"I very rarely go to any meetings where a citizen says, 'I'm over-the-moon happy about this project,' and that happened with this."
That's Town and Country Mayor Charles H. Rehm, Jr., talking about a condo development. Not a park expansion, not a new trail, not a road resurfacing. A condo development, in a city that has spent three quarters of a century making sure it never had to build one.
To understand why that quote is worth stopping on, you need to know what Town and Country actually is. The area organized itself in the late 1940s specifically to keep from being swallowed up, after residents near Clayton and Ballas Roads got word that neighboring Frontenac and Des Peres were looking to extend their own city limits over the same ground. What came out of that defensive move has been described by locals as a residential shield: no strip malls, no drive-throughs, no apartment complexes. Just winding roads, deep setbacks, and a real estate market that has run on exactly one model for the better part of a decade: buy a dated house on an acre, tear it down, build new. As of July 2026, new-construction listings in the city carried a median asking price around $1 million, and that has been the only door into Town and Country for anyone who wanted something newer than a 1970s ranch.
Which raises an obvious question nobody in this market has had to answer until now. If you already live in Town and Country, love the schools, love the neighbors, and simply don't want to maintain four acres and a pool anymore, where do you go? For 75 years, the honest answer was: somewhere else.
The site that couldn't find its purpose
Before it became Woods Mill Crossing, the parcel at the corner of Highway 141 and I-64 was the Woods Mill Center, an aging commercial strip that had been circling redevelopment for years without landing on anything. City commission records from 2023 show a proposal for a Maryville e-sports arena on the site was floated and then withdrawn by the developer, with the city continuing to negotiate with the property owner on what would come next. In 2024, the Board of Aldermen approved rezoning roughly 11.6 acres from straight commercial to a Planned Non-Residential Development district, clearing the way for McBride Homes to build. Demolition of the old center was completed earlier this year, and the company held its groundbreaking with Mayor Rehm on hand.
McBride's CEO, Jake Eilermann, described it as two years of back-and-forth with residents, city staff, and elected officials before the plan took its final shape. That timeline matters. This wasn't a developer parachuting in with a spec sheet. It was a slow, specific negotiation over what kind of housing this particular city, with its particular zoning history, would actually allow.
What came out of it: 112 condominiums, averaging over 1,800 square feet, in two- and three-bedroom layouts, with underground parking, elevator access, private balconies or terraces, and a shared lake with a fountain surrounded by more than 2,000 new plantings. A small mixed-use plaza at the entrance will include a restaurant with an outdoor patio. Pricing starts in the $720s, with a handful of quick move-in units priced from the $770s.
The number that explains the whole project
Here's where the math gets interesting for anyone tracking this market rather than just admiring the landscaping renderings.
| Product | Typical entry price | What it buys |
|---|---|---|
| New-construction single-family (teardown-rebuild) | Roughly $1 million and up | New build on a large existing lot, full maintenance responsibility |
| Woods Mill Crossing condo | Low $720s, quick move-in from the $770s | 1,800+ sq ft, 2-3 bedrooms, elevator, underground parking, low-maintenance living |
That's a quarter-million-dollar gap, sitting inside the same city limits, the same school boundaries, the same zip code. Town and Country never had a mid-tier. It had a floor around $1 million for anything new, and below that, whatever inventory of older ranches and split-levels happened to be on the market at a given moment, most of which were being bought by builders rather than by the people who'd lived in them.
Mayor Rehm put the gap in plain terms when the project broke ground. He said residents had told him repeatedly they didn't want to leave Town and Country, but that the city had a real shortage of independent living options that weren't tied to assisted living or skilled nursing. That's not a marketing line. That's an elected official naming a hole in his own city's housing stock, on the record, at a groundbreaking.
The demand response backs him up. McBride reported more than 60 buyer appointments already scheduled before the community's grand opening even happened, which is a meaningful signal in a project this size. That kind of pre-launch interest doesn't usually show up for a product nobody needed.
What this means if you're selling a large lot near Woods Mill Road
If you own an older ranch or split-level in Town and Country, particularly anywhere within a reasonable drive of the 141 and I-64 interchange, this project changes your buyer pool in a specific way. Until now, your realistic audience was almost entirely builders and buyers planning a full teardown, because that's who the market had trained to show up. Now there's a second group: longtime residents and empty nesters who want to sell high, buy small, and never leave the city, and who previously had to widen their search into Chesterfield or Clayton or elsewhere to find that kind of downsizing option.
That second buyer behaves differently than a builder. A builder is pricing your lot and ignoring your house. A downsizer moving into a condo down the road is less likely to need the home in move-in condition, since they're not planning to live in it for the next twenty years and grow a family in it, but they're also not stripping it for the dirt underneath. It's a different negotiation, and it's worth knowing it exists before you set your price or your marketing plan.
What this means if you're trying to buy into Town and Country
If the $1 million-plus new-construction floor has kept Town and Country out of reach, Woods Mill Crossing is the first legitimate answer the city has produced. It won't work for everyone. Model units aren't expected to open for tours until early 2027, so this is a pre-construction decision for most buyers right now, not a Saturday showing. And 112 units is not a flood of inventory. It's one project, on one site, that took two years of negotiation to get approved under a zoning category built for this specific use.
That last point is worth sitting with if you're hoping this signals a broader shift. The rezoning here was a Planned Non-Residential Development designation applied to one parcel, not a blanket change to how the city treats multifamily housing. Any future project of this kind would need to make its own case to the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of Aldermen, the same way this one did.
A short FAQ
Does this mean Town and Country is loosening its zoning rules generally? No. The Woods Mill Crossing site was rezoned individually through a Planned Non-Residential Development designation specific to that parcel. It doesn't change the underlying zoning code for the rest of the city, and any comparable project elsewhere would go through its own approval process with the Planning and Zoning Commission and Board of Aldermen.
When can I actually tour or buy a unit? Model condominiums are expected to open for tours in early 2027, with some quick move-in units under construction sooner. If you're weighing this against a resale or new-construction single-family option on a faster timeline, that gap matters for planning.
Is this priced as affordable housing? No. Starting prices in the $720s and $770s are well above regional medians. The story here isn't affordability in the broad sense, it's that this is the first entry point into Town and Country meaningfully below the roughly $1 million floor that new single-family construction has held for years.
If you're weighing whether to sell a large lot before this kind of project reshapes your buyer pool further, or you're trying to figure out whether Woods Mill Crossing or a resale in Kirkwood or Ladue makes more sense for where you actually want to land, that's exactly the kind of decision worth talking through before you list or make an offer. Jason D. Cooper has spent his career in these St. Louis County suburbs and can walk you through what a project like this actually means for your specific street, your specific lot, and your specific timeline. Schedule a personalized consultation to talk through your options.
