"I've had residents say they don't want to leave Town and Country, but there is a shortage of independent living facilities, especially those not associated with assisted living or skilled nursing," Mayor Charles H. Rehm Jr. said at the groundbreaking for Woods Mill Crossing in July 2025. It is a plain description of a problem that has nothing to do with zoning maps or ordinance numbers. A longtime resident wants to stop mowing an acre and stop climbing stairs, and would like to do it without leaving the city where they raised their kids. For most of Town and Country's history, the answer to that request has been: there isn't one. The city's housing stock is single-family, mostly on lots of an acre or more, and the code has never carried a standard multi-family district to build anything else.
That changed on one 11.58-acre parcel at the corner of Interstate 64 and Highway 141, and the way it changed tells a relocating or downsizing buyer more about this market than the change itself does.
The Site That Could Only Ever Be a Problem
The land in question was Woods Mill Center, a strip mall that had been sliding toward empty for years. By 2022 the property was already the kind of thing local news photographed as an illustration of decline rather than commerce. Retail centers in west St. Louis County don't usually sit half-vacant next to an interstate interchange for long, but this one did, which is its own signal that the site had stopped working as commercial real estate before anyone proposed replacing it.
That mattered for what came next. A dying strip mall next to a highway ramp isn't a threat to the estate lots half a mile away. It's a parcel the city needed to solve for, on its own terms, because leaving it as-is wasn't really an option either.
What the Ordinance Actually Says
The redevelopment did not arrive as condos. The first version, brought by McBride Berra Land Company in the spring of 2024, proposed rezoning the site from Commercial to a Planned Non-Residential Development District in order to build 80 single-family detached homes priced at $600,000 to $700,000, two and three stories, with two-car garages tucked behind the houses off shared alleys, according to West County News coverage of the Planning and Zoning Commission hearing. As of the Board of Aldermen's June 24, 2024 meeting, that was still the plan on the table, with the rezoning bill continued to the next session for a single-family residential designation.
By the time St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the board's final approval that October, the project on the same parcel had become fourteen four-story condominium buildings. The zoning designation had changed too, this time to a newly created Mixed Use Development district written specifically for the site, permitting multi-family residential and commercial uses, according to the adopted ordinance text.
| Spring 2024 proposal | Final approval, fall 2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Zoning sought | Planned Non-Residential Development | Mixed Use Development (MUD-1) |
| Housing type | 80 single-family detached homes | 112 condominiums, 14 buildings |
| Starting price | $600,000 to $700,000 | From the $720s |
Even the naming struggled to keep up. The city first called the district "non-residential" while approving houses, then landed on "mixed use" while approving condos. That's not a criticism of the drafting so much as evidence of how bespoke the whole process was. There was no existing category on the books that fit what this parcel was going to become.
Why the Plan Flipped From Houses to Condos
The city's zoning code already had a mechanism for one kind of aging-in-place housing. Town and Country's regulations include a specific Nursing Home, Assisted Living or Continuum of Care Facility district, built for exactly what its name says. What the code didn't have was a category for a resident who doesn't need care, just needs to stop maintaining a house. Eighty new single-family homes, even smaller ones with alley-loaded garages, would not have solved that. A resident downsizing out of a large estate into a smaller detached home is still doing yard work and gutter cleaning. A secured building with elevator access, underground parking, and no lawn does.
Eilermann described the process behind the shift as "over two years of engagement with residents, city staff, elected officials, and Mayor Rehm" that shaped the final site plan. Rehm's own comment at the groundbreaking, that he rarely attends a public meeting where a resident says they're thrilled about a project, suggests the switch from houses to condos wasn't a developer's pivot alone. It reads as the city figuring out, over two years, that the product needed to match the actual complaint, not just add more single-family inventory to a market that already has plenty.
What Buyers Are Actually Being Asked to Pay
Here is the detail that should recalibrate expectations for anyone hoping this is a discount route into Town and Country. The 112 condos at Woods Mill Crossing are priced from the $720s, with quick move-in units starting from the $770s. One unit hit MLS in January 2026 listed at $857,778. That's meaningfully above the $600,000 to $700,000 the original single-family homes were supposed to cost, on units that are smaller.
The buyer isn't paying less to live smaller. They're paying for a different bundle: secured entry, elevator access to every floor, underground parking, a design studio process for finishes, and a shared amenity package that includes a lake with a fountain, walking trails, and a restaurant with a patio at the entrance, all set within a development that reserves more than half its acreage as green space. Compared against the broader Town and Country market, where MLS data across the trailing twelve months ending in June 2026 put the median single-family sale price at $1.45 million, the condos still sit well below typical entry into this city's detached housing stock. But they sit above what this exact site was originally going to offer as houses. For a downsizer, that's the honest tradeoff: less square footage and yard, comparable or higher price, in exchange for maintenance you never have to think about again.
Why This Probably Won't Happen Again Soon
None of this changes the zoning on any other parcel in the city. The Mixed Use Development district approved for Woods Mill Crossing was written into the code for this specific 11.58 acres, described by metes and bounds in the ordinance itself. It did not amend the city's underlying Estate district standards, the one-acre minimum lot requirements that shape most of the housing stock, or the Architectural Review Board process that still governs what gets built on those lots.
What made this project possible was a narrow set of conditions unlikely to repeat easily: a commercial site that had already failed at being commercial, a mayor personally invested in solving a resident complaint, and more than two years of public process to get the product right. If you're evaluating Town and Country as a downsizing option because you've seen the Woods Mill Crossing signage, the realistic read is that this is one answer to one problem on one parcel, not the first of many. If you already own an acre lot in the city and are wondering whether this cracks open the door to denser redevelopment nearby, the ordinance record suggests the opposite. It took a genuinely dead commercial property to get here.
What Happens Next, In Plain Terms
When can I actually see one of these units? Model condominiums are expected to open for tours in early 2027, according to the builder, with some quick move-in units completing construction as soon as December 2026.
Does this rezoning affect my property's zoning? No. The Mixed Use Development district was approved for the specific Woods Mill Crossing parcel only, not as a change to citywide zoning categories.
Is more multi-family housing likely to follow in Town and Country? Nothing else is currently proposed, and the conditions that made this project possible, an obsolete commercial site paired with years of dedicated city engagement, aren't common in a city built almost entirely on intact single-family estate zoning.
If you're weighing whether to sell an estate lot into a market where a project like this is drawing attention, or trying to figure out what a downsizing move actually costs versus what it saves, that's exactly the kind of question The Benes Group can walk through with you against real, current comparables. Request a complimentary home valuation and get a straight answer before you assume anything about where this market is headed.
