San Luis demolition dispute now in court
The situation is dire for fans of the San Luis apartment building, which the Archdiocese of St. Louis plans to demolish and replace with a parking lot near Rosati-Kain High School on Lindell Boulevard.
Here’s the latest: After winning a favorable decision last month from the city’s Preservation Board, the archdiocese got a demolition permit for the 11-story San Luis.
On Friday, a group called Friends of the San Luis sued the archdiocese to stop demolition. But today a St. Louis Circuit Court judge denied the group’s request for a restraining order, according to online court records. The judge scheduled another hearing for this Friday.
Meanwhile, some heavy demo equipment is parked, ready to go, in front of the San Luis, at 4483 Lindell. Utility disconnections have been undertaken. The archdiocese owns the building and until a couple of years ago used it for senior housing.
The San Luis, originally the Hotel DeVille, was completed in 1963.
Fans of the San Luis decry the parking lot plan and say the building is a good example of mid-century modern architecture. They favor preservation and hope the archdiocese would agree to sell the building to a developer.
Instead, the archdiocese wants more parking for the Cathedral Basilica and Rosati-Kain.
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business as usual in the city of st louis. the evil wins again.
Yeah, they say they want more parking, but they readily admit that their new parking lot will have FEWER spots than the current parking garage of the San Luis. Hmm…
I’m not suprised the Archdiocese is doing this. They installed a Msgr. at St. Monica’s in Creve Coeur who isn’t objecting to Delmar Gardens proposal to build a six story office building next to the church’s cemetery and kids ballfied. The office building would displace about 50-100 nursing home residents who live on Delmar Gardens site.
I’m using this term for purpose. Nothing is SACRED anymore.
The Archdiocese is not a good steward of the neighborhood anymore. They don’t listen to their neighbors, only themselves. That building could be used for so many things, but all we get is a parking lot. Another loss for STL.
We live a few blocks from here and it was sad to see the demo equipment sitting on the lot the other day.
The worst part is that my Archdiocese wants a parking lot in place of a building in the city’s most urban neighborhood. The Archdiocese talks about environmental sustainability yet it takes down a usable building for a car park.
First, I’ll be honest I don’t care one way or the other. But since all the current post seem to be bashing the Archdiocese I would like to know if the real reason for the demo is cost of maintaining the building and thus the building was a money pit. It was built in 1963 and last served as a seniors building.
I can tell you from first hand experience that seniors can dismantle a building brick by brick. They fall asleep while cooking an start fires, they have a great knack for flooding toilets and causing water damage, they also love to “run” their bath water and then for some reason go down and do laundry, fall asleep again, go next door to visit and forget they turned the water on and cause water damage on multiple floors as the water can run for hours between walls without detection, the damage they do to doors, elevators and walls with walkers, wheel chairs and motorized carts is unbelievable, they pee in bed, couches and chairs and the apartments can smell to high heaven. They seem to put more food on the carpet then hits their mouth.
This is my thought as to why they don’t want the building anymore.
@ couldbe… based on testimony at the preservation board I think the problem is less the senior inhabitants and more two decades of deliberately deferred maintenance by the diocese.
The demolition is clearly the first step in a larger plan to consolidate diocesan land holdings. I feel really bad for the residents on the south side of the 4400 block of Maryland and anyone living in the block around Rosati-Kain. With spineless aldermanic representation like that exemplified by Lyda (”they refuse to maintain the building so we might as well let them tear it down”) Krewson all those residents are next.
Just remember in St. Louis you can tear down anything as long as you run it into the ground and you’re big enough to throw your weight around.
It is 2009, and we are watching a high-rise building at one of the city’s most high-profile intersections become a surface parking lot. And we wonder why St. Louis has a reputation of being backwater and dull…
I was at the Pres. Board meeting as well; the A-D’s manager for the building openly admitted that he poorly maintained the building for years.