Parkview Gardens Revitalization Strategy

University City, Missouri

Parkview Gardens is a historic, walkable neighborhood that, along with the adjacent Delmar Loop, was part of a thriving community built along a streetcar line. As with many main streets along streetcar routes, the Loop began to suffer from disinvestment and vacancy as the streetcar network was dismantled in the 1960s.

Fortunately, the Delmar Loop has been revived as a regional entertainment district, and Parkview Gardens has been bolstered by investment in building maintenance and increased security—most notably by Washington University in St. Louis, which operates a significant portfolio of graduate student housing in the neighborhood.

Our Approach

Still, much work remained to be done to sustain the Delmar Loop’s momentum and improve quality of life in the neighborhood. In this context, Development Strategies was hired to identify development opportunities, quantify market demand, analyze site capacity for key vacant and underutilized sites, and examine the feasibility of different housing types and densities.

On the heels of the plan, Washington University broke ground on a 500-bed mixed-use project that includes a grocery store (an $80 million investment that opened in Fall 2014) and committed $20 million to building rehabilitation in the neighborhood. Several market-rate multifamily projects have also been built along Delmar, and a $26 million office building with a ground-floor pharmacy was recently completed at a key corner in the neighborhood.