"We're really going to try to create something that's unique to, not only the St Louis region, but the entire mid-west," says developer Michael Staenberg of the 126 acres his company, The Staenberg Group, controls at the intersection of I-64 and Clarkson Road.
The site of the former Chesterfield Mall, Staeberg points out, is the size of Clayton, Missouri's downtown. "We're going to try to make it very, very unique. In fact one of the things that we decided to do, was to put a park right in the middle. A 3.8 acre park. You don't see that very often. When you drive in, you'll see the park. And we'll have residential surrounding it, and we will have some offices, retail, a hotel, a lot of different amenities."
"We have our TIF agreement approved, we have everything owned except for the Dillard's parcel [of land], and we're moving forward in a very nice way," Staenberg tells Total Information AM. "The city's been very cooperative and now we're in for our redevelopment plan and also for our final zoning."
Staenberg says there is still an issue with the Dillard's store, the owners of which have filed a lawsuit contesting the TIF funding for the site. "It's all about money. At the end of the day, Dillard's has been closed since 2017. They had a flood. They received a substantial amount of money to repair the store, and they never did. And now they're claiming they want to re-open because it's so important to their strategic plan for St Louis. So, at the end of the day, it's all about money."
Staenberg calls it a "10-year project," that will likely cost, "a couple billion dollars."
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