51ºÚÁÏ

ST. LOUIS — The owner of the Chemical Building is listing the vacant property for sale two years after acquiring it.

But the president of the New Orleans-based company that owns the building said he’s still bullish on 51ºÚÁÏ.

The 127-year-old property with bay windows and undulant red brick at North Eighth and Olive streets is listed for sale at $12 million, said John Campo Jr., president and founder of Campo Architecture & Interior Design.

He wouldn’t comment on why the property is back on the market.

Instead, his firm will focus on its other downtown project, Campo said: the redevelopment of the Mark Twain Hotel, an 8-story residential hotel building at Ninth and Pine streets, about 1 block north of Citygarden Sculpture Park.

The Chemical Building, built for the Chemical National Bank at 777 Olive, is the last property on its corner and one of the few remaining prominent sites in downtown’s central business district that have yet to be redeveloped. Several developers have tried over the years, with many failing due to financing issues.

Campo Architecture and its partners bought the building in 2022 for $5 million, and planned to invest $82 million to redevelop the historic property into a 240-room, dual-branded Marriott hotel with the help of historic and other local tax incentives.

In 2023, the company also bought the Mark Twain Hotel, at 205 North Ninth Street, for $6.1 million, city real estate records show.

The Mark Twain was built in 1907 as the Maryland Hotel, and is one of the few remaining historic hotels in the central business district, according to for the National Register of Historic Places. It became a residential hotel sometime in the 1990s.

Campo said his company plans to redevelop it into a Hilton Tapestry, a full-service hotel with a restaurant and meeting rooms.

He said the company is awaiting historic tax credit approval.