Tag: olivette

Categories
math-and-edu Saint Louis

Where to stay in St. Louis – 圣路易斯住哪里比较安全

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(01-23-2025) Last Saturday I learned wustl has an area that its school shuttle covers (don’t know where to find it online). And I came across this one about why people (mainly students I assume) usually live.

(11-03-2024 更新) 我上载了一个油管视频，是关于这个主题的，欢迎各种意见反馈。

(有人在小红书上问 #圣路易斯 哪里比较 #安全，我猜可能是华大学生，以下是我的回答）：综合考虑，建议住 #Clayton, #Brentwood, #Olivette 等。如果有上K-12的小孩，学区来讲，Olivette (Ladue), 和 Clayton 是密苏里公立学校/学区里面第一和第二名。Brentwood ranked 12th in the state of Missouri on Niche.com.

其它也有不少地方是安全的,比如 Kirkwood, Webster Groves, Maryland Heights, 绝大部份的 west county, south county. West county 和south county 要稍远一些。

我自己的的经历

我从2000年秋天到圣路易斯。一开始在Bridgeton (机场✈️附近）住了一年。住在那里的主要原因是当时我刚到圣路易斯，我有一个朋友住在那个小区，那个公寓离我上班的地方（办公室）也挺近。This is the apartment. I think it’s generally okay to live there – besides 2 or 3 unpleasant things or exceptions I experienced. I can elaborate later if needed.

A year later, I moved to Park Forest Apartments, off River Des Peres and once the river flooded to the road, and I had to abandon my car on the roadside, and walked uphill. My car was damaged or anything. It was just a flash flood. It’s not perfect, but it’s better in general. Also, a bonus point, that place is about one mile (one way) walk to the famous Ted Drews: arguably the most famous ice cream shop on the route 66.

In April 2005, I moved to the Briarcliff Condo in Creve Coeur. And I lived in the area since then – I mean the Ladue school district. I moved to Olivette in August 2019 – essentially I moved from near the west side of Monsanto/Bayer campus to near the east side of Monsanto/Bayer campus. Note Bayer has since sold the west campus (Olia Villiage, currently under development), and currently they are looking to sell majority of the east campus too.

Graduate Students in WUSTL (Washington University in St Louis)

A little over 20 years ago (fall of 1999 and 2003), I helped my friends find apartment at University Square Apartments (could not find their website, this is just the google map). Both friends are graduate students originally from China. Recently I heard college students (some are likely master/graduate students) are staying at Clayton on the Park – which is a high-end/luxury apartment in downtown Clayton (right across the street from the Shaw Park). This seems also can be an indicator of the economy development of China in last 25 years.

【St.Louis | Housing】圣路易斯华盛顿大学租房 | 全美犯罪率最高？| St Louis 生活学习 (YouTube by Kath Y.)

Some other places (apartments) I visited recently

This is for comparison purpose only. One in Overland (this apartment), this unit in a duplex in St. Ann, and one in Berkeley (near UMSL). Note I don’t recommend those. I visited those places because I was helping a neighbor looking for place to stay.

If you are shopping for houses in the St. Louis Area

Personally I like to get an quick overview if I am moving to a new place. Below are two excellent sources.

YouTube: If You’re Moving to St. Louis, MO WATCH THIS – St. Louis Area Explained (Jacob from the Living in St Louis YT channel, note Jacob is a realtor and a content creator)

St. Louis’ hottest neighborhoods for singles, professionals, and families (by Peter Lu Team)

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School Saint Louis

Gentrification of Olivette 橄榄村的绅士化?

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1006 N Warson, original built in 1894, probably one of the 1st houses in Olivette, not sure if Warson road existed then

Gentrification:

The process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process. Oxford Dictionary via google

Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and investment. There is no agreed-upon definition of gentrification. In public discourse, it has been used to describe a wide array of phenomena, usually in a pejorative connotation. Wikipedia

Also see Google Chinese translate for gentrification (not very good, in my opinion. But 绅士化 is actually the official word on Wikipedia :-). I usually translate Olivette into 橄榄村, btw.

