A Committee of Creve Coeur Residents
Creve Coeur, Missouri 63141
April 13, 2026
Honorable Mayor Hoffman
Members of the Creve Coeur City Council
Mr. Jason Jaggi, Director of Community Development
Ms. Bethany Moore, Senior Planner
City of Creve Coeur
300 North New Ballas Road
Creve Coeur, Missouri 63141
Re: Opposition to Graeser Station Rezoning — Planned Zoning District Application Nos. 25-034 and 25-035
Dear Mayor Hoffman, Council Members, and City Staff:
On behalf of Graeser Neighbors for Safety (GNS), a committee of Creve Coeur residents and neighbors, we respectfully submit this letter in opposition to the proposed Graeser Station development and the associated rezoning of the property at the southwest corner of Olive Boulevard and Graeser Road from General Commercial (GC) to a Planned Zoning District (PZD).
We are not opposed to development. We want to see this corner developed appropriately — whether that means neighborhood-scale retail, restaurants, professional offices, or even residential housing that complies with the city's adopted standards. We are opposed to this development — at this scale, at this density, under these terms, and under circumstances where the full financial burden to residents has not been determined.
Enclosed with this letter are:
We ask that all enclosed materials be entered into the public record for this matter.
Procedural Note — Supermajority Required: Pursuant to Section 89.060 RSMo, because a valid protest petition has been filed by owners of 30% or more of the land within 185 feet of the proposed district, this rezoning requires the affirmative vote of at least six (6) of the eight (8) Council members to pass. Nine of the ten immediately adjacent property owners have signed the protest petition. First Community Credit Union, located directly across Graeser Road from the proposed site, has submitted a separate letter of concern. A simple majority is not sufficient. A 4–4 tie is a denial.
The Creve Coeur Planning & Zoning Commission evaluated this proposal against the city's adopted zoning code, Comprehensive Plan, and design standards — and voted NOT FAVORABLE on March 16, 2026. GNS has identified eight specific areas of noncompliance. We urge Council to weigh each carefully.
The property is zoned General Commercial (GC), intended for small-scale, neighborhood-compatible commercial development (Creve Coeur Zoning Code, Section 405.360). Residential apartments are not a permitted use. The developer requires Council to approve a rezoning to a Planned Zoning District to make 147 apartments possible. Without that approval, this project cannot be built as proposed.
The city's Comprehensive Plan envisions the East Olive corridor as a walkable area of small-scale retail, neighborhood services, and low-density residential — with a maximum of 20 dwelling units per acre (Chapter 4, East Olive Vision). This proposal introduces 147 units on 4.42 acres, equaling 33.3 units per acre — exceeding the city's own high-density threshold by more than 65%. This is not a marginal variance. It is a fundamental departure from the adopted plan.
Furthermore, the city's own MX Mixed Use District standards (Section 405.340) establish a maximum building height of three (3) stories or thirty-five (35) feet, whichever is less. This proposal is four stories. The developer cannot meet this standard under conventional mixed-use zoning, which is why the Planned Zoning District is being requested — because a PZD, once approved, replaces all prior zoning regulations including height limits. We recognize this mechanism exists in the code. We submit that its purpose is to accommodate genuine site constraints and public benefits, not to circumvent the height and density standards the city has deliberately adopted for this corridor to preserve the character of the surrounding area, particularly the adjacent residential properties.
As noted during the P&Z Commission's review and subsequent denial: to approve a high-density development on this site, when consistently all Creve Coeur documentation denotes low-density development, undermines community engagement and city strategic planning.
The Neighborhood Commercial (NC) designation supports low- to medium-density development that provides a transition between more intense commercial districts and residential areas. This proposal introduces a level of density and intensity inconsistent with that purpose and with all existing development patterns south of Olive Boulevard.
The city's Design Guidelines require new development to be compatible in architectural and urban scale with surrounding uses. A four-story, approximately 162,000 square-foot building with 147 residential units is not compatible with the adjacent single-family neighborhoods of Martin Grove, Mary Meadows, and the surrounding residential context. No apartment building of this scale and context exists in the East Olive Corridor.
