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Metro plans retail, housing project for park-and-ride lot
(by Kara Krekeler - November 26, 2009)
Metro has chosen developer McCormack Baron to build a mixed-use project at the Forest Park-DeBaliviere park-and-ride lot.
The development would include up to 147 mixed-income housing units, 43,000 square feet of retail space and a parking structure with more than 100 spaces to accommodate both the development and Metro users, said Cady Scott, associate project manager for McCormack Baron.
The exact size of the project is still unknown, depending primarily on whether or not it is able to secure $19 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery discretionary grants program. The $1.5 billion TIGER fund was created by the economic stimulus package passed by Congress earlier this year.
A representative from Metro said that the transit agency expects to find out in early 2010 as to whether or not the project will receive the TIGER funding. Several other local projects, including the proposed Loop Trolley, have also applied for the funding. While it’s not impossible for more than one St. Louis-based project to receive funding, Scott noted that the U.S. Department of Transportation has been flooded with TIGER applications; nationally, applicants have asked for more than $56 billion in grants.
Should Metro and McCormack Baron acquire the TIGER funds, the $43.2 million project would likely include the strip mall to the north of the park-and-ride lot; without it, residential and retail space would be cut, although the parking structure would still include at least 100 spaces, as Metro has stipulated, Scott said.
The project has received the support of the city and the neighborhood, Scott said. “Everyone in the neighborhood wants to see something there that’s not a parking lot,” she said.
Tom Shrout, executive director of Citizens for Modern Transit, said that CMT’s transit-oriented development committee has also given the proposed development its stamp of approval, pending additional details.
“It could really transform the area around the MetroLink,” Shrout said. “Of course we need more details and there’s a lot of work to be done.”
Scott said that if all goes to plan and the project receives the federal funding, it is scheduled for completion in June 2012.
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