Monday, September 11, 2006

Ballpark Village - Tale of The Tape

In baseball, a "tale of the tape" is a popular expression to measure the distance of a monster home run. Soon, the expression could take on added meaning when describing another potential home run in downtown St. Louis: Ballpark Village.

Negotiations are underway to expand the scope of Ballpark Village to a $650,000,000 project. Investing $650,000,000 into eight downtown acres means achieving serious urban densities, and will be another big step in the transformation of our downtown.

If we estimate development costs to run $200 per square foot, Ballpark Village grows to approximately 3.25 million square feet. On 8 acres, that's about 400,000 square feet of new construction per acre.

Combined with new Busch, the total investment on the site of old Busch and its adjacent surface parking lot comes to over $1 billion dollars!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Ballpark Village is like some of these high priced players --- the cost and expectations are high but the results are often disappointing.

Once BPV is constructed we can't just trade it away if it underperforms. We can't just draft a new project to take its place. We've got one chance and only one change for at least the next 30 years or so.

That kind of sustained performance requires than a homerun. It requires season after season of good design and urban amenities. And right now St. Louis' batting average for good urban design ranks near the bottom.