Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

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Hoot45
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Re: Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

Post by Hoot45 »

Cherokee St is my hood. Thanks for checking us out Freed Roger. Hope it was a nice visit! The wife and I eat and drink pretty exclusively within about a 2 mile radius and we're out 3-5 times a week. And that's probably the norm. I've heard a few business owners say the locals frequent enough to keep the bills paid and the visitors make it profitable.

There is a surprising amount of hotel and apartment development going on downtown, along Wash Ave, and in the Grove. I always wonder where all those people are going to come from, but if they do, some of these bigger retail developments will be well positioned to capitalize on a big shift in population density.

When we moved to South City we stopped going to movies mainly because we loathe driving out to Ladue, Ronnie's, Gravois Bluffs, etc. The downtown MX Theater is close and nice, but it's small so you have limited films and hours. If this new place is cool I could see it getting us out to the movies more again. But it probably puts the MX out of business.

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Re: Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

Post by Freed Roger »

Hoot45 wrote:Cherokee St is my hood. Thanks for checking us out Freed Roger. Hope it was a nice visit! The wife and I eat and drink pretty exclusively within about a 2 mile radius and we're out 3-5 times a week. And that's probably the norm. I've heard a few business owners say the locals frequent enough to keep the bills paid and the visitors make it profitable.
Do you have any preference(s) among the Mexican restaurants?

Vista Ramen was great. Earthbound Brewery, the 1 beer I had that night wasn't good, but will go back because I know they have better beer there, and the space was neato. Around the corner, I was digging Byrd and Barrel's chicken nugz.

Anyways, I like how Cherokee St has grown naturally, as opposed to what we normally we get out in our hood.

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heyzeus
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Re: Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

Post by heyzeus »

Freed Roger wrote:
Hoot45 wrote:Cherokee St is my hood. Thanks for checking us out Freed Roger. Hope it was a nice visit! The wife and I eat and drink pretty exclusively within about a 2 mile radius and we're out 3-5 times a week. And that's probably the norm. I've heard a few business owners say the locals frequent enough to keep the bills paid and the visitors make it profitable.
Do you have any preference(s) among the Mexican restaurants?

Vista Ramen was great. Earthbound Brewery, the 1 beer I had that night wasn't good, but will go back because I know they have better beer there, and the space was neato. Around the corner, I was digging Byrd and Barrel's chicken nugz.

Anyways, I like how Cherokee St has grown naturally, as opposed to what we normally we get out in our hood.
I hope you patronise STL Style, too.

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haltz
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Re: Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

Post by haltz »

Hoot45 wrote:Cherokee St is my hood. Thanks for checking us out Freed Roger. Hope it was a nice visit! The wife and I eat and drink pretty exclusively within about a 2 mile radius and we're out 3-5 times a week. And that's probably the norm. I've heard a few business owners say the locals frequent enough to keep the bills paid and the visitors make it profitable.
I do some contract work with a newer spot down there and over this miserable winter we basically hold our breath during the week and then it's jammed on the weekends. Personally I think we really won't know anything until the warmer weather makes the area more walkable.

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JL21
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Re: Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

Post by JL21 »

heyzeus wrote:Time to get all "I'm kinda a big deal" on y'all. I'm friends (not besties, mind you) with the founder/owner of Alamo Drafthouse. And I'm good friends with some of their creative team. LOOK AT ME I AM IMPORTANT.

ANYWAY, you're gonna like it. Even though you're probably getting a watered down corporate franchise experience, it'll still be good. It's a movie theater run by movie and pop culture geeks. What that means is they put together clever film and video clips tailored to the movie you're about to see, they host screenings of interesting or cult movies, sometimes they do live events with directors or actors, and they have a no talking or texting during a movie policy that they strictly enforce. They will kick people out of the theater who violate it. That alone makes it worth going.

The food and drinks are ok and reasonably priced for movies, and their system of getting it out to your seat is pretty clever. Ordering a bucket of beers while watching a movie is particularly enjoyable. Often they'll have food and drink specials based on whatever big movie is showing, which is fun. And you reserve your seat when you buy tickets in advance online.
So yeah... I'll double down on this. Here are my Alamo tips:

-Show up early. Stupid early. Like 30 minutes early. Not because you'll need to, but because you'll want to see the pre-shows, which are [expletive] great. They're seriously my favorite part of going to the Alamo. Example- they played 30ish minutes of stuff like this before The Last Jedi, or this before Wonder Woman, or this before Keanu. These folks just have a [expletive] load of fun putting this stuff together. For instance, here's the no talking PSA prior to It:



-The food is not bad... I could take or leave it. EXCEPT the popcorn is damn good and huge and comes out in a giant silver bowl. Also, they do giant tasty cookies. And you can get some of this stuff free! IF...