I don’t know how you think, personally as I lived in the area (Creve Coeur, Olivette) for almost 20 years or so (since April 2005), I saw quite a bit development in the city of Olivette recently, both commercial and residential, and government as well (the city hall, police/fire station, and the new community center, Five Oaks on Warson). That pushes up the home prices in the area too (see Zillow), which has both plus and minus. Keep in mind Olivette also has one of the fastest population growth from 2010 to 2020 in the St. Louis county, per the census.

Five year home price chart from Zillow – Olivette

About Olivette (City of Olivette website)

History of Olivette (old PDF file from Olivette website, copied something I liked here, “diversity”, page 10):

In the late ’60s and early ’70s a fair housing commission called the “Freedom of Residence Program” helped stabilize the community. Core values such as good education for children, high housing standards and safe neighborhoods brought different ethnic and social groups together around a common cause. It is partly due to this program that Olivette today enjoys a diverse yet cohesive population.

The PDF file above talked about this building, note I took picture from the back road (opposite of the main road Olive Blvd). It’s still the tallest office building in Olivette as of Feb 2024. I’ve beeing to the building once or twice (Gateway Tour Travel Agency)

Recent development in Olivette (my blog post written a few years ago, updated many times since then).

Also YT Video – Olivette retail center across street from USPS (中文解说）

New Apartments Developments Along Olive Road And Its Impact On The School District (more recent blog post from yours truly)

Jacob Peistrup is a realtor in St.Louis, I just noticed his YouTube Channel and the above video is about Olivette

Noticed Jacob has a nice and comprehensive video introduction on YT the St. Louis city, St. Louis county, St. Charles county and Jefferson county, mostly from residential real estimate point of view. The video is 43 minutes long: in the order of St. Louis city, county, St. Charles county and Jefferson county.

PS: gentrification is a new word I learned over last few years… it has both good and bad. For example, in Frontenac they used to have a trailer park, it was developed into new homes in recent years. I read an article on the topic, and I hope the families (people) especially the kids got impacted are doing fine.

Latest newsletter from Olivette (this march 2024 issue), quote a bit here:

The 208-unit apartment complex
now known as Irvington Place,
located off of Alice Pl. between
Hilltop Dr. and N. Price Road and
the new Aldi grocery store and the
multi-tenant Lot 3 of Olive
Crossing should begin initial
construction work this spring.

Initially I was worried the builder may have backed out. I recently walked by and this is the YT shorts I got. I took a YT video last year too.

All newsletters are here.

(Update 02-26-2024)

Paris Baguette looks yummy 🙂

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School

Move families and kids to better school community

Reading Time: 3 minutes

(Update 02-07-2015) Sterling K. Brown talks growing up in St. Louis on Drew Barrymore Show. Quote below:

“At that point in time in my life, I didn’t know what my track was scholastically. My mom worked in the public school system in my neighborhood—it was a good school system—but she felt like the young Black men were being tracked along the lowest common denominator, and she felt like she wanted more for me; the potential to be as fully realized as possible,” he said on the show.

I am fairly certain that Mr. Brown lived in Olivette (the city I live now), also attended Spoede Elementary School (where my kids attended). Mr. Brown went to MICDs for high school.

(Original 09-15-2023) The recent tragedy in our community (Olivette and the Ladue School Community): Two boys in the fatal University City crash were best friends, next-door neighbors

Quote: Deion and Demetrius, known as “Meechie,” were next-door neighbors. Both of their families moved in 2018 from Pagedale to the 9300 block of Rothwell Heights Lane.

Reference: school districts serving Pagedale

The other day I also happened to come across the below tweet in Chinese, which is relevant.

左手墨迹
@Pandazhq “怎样让一个家庭变富有？这篇文章可以看看。”

I am putting some English articles here.

Opinion | Does Moving Poor People Work? – The New York Times

Moving | HUD.gov / U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

My family experience in China when we (the 3 kids) were little

I think it’s fully understandable that all parents want their kids to be successful or do better than their parents when the kids grow up. Also many parents believe their kids are gifted.

My parents moved me from village school to town school in grade 5 and moved my big brother to a better middle school in 8th grade. Those moves were probably strategic helping us get into the Zhenhai Middle (High) School. The reason I said “probably” is my other bro just got into Zhenhai High School after graduating from our hometown middle school.

