JAIME LEES
Cementland's distinctive silos in 2013
It seems as though the Cementland dream is officially dead, as the land has now been sold.
Cementland was an unfinished project of the late Bob Cassilly, founder of the City Museum (750 North 16th Street, CityMuseum.org). The artist bought the 55-acre site along the Mississippi River in the early 2000s and set out to turn it into a magical spot in the way that only Cassilly could deliver.
NextSTL.com reports that 16 acres of the site (including Mississippi River frontage and mooring rights) were sold back in 2020, but now the remaining acres have been sold off, too. The winning bidder snagged the Cementland property for $714,000 last week.
The land was formerly the site of the Missouri Portland Cement Company factory. Always a fan of recycling and reusing, Cassilly was in the process of transforming the old factory into his next major project when he died in a bulldozer accident on the site in 2011.
Cassilly’s incomplete project had been a point of speculation in St. Louis for years. The thought of losing something that could’ve been even half as cool as the City Museum has been too much to bear. Would someone try to come in and finish his vision? Could the land be turned into some other kind of cool project? Would the site continue to be reclaimed by nature?
Now it seems like we know the answer. NextSTL.com quotes Adam Jokisch, the owner of Adam’s Auction & Real Estate Services (which conducted the auction that sold the Cementland site), as saying that he’s sure the site was bought just for “industrial use.”