Throughout the P&Z process, city staff and the developer cited comparison projects. Some are in other municipalities entirely; those within Creve Coeur (such as The Nest) are all located north of Olive Boulevard — in areas already surrounded by apartment complexes, three-story buildings, and other high-density commercial development. None of the cited comparisons are adjacent to single-family homes in the East Olive Corridor — which is the distinguishing characteristic of this site. Even the Clayton examples are limited to three stories. Every comparison offered is from a fundamentally different context.
Unlike the comparison communities of Clayton and Maplewood, there is no street parking available on either Olive Boulevard or Graeser Road. First Community Credit Union — which sits directly across Graeser Road from the proposed site and whose driveway cut-out would face the development's cut-out — has stated in writing that it will not permit overflow parking and will tow unauthorized vehicles.
The developer's own parking study (Lochmueller Group, revised February 2026) admits this directly: the site requires 326 parking spaces under the city's code (Section 405.820). The project provides 260 — a shortage of 66 spaces, or 20.3% less than required. The study then argues this deficit is acceptable under a "shared parking" model that assumes residential demand peaks overnight while commercial demand peaks during the day. Even under this optimistic model, Saturday evenings at 6:00 PM show 209 of 260 spaces occupied — leaving just 51 spaces as a cushion for 147 households, a 100-seat restaurant, 5,000 square feet of retail, and all guest, delivery, and overflow demand. The model assumes perfect textbook conditions: no events, no holidays, no double-parked moving vehicles, no guests staying overnight, and — critically — no work-from-home residents, which fundamentally undermines the assumption that apartments are empty during the day.
The city's code (Section 405.800.G) does allow City Council to rescind joint parking approval with 15 days' notice if it becomes a public nuisance — but in that scenario, the owners must provide additional parking. There is no physical space on this site to add parking after the building is constructed. Once approved, this deficit is permanent.
The situation is already strained. A cannabis dispensary operating on the adjacent parcel to the west currently generates parking spillover into the vacant lot near the Thai restaurant. That informal overflow capacity disappears entirely if this project is built. The parking problem does not exist in isolation — it compounds with every adjacent use.
The site does not meet the minimum acreage thresholds required for increased height allowances under the city's mixed-use provisions (Section 405.340). The development exceeds what is permitted for a site of this size — which is precisely why the developer requires a Planned Zoning District rather than developing under conventional zoning.
Section 405.390 establishes that a PZD should be used when a site has unique constraints that conventional zoning cannot address, and when the proposed development advances the goals of the Comprehensive Plan and provides a clear public benefit. This proposal meets none of those criteria:
Council members should be aware that this is not the first time the City of Creve Coeur has been asked to approve an incompatible development on this exact property.
In 2020, QuikTrip applied for a Conditional Use Permit for a gas station and convenience store at this site. P&Z voted against recommending approval. City Council unanimously denied the application.
The property owners — BG Olive & Graeser LLC and Forsyth Investments LLC, entities led by Tom Stern of Gershman Commercial Real Estate — sued the City of Creve Coeur, alleging discrimination. A circuit court judge overturned the Council's unanimous decision and ordered the city to issue the permit.
Creve Coeur appealed. The case went to the Missouri Supreme Court (SC99619), which heard oral arguments on October 26, 2022. On December 21, 2022, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court and ruled in favor of Creve Coeur, holding that:
"The City reserves full authority to deny any request for a conditional use, to impose conditions on the use or to revoke approval at any time, upon a finding that the permitted conditional use will or has become unsuitable."
— BG Olive & Graeser, LLC v. City of Creve Coeur, 658 S.W.3d 44 (Mo. 2022)
The Court rejected the notion that meeting technical zoning criteria obligates a city to approve a project. The Missouri Municipal League filed an amicus brief in support of Creve Coeur, arguing that allowing a single judge to override municipal land-use decisions would "create delays, increase the costs, and make hearings more formal and confrontational."
