Everything that seemed like a good idea for St. Louis Centre when it opened in 1985 will be undone as developers give downtown's dead shopping mall an extreme makeover.

The basic four-story structure will remain, but nearly everything else will change. The aluminum exterior that a top city official calls "that green-and-white mess" will be replaced by pale green glass. Parking for 750 cars will occupy most of the mall's top three floors. A movie theater and fitness center might go on the second level.

And in a move praised by retail experts, what will remain as store space will be turned inside out. Shoppers will enter stores from streets instead of having to venture inside an enclosed mall.

The goal is to replace the St. Louis Centre with a development that will invigorate the surrounding blocks. Their occupants are office towers, America's Center and Macy's, which as Famous-Barr was connected to the mall when it opened 24 years ago.

St. Louis Centre was among many failed urban malls built in the 1980s because its model ignored everything around it, experts say.

"They were built as if they were in the suburbs," said Anita Kramer, a senior director for the Urban Land Institute in Washington. "They were built as if there was no attention to what connected them to their surroundings."

St. Louis Centre was praised as downtown's lifesaver when it opened 24 years ago. Thousands of people flocked to the mall when it debuted in August. Then-Mayor Vincent C. Schoemehl proclaimed it would transform downtown. Giddy city officials pointed out that the owner was mega-developer Melvin Simon & Associates and said the mall was a can't-miss success. Among its tenants were Ann Taylor, Laura Ashley, Abercrombie & Fitch and Sharper Image.

But success gradually turned to failure. Before long, the Centre's managers cut back the weekday closing time by two hours, to 6 p.m.

"Of course, St. Louis Centre was doomed as soon as they did that," said Barbara Geisman, the city's deputy mayor for development.

The mall also faced increased suburban competition. Westroads shopping center expanded in 1986 to become St. Louis Galleria, which grew again in the late 1980s. Plaza Frontenac added numerous stores, and Mid Rivers Mall, in St. Peters, also expanded.

St. Louis Centre's closing in 2006 ended what had been a large downtown presence of national retailers — a presence Geisman said she would like to see return with the makeover.

"What we're trying to create downtown is a walkable, vibrant community that has retail, office, parking and meets the other needs of people who want to live here," she said.

After St. Louis Centre closed, Pyramid Cos. bought the building for a 10th of its $95 million construction cost and announced plans in 2007 to redo it with luxury condos as part of an ambitious mixed-use, six-block project. That idea fell apart with the nationwide collapse of the for-sale housing market, and Pyramid went out of business in 2008.

Amos Harris, head of Brady Capital and part of Connecticut-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, which took over the St. Louis Centre project from Pyramid, said street-facing stores will be the key to the new Centre.

"The concept of taking a suburban mall and dropping it in the middle of the city is one that just didn't work," he said.

Little about St. Louis Centre made sense, Harris added.

"It had more retail than could be supported," he said. "The idea at the time was that St. Louis Centre was going to be this silver bullet that was going to work against the momentum" of suburban development.

Redoing St. Louis Centre is part of the larger project to rehab the One City Centre office building atop the mall and convert the empty Dillard's department store to apartments and an Embassy Suites hotel.

One City Centre, owned by St. Louis-bases SCR Investments, is scheduled to undergo a thorough rehab to attract law firm Lewis Rice, accounting firm LarsonAllen and additional tenants later. In work coordinated with the St. Louis Centre project, One City Centre tenants will get some of the mall's new parking. The office building's new entrance will be on Washington Avenue and blended into the mall's reworked facade, officials said.

Developers say money for the $220 million project, which includes the Dillard's component, will come from private sources, loans, tax abatements, state assistance and historic preservation tax credits.

Harris said the Dillard's project, including demolition of the skybridge over Washington Avenue, should be completed in early 2012.

Putting parking on St. Louis Centre's upper floors will be done with ramps through much of the existing atrium and bridges over the rest. Law firm Thompson Coburn, which is in the neighboring US Bank tower, will get much of the parking in a deal reached last year in which the firm agreed to stay downtown.

Geisman said St. Louis Centre's redevelopment plan carries no guarantee of success but is worth the gamble to eliminate downtown's "black hole." The reworked mall will have the benefit of a growing downtown residential population — estimated at 12,000 — that didn't exist when St. Louis Centre opened.

In the mid-1980s, downtown lofts were wishes and not realities. Most of the few hundred residents lived at the Mansion House or Plaza Square apartment complexes.