America's forgotten 'doom loop' city, where $205m skyscrapers are selling for under $4m and the decaying downtown has become a ghost town

St. Louis downtown has become a ghost town - with buildings boarded up and skyscrapers plummeting in value. 

Major cities like San Francisco have hit headlines amid concerns their urban districts are in the grip of a doom loop - but a new report by the Wall Street Journal revealed that St. Louis' decaying downtown is facing an even worse crisis.

Take, St Louis's largest office building - its 44-story AT&T tower - for example. In 2006 this prime real estate sold for $205 million. 

But that same now vacant skyscraper recently sold for around $3.5 million - a shocking 98 percent drop in value in less than two decades, the outlet reported. 

The Railway Exchange Building, once the crown jewel of downtown St. Louis with its Famous Barr department store and sprawling offices, is also now an empty relic with peeling paint. 

St. Louis downtown has become a ghost town - with buildings boarded up and skyscrapers plummeting in value

One AT&T Center (the taller building on the right) is a 44-story building in downtown St. Louis, Missouri at 909 Chestnut Street on the Gateway Mall

The Railway Exchange Building, once the crown jewel of downtown St. Louis with its Famous Barr department store and sprawling offices, is also now an empty relic with peeling paint

The staggering decline is almost hard to believe for a metropolitan area that was the fourth largest in the United States between 1861 to 1903

Since 2012 a collection of the region's largest office buildings have dropped nearly 24 percent in appraised value, according to a 2022 analysis by The St. Louis Business Journal. 

Local media have dubbed the trend in the midwestern city a 'real estate apocalypse' after 18 of the 25 largest office buildings shed $150 million.

The staggering decline is almost hard to believe for a metropolitan area that was the fourth largest in the United States between 1861 to 1903. 

But modern-day St. Louis was hit hard by the pandemic, with its population sinking to below 300,000 for the first time since the 1800s, according to the New York Times. This compares to nearly 400,000 people living in St. Louis back in 1990.

In fact, St. Louis has seen the worst recovery in foot traffic to its downtown area of all other major US cities since just before the pandemic broke out in 2019.

The University of Toronto's School of Cities released data in October 2023 comparing the number of visits to major North American cities during a four-month period in 2019 to the same timeframe in 2023. 

St. Louis was ranked last out of 66 cities observed, while Las Vegas was the only city to actually increase its visits since 2019.

Downtown St Louis from the vantage point of the Gateway Arch

St. Louis has seen the harshest COVID-19 clear out of its downtown area out of 66 North American cities

A person sits on a door stoop near downtown St. Louis on Thursday, May 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Now that office buildings are emptying out in St. Louis, the streets too are desolate and uninviting for visitors. 

Plus, empty streets end up attracting speeding drivers, making them more unsafe for the people who do visit.

This scenario played out in 2023, when 17-year-old volleyball star Janae Edmondson was struck by a speeding vehicle while crossing an intersection. Edmondson lost both of her legs after the car that hit her slammed into another vehicle, leaving her pinned between.

But the downtown decay is not an entirely new phenomenon - with the trend beginning with the closure of Macy's in the Railway Exchange Building in 2013 as online shopping took off and a rash of department store shut across the US. 

Shortly after Macy's left, the rest of the office space in the Railway Exchange emptied. That has had the downstream effect of fewer customers for restaurants and shops in the downtown area, leading to droves of them closing. 

The businesses that do stay have to deal with frequent break-ins and vandalism, according to the Wall Street Journal.

'It’s a classic chicken and egg kind of deal,' Washington University economics professor Glenn MacDonald told outlet. 'People don’t go there because there’s nothing to do. There’s nothing to do because people don’t go there.'

So far, efforts from local officials and non-government organizations to revitalize the city have proven unsuccessful, despite the low rents in St. Louis. 

The city reportedly wants to convert office space into residential apartments, but those projects end up costing developers a lot of money. 

The New York Times reported in December 2022 that conversions like these could cost up to $500 per usable square foot.

For example, the Railway Exchange's owners in 2017 - four years after the Macy's there closed - announced a plan to redevelop the historic building into apartments and retail space. The plan failed and the owners defaulted on the mortgage, the Wall Street Journal reported.