There is a major development going on around SLU that was last year branded “Prospect Yards.” The name was voted upon last March by select members of the SLU family, SSM Health employees and others within the community. The area connects north and south campuses; bordered by Grand Boulevard and Vandeventer Avenue. The project, led by the St. Louis Midtown Redevelopment Corporation, is composed of a number of individual redevelopment projects that coincide with one another as an attempt to revitalize an area of midtown that has since become largely vacant.

One such individual project is that of the Northeast corner of Grand Boulevard and Chouteau Ave. There stands a six-story, largely vacant building that the owner and developer, Michael Hamburg, intends to renovate into a 145-unit apartment complex.

The vicinity of these apartments to SLU and SLU Hospital will be particularly pertinent to students as well as SSM Health employees. “Our goal was to cater to a wide array of different tenants, including students,” said Hamburg, “most of our units are one-bedroom because of that.”

The relationships between these developments and the SLU community has always been at the forefront of the planning process. Meetings and discussions have been organized not only with the St. Louis Midtown Redevelopment Corporation, but also SLU CFO, David Heimburger and President Pestello, as well as various SLU board members. “My goal is always to make sure that I’m delivering what the university’s demands are,” explained Hamburg, “So that means, obviously, listening very closely to what the leaders of the university are wanting or what they are hearing students wanting.”

One of the big focuses of this new project is to turn midtown into a stronger entertainment area, given that it is currently lacking in its supply of bars and restaurants. New developers like Hamburg want to change this, “we want to make this a live, work, play, type of environment for students.”

The first phase of the apartment building is scheduled to be done by the end of May with 33 apartments completed. Sometime towards the end of Summer it is expected that the second phase will be done, including another 15 apartments and a microbrewery below. The third and final phase of 96 apartments is expected to start construction sometime in mid to late Summer; completion being in late 2020, close to the completion of the new SLU Hospital building.