Crestwood • The large pile of rubble dubbed by area residents as “Mount Crestwood” on the site of the old Crestwood Plaza will soon be graded, and UrbanStreet Group, the construction firm behind the site’s redevelopment efforts, has a new plan — just not the one many have been waiting for.
City Administrator Kris Simpson said city officials have approved a grading plan for the sprawling property at Watson and New Sappington roads where demolishing work on the former shopping mall started in 2016. And while UrbanStreet continues to search for redevelopment opportunities, the Chicago-based firm will plant native prairie grass to help control erosion and improve the aesthetics of the site.
“The dirt mounds in Crestwood have become a joke, an eyesore — call it what you will,” Simpson said.
Simpson said the city issued UrbanStreet a six-month grading permit, “with the hope that in six months or less we’ll be talking about a final grading plan as part of an actual redevelopment project.”
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“On the development side, we’re encouraged by some of the steps (UrbanStreet) has taken in the last month,” Simpson said. “They have a new local partner with folks pounding the pavement in a different way than what they were doing before.”
The partnership is with real estate veteran Bob Walpert. Walpert has been in the real estate business for four decades and developed ӣƵ-based Walpert Properties into a powerhouse that owned 5 million square feet of commercial property, including the WingHaven community in O’Fallon, Mo., valued at approximately $350 million before he sold the portfolio in the late 2000s.
Walpert said he, along with Kent Evans and Mike Hurwitz, are partnering with UrbanStreet as development partners, but they’re in the early planning stages. The team is talking to prospective tenants, he said, and a broker event is set for Sept. 26.
Simpson said UrbanStreet has shifted its focus from turning the old Crestwood Plaza mall site from a long, big-box oriented development to more of a mixed-use project.
“There seems to be more energy associated with this new effort,” he said. “The new concept is looking more like the Boulevard development in Richmond Heights or the Streets of St. Charles in St. Charles.”
The more than 1 million-square-foot mall — which previously operated as Crestwood Court and Crestwood Shopping Center — opened in 1957 and once housed nearly 100 stores. But like many malls in the region and nationwide, it deteriorated as shoppers’ habits changed, and ultimately closed.
Following the mall’s demolition, UrbanStreet described a variety of uses it planned to pursue, including retail, entertainment, dining and housing. Private investment was to total $79 million, with $25 million in tax increment financing and 2 percent new sales tax for the site.
Simpson previously told the Post-Dispatch that “at least 100,000 square feet of retail (must) be operating before the project gets any tax increment financing funds.”
Open for five decades, the mall closed in 2013. It was demolished in 2016 after UrbanStreet was chosen to redevelop the site.
But there has been no progress on the redevelopment site since the retail landscape surrounding the area has deteriorated.
Since it closed — Sears was the last anchor department store to leave — other stores nearby, such as Best Buy, Gordmans and Firestone have shuttered, as well as smaller businesses.
That area of ӣƵ County boasts one of the highest vacancy rates, at 6.4 percent, according to research from Gershman Commercial Real Estate.
“There’s still great density there, but the area is suffering from many of the retail sites around the region — and that is that supply is exceeding the demand,” said Joe Ciapciak, managing director at Pace Properties. “But there’s not a lot of vacant cornfields around there, so I would think there would be demand for development. It just what type of development? I’m not so sure it will come back as 100 percent retail.”
