More Missouri Land Theft.

From Tuesday's STL Today:

$40 million center is planned for city

By Tim O'Neil
Of the Post-Dispatch
Tuesday, Sep. 28 2004

A $40 million shopping center that would be anchored by a new Schnucks
supermarket and a Lowe's hardware store is being proposed for a 30-acre tract
along Interstate 55 in far south St. Louis.

The plan would require demolition of 20 homes and an athletic club as well as
tax subsidies of about $14 million, according to City Hall and Desco
Development Group officials. The site includes an existing Schnucks store at
950 Loughborough Avenue and the former Nordyne Inc. furnace plant at 7100 South
Grand Avenue, which closed last year.

Desco, which handles property development for Schnuck Markets Inc., wants to
call the new center Loughborough Commons. It would include a third large store,
possibly an electronics outlet, and several smaller lots for restaurants and
other businesses.

"This will be one of the most positive developments to happen on the South Side
in years," said Alderman Matt Villa, D-11th Ward. "It's really going to boost
the desirability of the neighborhood."

Barbara Geisman, development director for Mayor Francis Slay, said the plan
needs about $11 million in tax-increment financing and another $3 million in
transportation-development taxes. They would be paid by taxes generated by
business activity at the shopping center.

The transportation tax would pay for improving the entrance at Loughborough,
just west of Interstate 55.

The former National chain built a supermarket there in 1978, and Schnuck
Markets took it over in 1995. The store would remain open until the new one is
ready, a spokesman said.

Because it is downhill from Loughborough, the site is known locally as "the
hole." Desco would build the new major stores on the west side of the tract,
facing eastward, and raise the ground about six feet for a 1,100-car parking
lot.

The Desco spokesman said the company has contracts to buy Nordyne and
Carondelet Sunday Morning Athletic Club, 1012 Loughborough. Desco agents began
contacting homeowners last week and plan to make offers within two weeks, he
said.

The plan needs the approval of the Board of Aldermen. Villa said he would ask
the board to include the right to take properties by eminent domain if some of
the homeowners refuse to sell.

A spokeswoman for Comptroller Darlene Green said her staff is working with
Slay's and endorses the idea. If all goes well, the Desco spokesman said,
demolition would begin in February and construction would be completed in
spring 2006.

Gail Schuermann, who lives in a brick bungalow in the 6900 block of South
Grand, said Desco agents spoke to her family last week. Schuermann said she
supports the idea and believed that many of her neighbors did as well.

"Our house isn't big enough, and we'd been talking about selling anyway," she
said.

The site is less than one mile north of an area along Weber Road in Lemay that
Pace Properties Inc. is considering for a similar project.

Rick Randall, a Pace vice president, said his company still was planning its
development there but has not bought any homes in the 33-acre area.

Reporter Tim O'Neil
E-mail: toneil@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8132