Joel Oliver is banking on his latest project going to the dogs.
His 268-unit The Rail apartments in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood just received their final certificate of occupancy from the city of St. Louis a little more than a week ago. They sit right next to Bar K, the popular combination bar, restaurant, and outdoor dog park. Oliver says that at a typical apartment building, you’d expect half the tenants to have pets. Here, he anticipates that being closer to 80 percent.
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“This is a very different kind of market-driven thing,” Oliver told SLM on a recent tour. In addition to proximity to Bar K, Oliver hopes free memberships to the dog park and pet fees that are about half those of similar buildings will draw tenants.
On an icy mid-afternoon Monday, there were more people than you might think at Bar K, their hands buried in their pockets as their dogs frolicked around the two-acre open-air park. Bar K, which opened in St. Louis in 2021, debuted its first location in Kansas City in 2018. Oliver says that, in the years since, apartment buildings totaling about 800 units have popped up around that Kansas City location. Those developments have found success, which Oliver is hoping to replicate here.
Also sharing a parking lot with Bar K and The Rail is the headquarters of beleaguered developer Green Street Real Estate Ventures, which initiated The Rail project. Oliver used to work for Green Street until he left amid what he referred to as the company’s “well-documented problems.” Around Halloween 2023, during his final days at Green Street, Oliver says, “I got a call on a Tuesday that said, ‘We’re firing half the company.’”
Early the following year, Oliver founded Halo Real Estate Ventures with three other Green Street refugees. Since then, they have made something of a cottage industry of taking stalled projects off Green Street’s hands and getting them across the finish line. “There’s nothing worse than a half-built building,” Oliver says. In addition to The Rail, Halo is also handling a 40-acre redevelopment project along Manchester Road in Brentwood, as well as a project in Wisconsin.
At The Rail, the amenities extend beyond those of the canine variety. The building’s center courtyard includes a pool and bocce ball court. Shared first-floor spaces include two workout areas, reservable conference rooms, and a communal kitchen and dining area for anyone who wants to enjoy a meal socially or host an event like a birthday party. Oliver declined to install a mini-movie theater, opting instead for a golf simulator, which allows for more interaction.
“You come in here with five or ten friends and just hang out,” Oliver says. “People want to do stuff.”
The units come in one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and studio varieties, with rents ranging from $1,350 to $2,900. You don’t have to look too hard to notice a railroad theme throughout the building, as The Rail, Bar K, and the Green Street HQ sit in an area that used to house a factory and warehouses producing parts for the railroad. The Rail features railway- and industrial-themed art and flatscreens streaming live feeds from trains traversing various terrains (these videos, popular in Scandinavia, can be quite calming). In front of the building is a 9,000-pound sculpture built from railroad ties by BLA Studios.
Oliver says he hopes to have the building 75 percent leased by the end of the year, with an influx of move-ins coming in March when medical students find out where they’ll be doing their residencies. (Barnes-Jewish Hospital is about five minutes away.)
Less than a week after the building officially opened to residents, ten people are living there—a number that Oliver says he’s thrilled with. His prediction of 80 percent of the tenants being pet owners has so far been surpassed: nine of the ten moved in with four-legged friends.
