ST. LOUIS — A plan to build an apartment complex at the site of a historic midcentury modern building in the Central West End is being opposed by city staffers, even after the developer revised the project to preserve the building’s façade.
In a report issued Friday, staff from the city's Cultural Resources Office recommended that the St. Louis Preservation Board, which meets Monday, reject a request from St. Louis-based apartment developer Lux Living to demolish part of the Optimist International building at 4494 Lindell Blvd. Lux, led by CEO Vic Alston, hopes to build an apartment complex with seven or eight floors and two levels of underground parking.
The L-shaped apartment building would be built around two walls of the Optimist façade, in a plan the project's new architect, HOK, redesigned since the Preservation Board voted in August, at the urging of preservationists, to reject Lux's plan to demolish the entire building.
The Cultural Resources Office wrote in its recommendation that the preservation board reject the new design, saying it “considers this proposal a demolition, as it calls for the razing of all but two walls of the pavilion. This project is an example of Facadism, the architectural and construction practice in which only the facade of a building is retained, and a new building erected behind it or around it. Facadism is not preservation.”
The two existing buildings on the site make up the headquarters for global volunteer organization Optimist International, which hopes to downsize and spend less money on maintenance of older buildings for space it mostly doesn't use.
The Optimists’ pavilion building was designated as a landmark in a city survey that designated historic midcentury modern architecture. It called the pavilion a top 25 most significant midcentury modern building, out of 2,400 St. Louis structures evaluated. The second Optimist building was not designated as a landmark, and would be demolished under the new plan.
Read the rest of the story on the St. Louis Business Journal website.
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