Arlington Grove Multifamily Redevelopment Under Way in St. Louis

Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

St. Louis–Construction has started on the Arlington Grove residential redevelopment project in north St. Louis. When complete it will include 112 mixed-income rental units in garden apartments, townhouse and semi-detached housing, along with a new mixed-use building and rehabilitation of the historic Arlington Elementary School. All together, the redevelopment will total 162,000 square feet of residential space and 5,000 square feet of commercial space.

The school renovation will include 21 apartments. The rest of the Arlington Grove’s residential space will be 91 new-construction townhomes and garden apartments. All of the units are designed to meet mandatory Enterprise Green Communities (EGC) criteria as required by the Capital Fund Recovery Competition (CFRC) grant, a stimulus-related grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that helped pay for the $41 million development.

The redevelopment will contain market rate units, Low Income Housing Tax Credit units for tenants at 60 percent of the area median income, HOME units and public housing units. According to the developer McCormack Baron Salazar, Arlington Grove is considered one of the first EGC “green” designed mixed- income projects in the country, and the first for the city of St. Louis and Missouri.

Environmentally friendly features incorporated into the development’s design by KAI Design & Build–Arlington Grove’s architect, engineer, general contractor and building information modeling coordinator–include Energy-Star appliances and fixtures, high-efficiency HVAC systems, solar panels, water-conserving appliances and fixtures, and the reduction of heat-island effect through highly reflective roof shingles and pervious paving. During construction, KAI Design & Build will practice water-management techniques, as well as the recycling of content materials.

“The development’s green design will absolutely make it competitive in the marketplace,” Anthony Summers, KAI Design & Build senior project manager, tells MHN. “One attractive feature of the development is its more efficient heating, cooling and plumbing systems. Tenants can anticipate lower utility bills as a result of these systems, and that is an attractive benefit.”

The development is part of a larger effort to revitalize this part of the city of St. Louis, undertaken by a number of local organizations, including Friendly Temple Church, the City of St. Louis, Ald. Jeffrey Boyd, the Associated General Contractors of St. Louis and the St. Louis Housing Authority. Construction on the Arlington Grove redevelopment is expected to be complete in spring 2012.