credits. In addition, more than $2 million in federal stimulus money will be used to rebuild Carrie Avenue between Broadway and Hall Street.

The north riverfront’s 1,800 parcels, many of them small, present a challenge to developers trying to put together large properties. Green Street negotiated for a year with a railroad and three other property owners to assemble a 36-acre tract on the former rail yard south of Carrie Avenue.

Green Street had hoped to lure a Dial Corp. warehouse

operation to the site from the Gateway Commerce Center in Madison County. But Dial decided to remain in Illinois instead of relocating.

As a result, Green Street will erect built-to-suit structures on the site when tenants are found, said Phil Hulse, a Green Street principal payday loans with no faxing. The company’s goal there is to get large industrial tenants that otherwise would likely locate in outlying parts of the metro area, he said.

"The issue in assembling this ground is that you have to put in new infrastructure — streets, sewer, water, electrical capacity," Hulse said. "These large land sites are important to attracting new manufacturing and to changing the perception of the area from one of deterioration to one of vibrancy."

Much further along is the company’s redevelopment of its nine-acre streetcar site, at 840 East Taylor Avenue. Work began this summer to rehab and expand the one-time streetcar facility, where steel rails are still embedded in the concrete floor.

Raben Tire, a family owned company based in Evansville, Ind., has moved into part of the one-story building during the rehab work.

"We’re excited to be here," said Brad Raben, a third-generation owner of the company that sells, fixes and retreads truck tires.

Raben said setting up shop in St. Louis is a "natural progression" for his company, which has nearly 30 truck-tire centers in Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and southeast Missouri. Easy access to I-70 and the truck terminals on Hall Street attracted the company to the Taylor site. Raben said the company hopes to open a tire-retreading plant in a building Green Street plans to erect on the site by next summer. He said his company could eventually employ 40 people in St. Louis.

Joining Raben on East Taylor will be about 70 employees of Vernon L. Goedecke Co., a construction services firm that is relocating from midtown after spending 50 years on Clayton Avenue.

Goedecke’s president, Ralph Wagner, said the company would have stayed put had its five-acre site not been bought by Cortex, a biotech research district that plans to expand. But he said the East Taylor location will allow Goedecke to consolidate two warehouse operations.

Source