page_title: History of St. Louis (1981–present)
section_title: New construction, gentrification, and rehabilitation
hierarchical_section_title: History of St. Louis (1981–present) / New construction, gentrification, and rehabilitation
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Washington Avenue v St. Louis. English: St. Louis MO Ralph Moran
context_page_description: The history of St. Louis, Missouri from 1981 to the present has been marked by city beautification and crime prevention efforts, a major school desegregation case, and gentrification in its downtown area. St. Louis also continues to struggle with crime and a declining population, although some improvement has been made in both of these aspects.
context_section_description: During Vincent Schoemehl's three terms in office from 1981 to 1993, downtown St. Louis experienced a growth in construction it had not had since the early 1960s. Among these new buildings was the tallest building in the city, One Metropolitan Square, which featured ... square feet of office space. New retail projects also began to take shape: since 1978, Union Station had been abandoned by Amtrak as a passenger rail terminal, but in 1985, it was reopened as a festival marketplace under the direction of developer James Rouse. The same year, downtown developers opened St. Louis Centre, an enclosed four-story mall costing $176 million with 150 stores and 1,500,000 square feet (140,000 m²) of retail space. By the late 1990s, however, the mall had fallen in favor among shoppers due to the expansion of the St. Louis Galleria in Brentwood, Missouri, and the mall's flagship Dillard's store closed in 2001. The mall itself closed in 2006, and since 2010, development has been underway to convert the mall building into a parking structure, with an adjoining building being converted into apartments, hotel, and retail.
  The city also sponsored a major expansion of the St. Louis Convention Center during the 1980s, and Schoemehl focused efforts on retaining professional sports teams in the city. To that end, the city purchased The Arena, a 15,000-seat venue for professional ice hockey that was home of the St. Louis Blues. In the early 1990s, Schoemehl worked with business groups to develop a new hockey arena (now known as Enterprise Center) on the site of the city's Kiel Auditorium, with the promise that the developer would renovate the adjacent Kiel Opera House. Although the new hockey arena opened in 1994 (and the original arena was demolished in 1999), renovations on the adjacent opera house only began in 2011, more than 15 years after the initial development plan. However, the Kiel Opera House (since renamed Peabody Opera House) is slated to reopen on October 1, 2011.
  Starting in the early 2000s, a number of rehabilitation and construction projects began in St. Louis, some of which remain incomplete. Among the St. Louis areas to undergo gentrification was the Washington Avenue Historic District, which extends along Washington Avenue from the Edward Jones Dome west almost two dozen blocks. During the early 1990s, garment manufacturers moved out of the large office buildings on the street, and by the end of that decade residential developers began to convert the buildings into lofts. Prices per square foot increased dramatically in the area, and by 2001, nearly 280 apartments were built. Among the Washington Avenue projects to remain in development is the Mercantile Exchange Building, which is being converted to offices, apartments, retail, and a movie theater. The gentrification also has had the effect of increasing the downtown population, with both the central business district and Washington Avenue district more than doubling their population from 2000 to 2010.
  Other downtown projects include the renovation of the Old Post Office, which started in 1998 and was completed in 2006. The Old Post Office and seven adjacent buildings had been vacant since the early 1990s, but as of 2010 included a variety of tenants, including a branch of the St. Louis Public Library, a branch of Webster University, the St. Louis Business Journal, and a variety of government offices. The renovation of the Old Post Office spurred development of an adjacent plaza, which is linked to a new $80 million residential building called Roberts Tower, the first new residential construction in downtown St. Louis since the 1970s.
  As early as 1999, the St. Louis Cardinals began pushing for the construction of a new Busch Stadium as part of a broader trend in Major League Baseball toward stadium building. In early 2002, plans for a new park were settled among state and local leaders and Cardinals owners. According to an agreement in which the state and city would issue bonds for construction, the Cardinals agreed to build a multipurpose development known as St. Louis Ba
caption: The Washington Avenue Historic District has been the site of several rehabilitation projects since the late 1990s
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