Multifamily Strong in St. Louis for 2015

​With 2014 in the books, we’ve turned our focus to this year and what it has in store for us. As we began the year in St. Louis, we broke ground and began construction on a luxury multifamily development in the St. Louis’ historic Central West End. Responding to low supply and pent-up demand, this 217-unit apartment building is bringing high-end amenities to the vibrant, historic neighborhood, a strategic core for multifamily renters. 

Construction in Columbia, Mo., continues on District Flats, a luxury student housing development near the University of Missouri. This project, which will be delivered in the fall, adds to our portfolio of successful student housing buildings previously built near the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, University of Wisconsin in Madison and Marquette University in Milwaukee.

Throughout 2015 I anticipate seeing a tightening office market but strong industrial and multifamily markets. In St. Louis, development trends typically lag Tier 1 markets. We’ll start to see distribution center industrial projects taking shape this year as market fundamentals are ripe.  For example, according to CBRE’s Fourth Quarter MarketViews report, in 2014 the metro area had 3.8 million square feet of positive net absorption and the vacancy rate dropped .5% from the previous quarter. Urban core multifamily – like our Central West End project – will also be taking shape. In addition to urban core, we are looking into multifamily projects in various key institutional-grade suburbs and hope to announce those projects once they’ve firmed up. 

Lastly, we are proud to have started building our team in 2014 and continue to do so in 2015. Ryan Carlie joined us as a real estate manager in St. Louis in 2014. Ryan comes with deep market experience as an industrial broker and a knack for deal making, which will help us expand our business. We also have job openings for two to three project managers and a construction superintendent, among others, for 2015.

It’s an exciting time to be involved in commercial real estate in St. Louis and the entire metro region.