The Laurel Apartments Featured by St. Louis Business Journal for Strong Leasing in MX District

Amir Kurtovic’s coverage provides a positive update on The Laurel Apartments and the downtown apartment market and gives an update on MX retail tenants open and under construction.

St. Louis, MO – For a new apartment building, the first goal is always to fill it up. But that shouldn’t be a problem for the Laurel building, part of Amos Harris’ $250 million Mercantile Exchange development. Demand for apartments has been so good, in fact, that Harris has been able to raise prices less than a year after starting the leasing process.

“We are killing it with the apartments,” Harris said. “When we opened up our preleasing, we were leasing at $1.20 per square foot. We are now leasing at $1.34 per foot, which is huge. We’re talking about a more than 10 percent increase in the last six months.”

About 70 percent of the 205 one- and two-bedroom apartments are leased, said Harris, who is president of Brady Capital and a principal of Spinnaker St. Louis. The grand opening of the Laurel Apartments was in February and Harris said he could see rents rising to about $1.45 to $1.50 per square foot by next year.

The strong performance was a surprise to Harris. The Laurel Apartments were still under construction when Steve Smith’s 230-unit Park Pacific development opened.
“I was right there with everybody else in thinking that there were too many apartments coming on the market at the same time, but that didn’t turn out to be the case,” Harris said.

Deborah Done, president of locally owned rental agency Apartment Search, said there is a lot of demand for the Laurel Apartments because of their location and amenities.“Overall, the downtown market is strong and availability it tight,” she said. “Most of the properties are bringing their rents back up.” Done estimates that average rental price for downtown apartments have increased about 5 percent in the last six months.

Strong apartment leases are not the only good news coming out of the MX development. Harris said there is a lot of interest for the planned National Blues Museum at the MX and a number of supporters have shown interest in helping to raise the $6.5 million necessary to make the project a reality. About half of the $23 million price tag for the museum has been secured in New Markets Tax Credits.

The streetscape around the MX development could also soon get a facelift. The city of St. Louis has submitted an application to the East-West Gateway Council of Government for a $2 million grant that would fund improvements to sidewalks, lighting and decorations on Washington Avenue, from 7th Street to Memorial Drive. Harris said the $2 million grant required a $400,000 match, which the city was not able to provide. Instead, Spinnaker and Stifel Financial Corp. have agreed to split the match, Harris said. Stifel bought its headquarter building at 501 N. Broadway, adjacent to the MX development, last August for $20 million.

The 150,000 square feet of commercial space at the MX are about 60 percent leased so far, Harris said. On the restaurants and retail side of the MX, Pi Pizzeria at the corner of Sixth Street and Washington Avenue is already open and construction is under way for several other projects, including St. Louis Cinema’s three-screen MX Movies theater slated for October. Also under construction is the Collective at MX, a 3,700-square-foot fashion co-op that will house mini boutiques.

Eric Heckman, owner of Tani Sushi Bistro in Clayton, will also be one of the commercial tenants at the MX. Construction for his Takaya New Asian restaurant is under way and should be complete by late summer. The 3,300-square-foot restaurant will seat 120 and Heckman has projected sales of $1.5 million within three years. Harris said he is also in discussions with several companies about putting in an 8,600-square-foot fitness center. The fitness center would include steam rooms, saunas and cater to residents and workers in the surrounding office buildings.

For more information about the Mercantile Exchange visit: http://www.mxstl.com/ or follow The MX on Twitter and Facebook.

Media Contact:
Mack Bradley, StandPoint Public Affairs
314-324-8567 | mack@standpoint.com