St. Louis is sweetening the deal for developers eyeing a prominent vacant corner near Forest Park, offering at least a decade of property-tax incentives to get construction moving again. The site at Kingshighway Boulevard and Oakland Avenue was cleared for a major apartment project that later collapsed. Now the city is trying to make the empty lot less of a financial dare.
The St. Louis Economic Development Corporation plans to use the incentive package to attract a new developer to the roughly one-acre property, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The agency’s pitch comes as officials rethink how the city handles tax breaks after a proposed apartment development at the site fell apart.
The previous project’s cancellation was tied in part to disagreements over tax incentives, former 9th Ward Alderperson Michael Browning told First Alert 4. The development was expected to bring more than 300 apartments to a gateway property that had already spent years as a highly visible collection of vacant buildings.
From Long-Vacant Houses To Another Development Pitch
NorthPoint Development had proposed a 150-unit apartment building on the Kingshighway parcel, with studios and one- and two-bedroom units above a mix of at-grade and below-grade parking. The Forest Park Southeast neighborhood’s development review materials describe the site as seven homes that had been vacant for years before emergency demolition and environmental work began.
St. Louis Public Radio reported that NorthPoint’s broader plan called for two apartment buildings totaling 328 units and nearly $120 million in investment, including a second project near Chouteau Avenue. The company later dropped the plan, leaving the cleared Kingshighway site without a building to show for the demolition.
By April, the property had been placed on the market for about $2.8 million, with city officials suggesting that insufficient economic incentives had helped derail the earlier proposal, according to the St. Louis Business Journal. The listing describes nearly 42,000 square feet of vacant land with frontage on Kingshighway, Oakland and Arco avenues.
How The Proposed Tax Relief Works
Tax abatement is a standard development tool in St. Louis, but the city’s own guidance says the usual term is five to 10 years. The St. Louis Development Corporation explains that the incentive freezes the tax assessment on improvements at the property’s pre-development level, giving a developer time to recover some of the cost of new construction.
For the Kingshighway site, the longer incentive period is intended to help close the gap between what construction would cost and what rents or other project revenues could support. It does not guarantee that a project will be built, and any proposal would still need to clear city and neighborhood review.
The parcel’s location is part of the attraction. A current property listing from Savoy Properties highlights its proximity to BJC HealthCare, Washington University, St. Louis University High School and Forest Park.
A High-Profile Test For St. Louis Development Policy
The corner has become a small but unusually visible case study in the city’s struggle to turn vacant land into productive property. It sits along a major route into the central corridor, yet years of vacancy, demolition and shifting development plans have left neighbors watching another round of promises take shape.
The new offer also lands amid a broader debate over where St. Louis directs public incentives. St. Louis Public Radio previously reported that city leaders and neighborhood advocates see tax credits, abatements and public investment as necessary tools, while warning that central-corridor redevelopment has historically received more attention than many north and south city neighborhoods.
For now, the city has an incentive package but no announced replacement developer. The next test will be whether a decade or more of tax relief is enough to turn the cleared Kingshighway corner into housing, retail or another project that finally sticks.
