The New QuikTrip at Gravois & Chippewa Should Be An Urban Prototype

The general consensus is the relocation of an existing QT from the Bevo area up the street to the wedge at Gravois & Chippewa is OK. Assuming that to be these case, let’s discuss the design options for the site.

But it is a gas station you say, implying options to do not exist for the site layout. After all, everyone knows you place the building as far back on the site and put all the pump islands out front. What is to debate?

Well, that very assumption!

Yes, I’m calling for QT to build an urban gas station like those required in other cities around the world. Not only are the design options interesting and more urban, it makes better use of the land which can return higher profits. Here is the basic argument: flip the typical site plan around — put the building next to the street and the pumps in back.

First, let’s see just how wasteful QT is with land development.

At we can see from the existing QT to the east on Gravois they have made little attempt to maximize the site. As a result, a very large land area that was originally many smaller parcels is reduced to only serving one function: the QT. This is not an urban model and is well suited to far suburban areas but not in an urbanized city environment.

But this post is not about what they did wrong at this site and what it could look like if rebuilt. I’m showing the example at right to demonstrate wasteful site planning practices common among such entities as large gas stations.

At left is my crude diagram of the [proposed] site [at Gravois & Chippewa]. The teal color represents the canopy over the gas pumps with the red rectangle representing QT’s standard building design. The blue triangle represents an urban opportunity. Here is what I picture: a 2-3 story building with street-level retail and small living spaces above. These might be rental, perhaps condo? The building might be designed to create some live/work spaces. The building might end up being more than a single building.

What does all this change accomplish? Several things. First, an urban building at the corner reduces the visual impact of the gas station while still providing that service. The urban corner building also begins to place some “community” in the area where, according to Ald. Kirner, none exists. This would be an incremental step toward rebuilding what was once two highly pedestrian friendly urban corridors.

I am not calling for QT to design a special building to house their function —- I’m tolerant of the standard formula. They actually do a decent job of connecting their buildings to public sidewalks which could be easily accomplish in the site plan mockup I’m showing. And the urban building?

I’m guessing folks are going to say two things. One being there is no demand for either retail or living spaces in the area and second that QT is not in the business of building such buildings. True, demand may not exist at the moment or even five years. But if QT builds their facility in the manner I’m suggesting and plants some evergreen trees behind the building it certainly wouldn’t look any worse than coming down Gravois looking at nothing but gas pumps. As demand increases and say MetroLink ends up on Gravois or the tracks nearby then we are ready to do some urban in-fill without having to relocate or rebuild the QT — we’d be that much ahead. And I wouldn’t expect QT to build the building — I’d expect them to sell or lease the land. A non-profit housing group could lease the land from QT on a long term lease so that QT got a good tax write off and then build some smaller living spaces without any off-street parking. This would be great for those who either can’t drive or don’t want to drive. On-street parking could serve the retail spaces.

Think of this as land banking — we are saving this corner that might normally be wasted through typical sprawl planning and holding it until we are ready for something a bit more urban. To move the process along I’d favor some sort of tax incentives to QT so they could offer this land on the cheap to a developer that completed a structure that met some basic urban criteria. This could be a win for the city and QT.

– Steve

Tax the Land, Not the Buildings

My friend Trevor Acorn has a great new blog and today he is quoting a green party candidate from Canada. Here is an excerpt from Frank deJong:

The current structure of our property tax system sends the wrong signals. Generally speaking, municipalities calculate property taxes based on the value of the land and the buildings sitting on them. This means that anyone who builds on a vacant site in an existing urban area or renovates an abandoned building back to health pays more taxes than if they just left the land or building vacant. This is a tax on smart growth. And it’s not smart.

He makes a good case for placing all the tax burden on the land itself, not the structures. Click here for the full read.

– Steve

Edwardsville’s Pedestrian Tunnel for High School Students

Why did the student not cross the road? Because they were chicken? No, because they have a new $480,000 pedestrian tunnel in place of the former shuttle buses. And it is against school policy for them to walk across the two lane street in front of the high school. Seriously, I’m not making this up!