-...you join their rewards program- Alamo Victory. I know, I sound like I'm making a dumb sales pitch. But seriously... they give you some pretty damn good rewards if you do the Victory thing, including a free ticket on your birthday, free cookies, free popcorn... And you get more rewards the more you go.

We've gotten to the point where, especially for newer releases where there will be huge audiences (like The Last Jedi), we refuse to see it anywhere else because we know there won't be kids screaming and kicking us, no people pulling out their cell phones, no movie nuisances at all. And for some perspective, our Alamo is a good 30-40 minutes away, and we have tons of decent theaters much closer to us- hell, within walking distance. But 3/4ths of our movie-going experiences are at Alamo.

Oh... and our Alamo has an adjoining bar (I bet they all do- zeus can verify this), and it has one of the better beer selections I've seen in DC. Like... I [expletive] drank a Perennial Abraxas- IN DC!!!- during a movie last year.

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Swirls
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Re: Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

Post by Swirls »

Yeah, they all feature at least 30 taps of local domestic craft beer for that particular area. They also each have their own menu and cocktail list with regional stuff - the Springfield MO Alamo actually has Springfield style cashew chicken on it, but they do it in a kabob fashion I think. We also got buffalo chicken poutine at the Springfield one.

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Re: Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

Post by TimeForGuinness »

heyzeus wrote:
Freed Roger wrote:
Hoot45 wrote:Cherokee St is my hood. Thanks for checking us out Freed Roger. Hope it was a nice visit! The wife and I eat and drink pretty exclusively within about a 2 mile radius and we're out 3-5 times a week. And that's probably the norm. I've heard a few business owners say the locals frequent enough to keep the bills paid and the visitors make it profitable.
Do you have any preference(s) among the Mexican restaurants?

Vista Ramen was great. Earthbound Brewery, the 1 beer I had that night wasn't good, but will go back because I know they have better beer there, and the space was neato. Around the corner, I was digging Byrd and Barrel's chicken nugz.

Anyways, I like how Cherokee St has grown naturally, as opposed to what we normally we get out in our hood.
I hope you patronise STL Style, too.
...and the Whiskey Ring. Good People.

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heyzeus
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Re: Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

Post by heyzeus »

To the best of my knowledge, every Alamo has a full bar. Some of them also have an event space and karaoke lounge attached to them.

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Re: Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

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Freed Roger
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Re: Alamo Drafthouse and others coming to STL city foundry

Post by Freed Roger »

Ok, somebody has to provide the boring info on the tax breaks - (breaks that, presumably, owners of nearby property that house competing restaurants, bars, entertainment may not always get).

tenants don't get the break directly, the landlord gets it first.

This is a $330 mill project. initially phase gets $19 million in TIF. (they get a check.)
5.7% of project cost. Not sure if more TIF coming, and state tax credits etc. In my burb, the TIFS usually end up 15-20% of the whole. Hence our 9.5% sales tax rate.

Also, hidden cost to cities can be infrastructure around this place. And use of city services that would get covered by taxes (police, F-D) - our local developments get a lot of extra attention there.

Property tax abatements - 95% for 10 years and 50% for 5. Kind of tricky as far as cost or opportunity cost (been a long time since school - no time value of money factored). According to the spoilered calc, I modestly estimate that landlord saves about $120 million in property tax over the 15 years, vs what $330 mill of commercial property would be paying. Presumably that space isn't pulling anywhere near $9 mill per year in prop tax currently. So tricky how to that works and what is a benefit cost. Point is, it is a big break they get over any sort of competition.
[SHOW]
Using example 2 the tax was 3.1% on $180k commercial bldg. so if FMV of new space is $300Million, and 95% ten yrs and so on. rough estimates.
https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/d ... -taxes.cfm
A few more thoughts. Article mentions SLU has some control over nearby tax abatements. Does SLU pay taxes ? I'm guessing a lot of what they do is exempt. Nearby hospitals, under SLU - no property taxes. CORTEX, and IKEA? ...

Also, the examples I saw on STL webpage shows that real estate tax is about 3% of FMV for commercial and residential. Damn that is steep - my prop tax works out to be about 1% (though our sales tax is like 9.5 % to pay for all our TIFS -on the plus side, public school dist good and they have/use about $18K per student in annually)

Anyway, not that this is bad- this [expletive] just makes me think of precedents (like the [expletive] Rams/Kroenke, and what Cardinals get etc) and fairness, as well as balancing it all out with residences and schools. One thing leads to another

if I went back in time, I'd have liked to have studied city planning in school. Somewhere there would be a midwestern town with a 1/100 brewery to resident ratio, and singletrack/hiking trails out the ying yang.

Anyways carry on. Alamo Drafthouse [expletive] yea! party!

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