ĂÛèÖֱȄ

The council voted unanimously to a plan by The Staenberg Group to demolish the mall, at Clarkson Road and Interstate 64, and replace it with more than 2,500 apartment units, thousands of square feet of commercial space, pedestrian walkways and other amenities.

Demolition of the mall isn’t expected to begin until late 2024 at the earliest, and The Staenberg Group will need to get council approval for detailed construction plans for the site. But, after months of debate and delays, the vote Tuesday was a significant step forward, Mayor Bob Nation said.

“This has been a while coming and we still have some challenges ahead, and we’re looking forward to that,” Nation said after the vote. “And right now we’re all leaving united and looking forward to the future.”

The city’s action paves the way for a project that, along with a neighboring housing and retail development called Wildhorse Village, represents more than $2 billion of new development poised to remake some of the last undeveloped land in Chesterfield, a major shopping destination in the St. Louis region and one of the wealthiest suburbs in the state of ĂÛèÖֱȄ.

The vote was greeted with applause from more than two dozen people in the crowd, including a handful who urged the council to support a project they said would be transformational for the city.

“The positive impact of this project will be felt for decades to come,” said Debbie Shaw.

The action Tuesday followed years of debate over a concept that originated around 2018, after the Chesterfield Mall went into default and The Staenberg Group bought the Sears building there in a separate transaction. That deal essentially blocked an attempt by a Georgia-based company to redevelop the land, and The Staenberg Group acquired the rest of the site in 2020 and pitched a mixed-use downtown concept for the site.

Last year, the City Council approved $353 million in tax increment financing meant to go toward paying for new infrastructure at the mall site and nearby areas. But the vote followed weeks of debate and fierce pushback by Rockwood and Parkway school districts, which argued the new developments would add hundreds of students without the taxes to support them. City officials have said the TIF will go toward paying for new infrastructure at the mall site and nearby areas.

In February, Dillard’s department store, whose location at the mall has been closed since 2016, sued the city to stop the redevelopment and asked St. Louis County Circuit Court to overturn the TIF, arguing the property wasn’t properly blighted. The retailer said it always planned to reopen its store after it closed and asked the court to exclude Dillard’s property from any redevelopment and bar the city from using eminent domain against it.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Chesterfield residents raised concerns the proposed mall redevelopment had too much housing and lacked guidelines to ensure a mixed-use concept.

By last month, TSG and the citizen group, Preserve Chesterfield, came to an agreement to drop the number of planned apartments from 2,880 to 2,538. The developer also agreed to more than a dozen other changes, including limiting building height to no more than 200 feet and requiring first-floor space that faces the park and main streets be used for commercial development, not residential.

But the council’s four-person planning committee proposed the city take it a step further, voting 4-1 to recommend an additional restriction that would have capped the amount of ground floor space apartments could take up at 1.35 million square feet — about 60% of the 55 buildable acres on the 96-acre site.

TSG, frustrated with the proposal, asked the city to delay the project indefinitely.

But instead, at the last council meeting, the council voted 5-4 to reject the proposed restriction and then 7-1 to give the mall redevelopment first-round approval. TSG, however, declined to publicly comment on whether it would commit to the project.

By Tuesday, TSG reached a compromise with council members to add one last change to the plans requiring that three individual parcels encircling the development be devoted entirely to commercial construction.

Councilwoman Mary Monachella, who had been among council members pushing last month to restrict the project’s housing footprint, said the move would help ensure the project would stay as a mixed-use development.

John Nations, a former Chesterfield mayor and now an attorney representing TSG, said the developer looked forward to working with the council on the project, which he said fit with long-term city planning for the community.

“This is the biggest project in the region at the moment,” Nations said in an interview after the meeting. “We will be working diligently to give the community exactly what they talked about and exactly what the council approved.”