Some random thoughts

One thing from my own experience and observations is it’s very important for kids to have friendships during their adolescent age. As parents, we should all pay attention to that. No judgment, just to make sure they hang out with the right friends, don’t do drugs, solely focus on appearance or getting Lululemon, etc. You get the point.

Another thing, maybe more relevant in Ladue, is we have a diverse community in terms of economic conditions, and races. Try to integrate (from school, and parents’ point of view) and hang out with kids from all backgrounds, if possible. Some kids could really use some friendship. Remember Mr. B asked why we don’t let the kids pick roommates for the 6th-grade camp 🙂 Hint: don’t just hang out with the “cool” kids.

Our goal is we have one integrated school community.

Last but not least, this whole thing reminds me of 孟母三迁 story.

Equality

(Update 09-16-2023) Something I just recall. I thought of team sports. Note I don’t think my kids can make the Ladue varsity team, be it basketball or tennis, at this time. But a few years ago I did try to push my older daughter to the basketball, and we played a few leagues and games in the process. At one time, I think the girls wanted to get hold of one of their friends, but we could not because we didn’t have her mom’s (or dad)’s contact info. I tried to ask the school, but the school couldn’t give out the info. I recall the girls just passing out the info themselves. We didn’t get the specific girl to sign up for the team. A related thing I could think of, is we need to consider health insurance too, what if the girl didn’t have health insurance, what if she played basketball and got hurt? This is a uniquely American problem because in all the other developed economies in the world, there are universal healthcare.

Categories
Business Economy Fun Saint Louis

Recent Olivette Developments

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(Update 03-09-2025) Irvington Place, Chevy’s 墨西哥餐馆后面的新大公寓在建设中.

Centennial Green Way is breaking around near Indian Meadows Park/Napoleon Blvd near Dielman Road – Feb 2024

(Update: 10-04-2023) The Olive Crossing apartments at Olive and 170 just opened as the Clover luxury apartment. I have a recent YouTube video on this.

(Update: 09-11-2023) Yesterday I noticed the new Hilltop West development: My YouTube video when I walked by yesterday am, the Olivette City Website, and a Zillow link (and developer website, not much info there, by the way). Again I saw quite a few torn down and rebuilt in that neighborhood. The new house in the school district went up probably 50% in the last 3 years. For average wage earners, the salary didn’t go up that much. I recall in the good old days the rule of thumb was that we buy houses about 3 times our before-tax income. So in order to buy a $ 750k home, we need to earn about $ 250k (which is still quite a bit of money for the average worker salary in the St. Louis area).

(Update: 06-22-2022) Besides new apartments below (again The Oliver which is almost done as of June 2022, and The Opus Group Multifamily Redevelopment Project at Irvington and Reyem Courts which I assume will take some time / years or months), there are also two townhouses complex. Hilltop West-attached home redevelopment project and Olivette Townhouse Redevelopment (this is the 35 new townhomes below). (Update 04-01-2025) Irvington Place is taking shape. See my recent YouTube video here.

(Update: 12-30-2021) I heard about this one, but the new 35 townhomes at Dielman and Olive Road are official. Here is the developer’s website. I took a short video here. As of 04-16-2023, I saw earth-moving equipment flattened the surface when I was driving by Olive Road passing the Dielman. (Update 04-01-2025) Looks like it’s going to be 33 units now – see my youtube video here. I am guessing price starts at $750k.

(Original) We can see a lots of new developments, both residential and commercials, at Olivette along the Olive road in last year or so.

Some of the bigger development projects I am aware of: are the Oliver (apartments and some retail), Olive Crossing at Olive and 170(apartments now opened as the Clover luxury apartment, hotels, retail and dining), and the Opus group olivette project. , one of the new neighbors in my neighborhood moved from the last project site (a single-family home sold to a developer and bought a new home in my neighborhood). We briefly discussed the trend of apartments over single-family houses (SFH) in the younger generation. I think it’s also a desire from the city and the developer as well. Maybe the apartments are more environmentally friendly compared to SFH. (Update 09-06-2023) It seems the apartment behind the Chevy Restaurant didn’t take off: all I can see right now is weeds and bushes in that empty lot 🙂

Back to the topic, there are also two smaller projects along Olive Road, the Firestone project (near Price). and the Planthaven commercial center (this is next to the Olivette Shopping Center).