The Reconstruction of 3305 Meramec Proves No Building is "Too Far Gone To Save"
- Chris Stritzel
- 10 minutes ago
- 4 min read
When we’re told that a building is “too far gone to save”, what does that mean? Is it that the structure is in too poor of a condition to safely reuse? Is it because the rents necessary to justify a project aren’t there? Or is the problem that we, as a society, have grown used to treating things as disposable, including very expensive things like buildings? The answer may be a combination of the three, but St. Louis is lucky to have a handful of these projects that took one of those “too far gone” properties and brought it back to life. Most notably, North 14th Street between Warren and St. Louis Avenue in Old North or St. Anthony of Padua (after the fire).
Now we have another one to add to the list and it wasn’t one that most people gave much thought to - 3305 Meramec.
Part of Lutheran Development Group’s (LDG) and Rise Community Development’s (RiseSTL) Marquette Homes project, which will add 60 affordable homes and commercial space across the Greater Dutchtown Neighborhood in new and old buildings, this ongoing redevelopment is far more complex than it initially seems.
When LDG and Rise acquired the property for their Marquette Homes project, they launched a careful “shoring up” of the structure to prevent collapse and improve public safety. The issuance of a building permit in May 2025, in the amount of $1,775,000, drew ire from Facebook users who follow my counterpart, NextSTL. Comments generally followed a negative sentiment social media users have towards anything positive in the City of St. Louis.
Prior to stabilization, the 3-story building, constructed in 1900, was silently collapsing. The original interior stairwell began to rot away beginning when the building was previously occupied. Prior residents used an exterior stairwell to get to and from their unit. After the building went entirely vacant, the original interior stairs slowly collapsed, pulling portions of the floors with them and weakening the structure. Add in a flood that filled the basement with water, and subsequently turned the original stone foundations to dust, and you had a building held up only by it’s brick walls and the remaining, but rotting, wood trusses. But even those exterior bricks were being weakened thanks to uncontrolled ivy growth. To say the building was a danger to public safety was an understatement. It was a literal ticking time bomb that put the general public at risk.
Fast forward to last year’s building permit issuance, crews carefully removed the collapsed and rotting wood, performed emergency tuckpointing work, wrapped the building in scaffolding, removed a portion of the rear wall that was bowing out (at risk of collapse itself) and pumped water out of the basement. New foundation piers were placed into the ground to hold up the center wall (replacing the original stone foundations) and the basement was filled in. All of that was done just to let the building get to a condition where construction workers could safely enter the structure.
Even today, after months of work, progress on the interior of the building is far behind that of Marquette’s other components, but the importance of the stabilization work cannot be understated. A new building is practically being built in the shell of the old, retaining a 125-year-old building and proving that anything’s possible with determination.
LDG and Rise’s plans call for the building to be home to 10 apartments and a small commercial space fronting Meramec Street. Two apartments will sit on the first floor with the upper floors consisting of 4 units per floor. All apartments will be one-bedroom, one-bathroom and, like other components of Marquette Homes, will be geared towards those earning 30%-60% of the area’s median income. There will be a parking pad on the backside of the property that’s accessed from the alley.
When I was shown the property on May 12th, the prior decay was still evident. Some rotting wood still remained inside of the building, but it posed no real threat to us. There’s a distinct beauty to standing on the first floor and seeing through the upper floors of the building all the way to the roof, especially knowing what this building went through in recent years. New plumbing pipes have been installed on the first floor and will eventually rise up to serve the upper floors. The new foundations I mentioned earlier are visible in the form of new steel rising out of the gravel that filled the basement and holding up existing structural steel.
We also climbed the scaffolding to the second story and were treated to a view of Meramec Street.
The view of this classic Southside commercial corridor was sweet from the 2nd floor. It was also an opportunity to see some classic St. Louis brickwork up close.
The road ahead for this project is still long, but with the hardest component completed, it should be relatively smooth sailing from here on. The day the scaffolding comes down to reveal new windows and a restored building will be the day the “impossible” was made possible.
A project like this is possible thanks to low income housing tax credits (LIHTC) from the Feds and State, Historic Tax Credits (HTCs) and some soft funds from the City through the Community Development Administration (CDA).
CORE10 Architects is serving as the project architect. EM Harris is serving as the general contractor. If I had to guess, 3305 Meramec has at least a year’s worth of work left, but taking time to do something right is worth it. Not just for the neighborhood but the City in general. One less vacant building and one less potential vacant lot.
The gallery below features additional images of the building from my visit on May 12th and an image of the building prior to the commencement of reconstruction (those photos come from LDG)..