This ruling is directly applicable. The Supreme Court affirmed that this Council has discretionary authority over land-use decisions for this property. That authority was hard-won. We respectfully urge Council to exercise it.
While the property owner has the right to ask any price for this land, the economics of a private commercial real estate transaction should not dictate whether the city abandons its adopted planning standards. The developer has publicly stated that based on the cost to purchase this property, the scale and density of the project are what the developer needs for the transaction to be economically viable. This is not a justification for rezoning.
The property owners are solely responsible for the current state of the site, and the record speaks for itself:
For context on the scale of what is being proposed: the previous two buildings on this site totaled approximately 20,000 square feet. The proposed Graeser Station development totals approximately 163,500 square feet across four stories — more than eight times the built area that previously existed on this site.
The current vacancy also distorts the developer's traffic study. The study labels the strip malls as "abandoned" and credits the project with removing their traffic, making the net new trip count appear small. The appropriate traffic baseline is a functioning commercial site, not the current condition.
Council should evaluate this proposal on its merits against the Comprehensive Plan — not against the current condition of a site that has been in transition for years.
The developer has publicly stated — on his own company's website — that this project will require public subsidies, including:
The specific terms, duration, and financial impact of these incentives have not been defined and will not be known prior to Council's vote on the rezoning.
This is the sequence the developer is asking Council to follow:
Council and residents deserve to know the full cost before, not after, the foundational approval is granted.
The impact of this development on the Ladue School District — in terms of both enrollment and revenue — is unknown. Tax abatement, CID, and TDD mechanisms have the potential to reduce or redirect revenue that would otherwise reach the district. Until the terms of the incentive package are defined, the fiscal impact on Ladue schools cannot be evaluated. Council is being asked to approve the rezoning without this information.
A 147-unit apartment complex with 8,500 square feet of retail — including a proposed quick-service restaurant — will generate additional daily vehicle trips at an intersection that is already rated as a failing level of service under current conditions.
The developer's own Traffic Impact Study (HR Green, revised February 2026) documents the following conditions before the project is built:
By comparison, with the development built, conditions worsen: the northbound left turn at Olive & Graeser degrades from LOS E to LOS F by 2036 (82.9 seconds delay), and traffic on Olive approaching the Graeser Road signal queues to 775 feet during PM peak — a line of vehicles stretching nearly to the Schulte Road intersection. The proposed mitigation — prohibiting left turns out of the main site entrance onto Olive and adding protected/permissive left-turn phasing at Graeser/Olive — does not resolve the fundamental capacity deficit. It redistributes delay from one intersection to another.
No apartment building of this scale and context — four stories, 147 units, approximately 162,000 square feet — exists anywhere in the East Olive Corridor. If this project is approved, it becomes the local precedent. The next developer to propose a high-density project along Olive south of the boulevard will point to Graeser Station and say: "You already approved one."
This decision determines what Olive Street Road becomes south of the boulevard for the next 50 years. We urge Council to set a precedent that aligns with the Comprehensive Plan, not one that abandons it.
GNS believes Council should be aware of the following matters of public record regarding Garrison Companies and its principal, Garrison "Gary" Hassenflu, based in Prairie Village, Kansas:
We raise these matters not as personal attacks, but because they are relevant to the Council's assessment of whether this developer and this project represent a reliable, long-term benefit to Creve Coeur.
GNS is not asking for an empty lot. We have consistently stated — in P&Z sessions, in writing, and in conversations with city staff — that we want this site developed. We would welcome neighborhood-scale commercial uses, professional offices, restaurants, medical facilities, or appropriately scaled residential housing. What we cannot support is a project that overrides the city's own adopted standards. Specifically, we support:
We anticipate that this opposition may be characterized as resistant to change. It is not. It is a request that the city follow its own adopted plan — a plan that was created with community input, through a democratic process, and that already contemplates and welcomes development at this site. A compliant project could have broad community support. This is not that project.
We believe it is important for Council to honestly assess what this project delivers to the city, and to address claims made in correspondence submitted by the property owner.
