A Brief Look at St. Louis’ Kiener Plaza
This morning I attended a presentation by Fred Kent and Kathy Madden of the Project for Public Spaces. Great folks doing great work. They are about creating places, not “projects.” Afterwards I was taking a guest downtown to the media conference in town so I thought I’d stop by Kiener Plaza to check my email (the park is a free wi-fi zone).
First, crossing the street into Kiener plaza was interesting. Check out the photo at right. See anything wrong? Note the location of the pedestrian crosswalk and the location of the pedestrian signal. Standing at the crosswalk I was unable to make out the cross signal. Instead, I crossed based on traffic.
Kiener Plaza is so full of mistakes there is not way I could cover them all in one post. Much of the lack of use can also be contributed to the dreadful buildings, mostly parking garages, facing the space.
But, I was there to check my email. Coincidentally I ran into PPS’ Fred Kent and Kathy Madden while I was there. They had just been interviewed by Charlie Brennan on KMOX. We had a nice conversation. We agreed that St. Louis has the potential to be a great place.
I settle down to check my email and glare is a problem so I move to a shady area near the amphitheater. No wi-fi signal detected. I head back toward the middle of the park and I get a signal. Great. One problem, no internet. The folks at the tourist information office seemed clueless about the wi-fi.
Originally Kiener Plaza was only a block in size. Bounded by Broadway, Market, 6th and Chestnut. During the 80s make over the block to the West was cleared if its historic buildings and given an amphitheater. In the process 6th street was closed.
At left is the view looking North at 6th Street. The old 6th street was used to create a strong axis in the park – visually continuing the street. What should be a connection from the park to the business district is blocked by a minivan. But the van is legally parked. Like the example above, little consideration is given to how we connect our green spaces to the rest of the city.
Although not clear at this point, if you want to cross Chestnut at 6th street you only have one choice – on the left which is behind the van. If you wanted to go to the restaurant on the right you’d have to cross Chestnut first and then cross sixth street. Why is this the case? Simple, the traffic engineers don’t want pedestrians holding up left turning cars going from 6th to Chestnut. Moving cars is more important than pedestrians.
At right is the one crosswalk across Chestnut at 6th. Pretty typical. But what is the view from the other direction?
The pedestrian crossing into the park is greeted not with something grand but the view of a trash can. The strong geometric pattern of the park doesn’t really relate to how the users of the park enter & exit the space.
Looking at the park from 6th street. The connection just isn’t there. Motorists don’t really get a view nor do pedestrians. If it were up to me they would have left 6th street open.
– Steve
I think the biggest problem with Kiener is too much grass space. The grass is dead in most spots, and mulch has been put down. Pavers need to be put down instead, and planters could be incorporated in. This would allow for much more use for the plaza. The pavers would take care of much of the access issues, except for the traffic lights. Some small food stands and shops also need to be put in.
The block between 6th and 7th used to be a parking lot (see here for a view of just a tiny corner of it), and a fairly nasty one at that. It’s the block between 7th and 8th that was stripped of the good buildings as part of the idiotic ‘Mall’ idea.
Then it turned out there wasn’t enough money for this, so that Gateway One building was built on half the land: brilliant. And we lost the 905, the Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the Lion Oil building with the mural of Lindbergh on it into the bargain.
Michael and I were just talking this afternoon about how 6th street should be open! It’s not as if the two halves of the plaza flow together as one, anyway–the original portion, the fountain, kinda stands by itself, while the icky 80s ampitheater addition seems to turn its back on the fountain if you stand between the two.
I’ve experienced problems similar to those you mentioned with the walk signal. That seems to be a problem all over Downtown. With many one-way streets, they simply don’t put in a signal in the direction traffic doesn’t drive. I realize that they don’t want to waste money on signage or encourage cars to drive the wrong way (accidentally or otherwise), but as a pedestrian, I need to know who has the right of way. At most times of day Downtown, there is not enough traffic to prevent me from crossing safely, but there’s just enough that I want to know if my direction has the green light or not. Those orange hand/white person signs aren’t everywhere, and they stay orange for the majority of the light cycle (whether or not the direction I’m crossing in has the green), so they’re not always helpful to me. I know we’re not supposed to cross against the light, but most people do when they can, so that should be taken into consideration. There’s not enough traffic for us to always tell who has the light, but there’s enough for someone to get hurt if they’re not careful (or just not informed of the light situation!).
One more thing:
“We agreed that St. Louis has the potential to be a great place. ”
Remember those commercials for Mayor Slay recently? They went on and on about how Slay has supposedly somehow triggered a reversal of StL’s population decline, and ended with (approximately) “St. Louis will be a great city again.” I disagree with both their sentence and yours. St. Louis isn’t *going to be* great. It already is great (It never stopped being great!), and it has the potential to get even better! I know you didn’t mean StL stinks, but it’s important to be careful with language.
[REPLY: Claire you are right! St. Louis is a great city. How can it not be? Sure, we’ve got room to be better but the layout and architecture of this city is so much better than most cities and better than nearly every suburb out there.
As I was showing a well-traveled friend on his first visit to St. Louis I could really see that we are indeed great. He commented on our greatness several times.
Let’s just work on making our city even greater. – Steve]