The project drew near universal opposition from residents in Lafayette Square, who panned the concept as unresponsive to their desires for such a prominent intersection. \u201cThere is no way that we are ever going to be in favor of anything on that corner that is public storage,\u201d the president of the neighborhood association, Vincent Volpe, testified in July.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dozens of Lafayette Square residents articulated similar views, along with dozens of emails, written letters and pages of signatures opposing the storage facility. It was enough for members of the Board of Adjustment to essentially tell the developer to go back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is wrong for the city. I think that this is a huge important corner. They can come back with a better plan,\u201d said Board of Adjustment member Mona Parsley.<\/p>\n
Now the developer has its \u201cbetter plan,\u201d having filed designs last month seeking a building permit for a $3 million redevelopment of the industrial site. According to city records it would now be a commercial\/residential use instead of a warehouse, but a closer look at new designs for the site shows the vast majority of the existing more than 50,000 square foot building still being retrofitted for a self-storage facility. The difference is that squeezed into the south side are five residential units, mostly measuring around 1,000 square feet, and three office spaces, the largest measuring about 1,500 square feet.\u00a0 And because the city\u2019s zoning for this site leaves \u201cmixed use\u201d a bit open to interpretation, the new plans may have an easier time passing muster.<\/p>\n
Plans courtesy of Killeen Studio ArchitectsPlans courtesy of Killeen Studio Architects![\"Public](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/public-storage-proposal_killeen-studio-architects-1024x662.webp.webp\")
Plans submitted to St. Louis for a $3 million redevelopment at 2350 Chouteau show self-storage with five small residential lofts and three office spaces.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is really skirting a fine line about what mixed use is,\u201d says Lafayette Square resident Matt Negri. He wonders if the inclusion of rental units on the plans is just window dressing: \u201cWho would rent something like that attached to a warehouse where people can store anything? I could see it easily not being rented, because that is not a normal type [of] building that would house people.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Sweeney, the lobbyist who represented Graddy at the last meeting, did not respond to several requests seeking comment. The city has yet to act on the request for a building permit.<\/p>\n
Negri, who has served as president of the Lafayette Square Neighborhood Association two times in the past and currently sits on the neighborhood\u2019s preservation committee, says he\u2019s also irritated that the developer hasn\u2019t made an effort to show the new plans to the neighborhood association, whose next scheduled meeting is Wednesday at 7 p.m. (Negri says he\u2019s been told the developer declined an invitation to appear.)<\/p>\n
Instead, he says the new plan for the site was discovered \u201cby happenstance\u201d by a neighbor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were hoping the developers would come back to the neighborhood and get some input, you know, take a poll, get the pulse of the residents [on] what they would like to see there,\u201d Negri says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many, including Negri, have expressed a desire for projects that bring new jobs, residents, or both to the prominent corner. The 2200 LaSalle<\/a> apartment complex, which sits next to the storage facility, opened in 2022 with the neighborhood\u2019s blessing.<\/p>\n In St. Louis\u2019 own freshly adopted Strategic Land Use Policy<\/a>, the parcel where Graddy hopes to build the self-storage facility sits in an area where the city wants \u201cmany types of housing\u201d or \u201cmany types of commercial activities and users\u201d and not \u201cmost industrial uses, especially those that create divisions between neighborhoods.\u201d And, the neighborhood\u2019s special use district overlay, which includes the parcel in question, intends<\/a> for \u201ca high density mixed use development with a potential for taller buildings\u201d in that portion of Lafayette Square.\u00a0<\/p>\n In recent years, Negri says neighbors have been told the development Graddy is pursuing is \u201cthe best Lafayette Square could hope for\u201d because of the presence of a Quik Trip across the street.\u00a0<\/p>\n Graddy said as much at the July Board of Adjustment meeting, and that potential tenants of Aldi and Butler\u2019s Pantry both fell through after signing letters of intent.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have tried to recruit a number of people with that site,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve interviewed a lot of prospective clients for that business and they have all turned it down. Most recently the reason they\u2019re turning it down is because of the violence coming from across the street.\u201d<\/p>\n Lafayette Square residents like Negri reject the notion that self-storage is the best that such a prominent intersection in the city can attract, especially with new homes nearby selling for $1 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe would really like to work with the developers and give some ideas,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just for the neighborhood, it\u2019s really for the city of St. Louis.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A developer whose proposal for a 24\/7 self-storage facility at a prominent intersection in the Lafayette Square neighborhood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[28,158],"class_list":{"0":"post-146052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}