The developer of a new 29-story plyscraper in downtown St. Louis, hoping to put the city on the map for tall timber construction, is planning to break ground late, pending development approval this year. That is according to Brian Pratt, AHM managing principal and partner, who said the 314 — a 287-apartment, 15,000-square-foot mixed-use tower at 2100 Locust Street overlooking Energizer Park — will be a “great marquee landmark for Downtown West.”
The project cleared a critical financing hurdle late last year after the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority approved $171 million in bonds and a construction sales tax exemption for the broader $232 million, five-phase scheme — putting AHM Group in a position to finalise its design, secure remaining funding and select a general contractor before construction commences.
Designed by Milwaukee-based Korb + Associates Architects in collaboration with St. Louis firms Trivers Architects and Arcturis, The 314 will deliver its 287 apartments above a seven-storey post-tensioned concrete parking podium, with structural engineers KPFF and civil engineering firm Civil Design Inc. also attached to the project.
AHM first pitched the project in 2022 before pausing due to volatile financing conditions, using the intervening period to monitor how comparable mass timber apartment projects across the United States performed. Pratt said those developments experienced faster leasing and higher rents than traditionally built apartments — validation that has given AHM the confidence to advance.
Wood Central understands the tower forms the centrepiece of a broader five-phase activation of roughly 12 acres in Downtown West — a precinct AHM describes as surrounded by demand drivers including St. Louis University, the new National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency headquarters, CityPark and Union Station. “All five phases together form a perfect scenario that is all market types,” said Zachary Wilson, vice president of economic development incentives for the St. Louis Development Corporation. “A mix of commercial and office space and residential fits nicely into that neighbourhood.”
AHM expects the CLT system to cut the construction schedule by at least 90 days compared to an equivalent concrete build, with Pratt saying cross-laminated timber gives developers a way to use less concrete without abandoning it entirely. “I hope that this is a catalyst for more structures being built using the same technologies — it feels really nice, and it could help St. Louis be placed on the sustainability map,” Howerton told St. Louis Radio.
Jason Korb, founder of Korb + Associates — whose firm delivered The Edison in Milwaukee before bringing the same system to St. Louis — said the material is reaching an inflection point in American construction. “It is rapidly hitting a tipping point here,” Korb told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “When we started our building [in Milwaukee] in 2020, there was no manufacturing capability in the US.”
The project will also require St. Louis to update its building codes to permit mass timber construction at this height, and includes at least 100 of the broader scheme’s 450-plus units earmarked for households earning up to 80 per cent of area median income. “We’re really focused on being able to create a neighbourhood that serves everyone, and that’s really driven through diversity of incomes and affordability,” Howerton said.
At 29 storeys, The 314 sits two floors below The Edison — Milwaukee’s 31-storey CLT tower, which broke ground in March 2025 on a 30-month construction schedule pointing to a late-2027 completion. St. Louis’s window to claim the world’s tallest timber crown is closing, contingent entirely on how quickly AHM secures its remaining financing and puts a builder on site — but Pratt says the neighbourhood momentum is already visible on the street. “You can see it in the number of people down here, the number of people walking their dogs and choosing to live here,” he said. “We’re looking to build on that daytime population.”
