This time it's back in the news for existing! At least, for existing, eventually! Ballpark Village, the long-delayed replacement for the Busch Stadium architects' ill-advised decorative Giant Pit has gone from a regional joke to a regional joke that has "a framework for financing back together again", according to St. Louis Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt.
↵Ballpark Village, thanks in part to its absurd status as the Duke Nukem Forever of retail developments, remains the rallying point for everybody in St. Louis who is still kind of pissed off about losing the old Busch Stadium, but that's not the only reason the team's getting more and more eager to show a little progress—according to the terms of their agreement with the city of St. Louis the Cardinals could be liable for millions of dollars in fines if it's not complete by 2012. I'm not sure they're going to hit that deadline; they'll find the market for slick themed restaurants and "one-of-a-kind entertainment venues" a little softer than it was in 2006.
↵What's in the plans for the latest iteration of Ballpark Village? Well, I hope you weren't planning on moving there—in the current, stripped-down proposal the condos are out. DeWitt promises "225,000 square feet of office space and 100,000 square feet of retail space", although we at SB Nation St. Louis have been told that he doesn't yet have commitments from the saxophone buskers out by the chain-link fence, the primary retail tenants in the current iteration of Ballpark Village.
↵