Parkview Gardens Neighborhood Plan

St. Louis, Missouri

Parkview Gardens is a historic, walkable neighborhood that, along with the adjacent Delmar Loop corridor, was part of a thriving community built along a streetcar line in the early part of the last century, but suffered from disinvestment when that line was removed in the 1960s.

Fortunately, the Delmar Loop has been revived as a regional entertainment district, and Washington University in St. Louis has taken a strong interest in leveraging that momentum to stabilize Parkview Gardens and stimulate private investment.

Development Strategies was hired in 2011 to identify market-based development opportunities for housing development and offer market and implementation strategies to seize upon them.

Using target market/consumer group analysis, Development Strategies determined a substantial amount of demand existed from young professionals for housing in the neighborhood, and provided a marketable mix of housing types and rehabilitation efforts needed to attract them. Working with H3 Studio, appropriate sites were identified for new development and preservation, and Development Strategies devised a funding strategy to leverage future revenues to fund needed public improvements.

On the heels of the study, Washington University committed $100 million in investment, including an $80 million mixed-use development that opened in the Fall of 2014 (and includes a neighborhood grocer) and $20 million to rehabilitate its substantial portfolio of historic properties in the neighborhood.