We have attempted to identify every tangible benefit this project provides to Creve Coeur. Here is the complete list:
Every one of these benefits could be achieved by a project that complies with the Comprehensive Plan. None of them require the city to abandon its adopted standards.
The property owner, Tom Stern of Gershman Commercial Real Estate, submitted a letter to the city regarding the proposed redevelopment. We ask that Council evaluate his claims in the following contexts:
Mr. Stern writes that the properties "have been available for redevelopment for more than 10 years and at least 4 users have been denied."
The referenced redevelopment proposals for the property were all significant departures from the Comprehensive Plan, required significant rezoning, and/or a conditional use permit. The common theme has been high density, high volume, high traffic in order to make the project economically viable for the purchaser. We are not aware of any redevelopment proposals over the last 10 years for projects that comply with the city's adopted standards vis-à-vis the property zoning and Comprehensive Plan. This begs the question of whether the asking price has been in line with developing permitted uses on the property. There is an old saying in real estate: "if a property sits on the market, it's overpriced."
Mr. Stern writes that "at least 4 users have approached the City for approval, only to be advised by staff or been opposed by neighbors and denied."
If the city, the courts, and the neighbors have consistently said no, perhaps the message is not that the process is broken — it is that the proposals do not fit. We are aware that Waterway Car Wash explored this site and withdrew after learning that their garage bay doors could not face adjacent residences — a standard zoning requirement, not an unusual obstacle. That is not a denial. It is a code compliance issue that the applicant chose not to work around. The only formal denial on this property was the QuikTrip Conditional Use Permit, which City Council rejected unanimously and the Missouri Supreme Court upheld.
Mr. Stern writes that "the City has received positive results from parking and traffic studies."
The developer's own traffic study required MoDOT signal modifications, prohibits left turns exiting the site westbound, and prompted First Community Credit Union — directly across Graeser Road — to submit a letter of concern and announce a towing policy for overflow parking. These are not "positive results." They are acknowledgments that the site cannot absorb the traffic this project generates without mitigation measures and restrictions.
Mr. Stern writes that the project "will provide housing for the type of residents the City should desire (young, upwardly mobile or current residents wishing to downsize)."
The developer's own company, Garrison Companies, was formed specifically to develop Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and subsidized housing. The developer has publicly stated the project requires tax abatement, a CID, and a TDD to achieve financial viability. The marketing pitch of "young, upwardly mobile" residents does not align with the developer's actual business model or the financial structure of the project as described by the developer himself. Furthermore, the proposed unit mix — 27 studios, 114 one-bedrooms, and only 6 two-bedrooms — is 96% studios and one-bedrooms. This is transient rental stock designed for high turnover, not a building designed for residents who intend to put down roots in Creve Coeur.
Mr. Stern writes that "it would be a shame for a few dozen residents to deprive a city of 18,000 others of this quality project."
This isn't about "a few dozen residents'" objections depriving the city of this project. This is about a project whose public subsidies have not been disclosed and setting a precedent that would override the Comprehensive Plan for the entire East Olive Corridor. The 18,000 residents of Creve Coeur are not being deprived. They are being protected by a Comprehensive Plan that was adopted with community input, through a democratic process, for exactly this purpose — to ensure that development decisions reflect the best interests of the community.
We urge Council to evaluate this proposal on its own merits against the Comprehensive Plan. In our view, this is not the best outcome available for this site — it is the outcome that the current economics require. Those are not the same thing.
For the reasons set forth above, Graeser Neighbors for Safety respectfully requests that the Creve Coeur City Council:
We are grateful for the time and attention Council has devoted to this matter. We recognize the complexity of the decision before you. We ask only that the decision be guided by the standards the city has already adopted — standards that were created with community input, adopted through a democratic process, and upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court.
Respectfully submitted,
Graeser Neighbors for Safety
Brett Berger — Winfield Pointe Lane
Beth Levy — Spoede Road
Mark & Mary Rothstein — Little Creek Road
Lynn Berry — Graeser Road
Zoë Lemcovitz — Graeser Road
Web: graeserneighbors.org
Enclosures:
References Cited:
cc: Creve Coeur City Clerk (for public record)