Last June I did a brief post on the planned tunnel after reading an article in the Belleville News-Democrat. This past Saturday morning I visited the now finished tunnel on a tour of Edwardville, Illinois (map).

So, there it is on the right: the long walk under Center Grove Rd with the massive high school campus in the background. Remember the days when you could walk or bike to school? Those times seem long gone. Now students drive their own cars to school and in Edwardsville some students, roughly 200, have to park across the street and walk under the street to get to the campus.

Don’t look for any steps or walkway to get you from the south side of Center Grove Rd down to the tunnel, it is assumed that nobody walks in this part of town. Probably true enough, it is nothing but tacky buildings set in individual seas of parking.

I should also point out the tunnel was planned from day one. It wasn’t built until this summer because they just received the funding to construct it. So when planning a new high school campus the concept of say placing it closer to walkable areas seems to have been ruled out. I’m actually told the school district is much larger than the City of Edwardsville and that the schools is pretty centered within the district. The solution then becomes two smaller high schools rather than one large high school. You can point to additional costs to do that but that can be countered with the additional costs of sprawl and, in this case, a pedestrian tunnel.

This is Center Grove Rd looking west from the parking lot entrance. That is not a sidewalk you see to the left of the road, it is the shoulder of the roadbed. You can see some of the recently built sprawl in the background. What a horrible environment they are subjecting their impressionable youth.

Sadly, they are in effect teaching kids pedestrians and streets don’t mix.

– Steve

Please Vote in the RFT ‘Best of’ Poll

The Riverfront Times is conducting one of their ‘Best of’ polls and the first item on the list is ‘Best Blog.’ I was very honored last year when the RFT editors named Urban Review the ‘Best Civic-Minded Blog.’ This year they are opening up the category and asking for votes.

St. Louis is fortunate to have many talented bloggers creating original content on their sites. While this makes for heavy competition is also makes for a more enlightened city.

Here is why I think you should vote for Urban Review. This week Professor Charles Bohl from the University of Miami’s School of Architecture summed it up quite well:

You are providing what 99% of communities in the U.S. lack – a critical perspective that directly takes up community design. The layperson often can’t visualize or articulate the shortcomings until someone starts revealing them as you are doing.

Indeed my perspective is not necessarily the majority but it is sparking discussion about place, a worthwhile exercise in any community. Furthermore, your comments, now numbering over 5,000, show the level of interest in the topics covered by Urban Review. The number of readers, just under 20,000 unique visitors in August, also shows the widespread level of interest in subjects that many may have thought to be too specialized. All this interest & discussion makes an impression on decision makers from local elected officials to bureaucrats to real estate developers. Collectively we are creating change in the local mindset — something other blogs cannot claim.

Vote here.

Thank you! – Steve

Reason Foundation Suggesting More Lanes Will Solve Congestion

Via StreetsBlog comes a story of faulty reasoning: more traffic lanes to ease congestion. From the Reason Foundation:

Missouri has one city that currently suffers from severe congestion, which this study identifies as those areas with Travel Time Indices (TTIs) of 1.18 or higher. The St. Louis area on the eastern edge of the state is tied with three other cities (Memphis, San Antonio and Cincinnati) as the 35th most congested region in the United States, with a Travel Time Index (TTI) of 1.22. This means that driving times during peak traffic hours are 22 percent longer than during off-peak times.

Unless major steps are taken to relieve congestion, drivers in St. Louis can expect to see a TTI of 1.42 by 2030. For an idea of how severe that level of congestion would be, note that this projection is worse than the traffic delays experienced today in all but five cities in the United States: Atlanta, Washington, DC, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Sorry, but I reject the notion that adding additional lanes eases traffic congestion. This may be a short-term solution but it inevitably leads to simply more cars on the road which brings us back to more congestion. This is a cycle that must be broken, not continued.

The researchers have done a cost analysis to show the savings by reducing congestion. I will look into the full report to see if they have calculated additional costs such as health issues with driving vs. walking, costs of parking garages, etc… I’m guessing they have not taken so many interrelated factors into account.

– Steve