CEO of Lawrence Group thinks there is a enormous amount of activity in downtown St. Louis

ST. LOUIS (KMOX ) - It's has been over two weeks since the Wall Street Journal published a story about downtown St. Louis, calling it a real estate nightmare and it is desperately trying to reverse its ‘doom loop.’

The story discusses a University of Toronto School of Cities study to see how 66 cities around North America have recovered since the COVID-19 Pandemic and found that St. Louis was the worst among the 66 cities, with the cities recovering only 53% to it's pre-COVID-19 levels as of Oct. 16 2023.

Many in the St. Louis-area chimed in their thoughts on the article including KMOX's own The Chris and Amy Show , regarding downtown St. Louis, with local officials like Alderwoman Cara Spencer thinking this is a 'wakeup call'.

Steve Smith, CEO of The Lawrence Group, an architecture group that has been in the area since 1983, pushed back on the piece, writing an opinion piece in the St. Louis Business Journal , saying that the city can change the perception of downtown St. Louis, while thinking some of what the story wrote was a little bit sensationalized.

"I practiced my career in downtown St. Louis for 40 years, so I know it well," Smith said on Total Information A.M. Tuesday. "We absolutely have some challenges and it's primarily isolated in the central Central Business District, but when you look what's happening in the greater downtown area, in the Central Corridor, there's an enormous amount of positive activity, investment."

Smith says he believes the perception of St. Louis is shaped by the city's urban core and that why The Lawrence group has put significant amount of time and investment to improving it for the last 20 years.

"If our front door to the world doesn't look vibrant, people perceive the whole region isn't vibrant," said Smith. "That's why it's so critical and why we been in the last 20 years investing redeveloping our wonderful legacy architecture and when you really look at it, a great many of the historic buildings have redeveloped, there's a lot less empty buildings than there used to be, we just have a couple of really big ones right now that is creating all this problem."

Smith says that while buildings like the Millennium Hotel and the AT&T Buildings are most infamous empty buildings in the area, Smith says the problem with St. Louis is a lot less worst than the likes of cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, and others cities.

(The Lawrence Group) does work all over the US and have offices in other cities and I can tell you places like New York, Chicago and San Francisco have some significant challenges right now with their under-occupied office buildings," said Smith. "You go to downtown San Francisco and there's like 30 empty buildings that are way under occupied. Chicago has more because of the work from home, a lot more issues, a lot more empty buildings than we have in St. Louis."

Smith says he believes the challenges that downtown St. Louis is facing can be addressed if civil, political and institutional leadership in St. Louis can come together, and they can solve the issues like what downtown St. Louis is going through.