PwC-Anchored Office Tower Tops Out in St. Louis

The PwC Pennant Building groundbreaking ceremony. Image courtesy of St. Louis Cardinals/The Cordish Companies

The Cordish Cos. and the St. Louis Cardinals celebrated the topping out of The PwC Pennant Building, a Class A office tower that forms part of the $260 million expansion of Ballpark Village in downtown St. Louis. Anchored by accounting firm PwC, the 11-story building will deliver 120,000 square feet of office space.

Investment bank ButcherJoseph & Co. will be the second tenant in the new property, taking 8,000 square feet. Located at the corner of Walnut and Eighth streets, The PwC Pennant Building is scheduled to open this summer as the first new-construction office building in the city’s downtown in more than a generation.

HKS Architects, Hord Coplan Macht and Tao & Lee designed the tower, which is being constructed by PARIC Corporation. The property along Cardinal Way will also offer street-level retail and 460 parking spaces. PwC will have a private rooftop deck.

Swinging for the fences

Ballpark Village Phase 2. Rendering courtesy of St. Louis Cardinals/The Cordish Companies

The placing of the last beam in the PwC-branded building marks a milestone for the second phase of Ballpark Village, which is slated to provide 700,000 square feet of mixed-use space upon completion. Also under development are a three-story retail pavilion anchored by Onelife Fitness, a Live! by Loews hotel and a 29-story residential tower called One Cardinal Way.

The Cordish Cos. and the St. Louis Cardinals teamed up on the 10-acre, master-planned Ballpark Village after the Major League Baseball team opened Busch Stadium in 2006. The $100 million first phase of the project, a dining and entertainment district, opened in 2014 and has drawn more than 20 million customers in its first four years. The partners broke ground on the second phase of the project outside of Busch Stadium in December 2017.

The newly topped-out building will help strengthen fundamentals throughout the St. Louis office market, alongside other signature office projects being delivered toward the end of 2019 and the start of next year, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield.

The brokerage found that the downtown submarket posted 16,000 square feet of positive office absorption in the first quarter of 2019, while vacancy reached 18.7 percent. Office vacancy across St. Louis City tightened to 17.4 percent, the lowest level in more than 15 years.