Hayden to Convert Top Floors of Millennium Center to Apartments

By Gabriel Circiog, Associate Editor

Downtown St. Louis’ first glass-walled office tower, the Millennium Center, has been acquired by developer Brian Hayden who intends to move the existing tenants to lower floors and renovate the higher floors as apartments, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Located at 515 Olive Street, the newly acquired Millennium Center, originally called the Executive Office Building, was designed by Chicago-based firm A. Epstein & Sons. The Modernist-style tower was the first structure in downtown St. Louis to feature a lightweight glass curtain-wall façade and also the first building to be constructed after the depression. Construction of the building was finalized in 1962.

Brian Hayden purchased the building from New York-based Nassimi Franklin Development Inc., a company that had owned the building since 2008. Currently 36 percent leased, the Millennium center is mainly occupied by a printing company and law firms. The model shop of HOK and a Starbucks are located on the ground floor. Hayden intends to renovate the top 11 floors of the 20-story building, and plans feature 102 one- and two-bedroom apartments.

Hayden is considered an atypical St. Louis developer due to the fact that he doesn’t use historic preservation tax credits, tax abatement or any other form of public incentives for his projects. Although the cost of the Millennium Center project was not disclosed, he divulged to the newspaper that he was utilizing conventional bank financing from Citizens Community Bank in Mascoutah and First National Bank of Dietrich in Red Bud.

Hayden has previously had a similar approach on another downtown building: the former WS Hotel at 400 Washington Avenue. He acquired the vacant building from businessmen brothers Mike and Steve Roberts last year. Built in 1901, the seven-story building was transformed by Hayden into 78 apartments. Renamed Gallery 400, the building is now fully occupied.

Photo Courtesy of: Google Street View.