Review of Today’s Preservation Board Agenda
The St. Louis Preservation Board meets this afternoon at 4pm. A number of items are on the agenda, I’ve listed them all below.
- Condo developer has zero parking due to small lot with no alley.
- Wants to buy LRA property next door which faces Tower Grove Rd (and the Botanical Gardens) for parking.
- Seeking parking for eight cars — two per condo.
- This is a good example where parking should be “unbundled” from the actual units. If someone wants to live alone or doesn’t have a car why should they have to pay for two spaces? Build the parking lot with six spaces, not eight. Give each owner the option of buying a space and after each of the four has done so see if anyone else wants to buy the remaining two.
2027 Lynch Street in the Benton Park Historic District:
- Proposal for new construction.
- Design looks good.
- Nice to see in-fill construction happening within neighborhoods, really not necessary to wipe away the old to provide new housing.
1310 & 1312 Mackay Place in the Lafayette Square Local Historic District:
- This is to construct two townhouses on a vacant site.
- The cultural resources staff correctly points out the site has a distinct slope from one side to the next but the two units maintain a level appearance (windows, overall height) whereas original housing would have stepped down the hillside. By stepping down the hillside it helps give the appearance of two townhouses rather than one big mass.
- Lafayette Square has had recent issues with utilities and front doors so we will see how that is addressed at the meeting.
2028 S. 9th Street in the Soulard Local Historic District:
- Hammerstone’s Bar constructed a fence and covered bar area without a permit.
- Cultural Resources says the structure does not meet the standards (maybe this is why they did not get a permit?)
- Structure should have been based on a “model example” from the neighborhood. This means, the owner should have found a a historic example of a covered bar. Yeah, right.
- I think the structure could have been a bit more attractive in the composition of materials — it looks a bit generic. Still, I think the preservation standards wish to keep us in the year 1900.
- It is probably time to review some of these standards to see if they should be updated to deal with newer materials and changing development patterns.
4485 Vista Avenue in a “Preservation Review District.”
- A Preservation Review District is not a historic district but an area where demolitions of “contributing structures” must be approved by the Preservation Board.
- This very historic and rare home is in The Grove neighborhood (aka Forest Park SE).
- Structure is small, in poor condition and has ugly siding. Still, it is quite rare in the city.
- Staff is recommending that a decision be deferred for six months.
- Most likely this area will see a wholesale clearance program, a very retro urban renewal program that totally sanitizes the area of anything worthwhile.
- I can understand neighbors that are tired of seeing a vacant and boarded house. The fears around safety are also valid as such a building can invite a criminal element. Still, we simply cannot afford to raze every vacant structure in the city — we’d have too little left.
- The city, in my estimation, does a poor job of marketing these properties. Why aren’t they on the real estate multi-list system? Where is our homestead program to aggressively market these types of properties and literally give them to someone qualified to fix them up? Instead the city holds these properties for years to the point where the neighbors demand demolition. This is not a good system.
Extending the boundaries of the Central West End Historic District
- Boundary would extend north to include a number of blocks of Olive in wards 18 & 28.
- A lot is happening in this area and being in a historic district would afford some of these properties access to historic tax credits and protection from being demolished (especially those in Kennedy’s 18th Ward where he refuses to place the ward in a Preservation Review District).
- One of my favorite buildings in the entire city is in the new boundaries so it would be nice to see it rehabbed (see p. 46 of agenda, building on right).
Steve – What’s up with your comments on Hammerstones? I thought we should be stuck in one arbitrary time period (at least that seems to be your position on Lafayette Square). Me, I’d rather see both more diversity and more honesty in architectural design in historic districts. I have no problem trying to keep contributing historic structures intact and “whole”, but I have major problems expecting new construction and structures trying to mimic something from 100 years ago . . .
Agreed that “Still, we simply cannot afford to raze every vacant structure in the city — we’d have too little left.”
Although this may not be the case in FPSE, hard decisions sometimes need to be made. If a person has lived next door
for 30 some years and can no longer get homeowners’ insurance because the house in question is vacanct and likely will
be for some time, they will call and complain to the City. What should the City do? I like the idea of listing LCRA property
on the MLS though. It’s a start.