Watson Road, Revisited

A guest editorial by Jim Zavist, AIA

A couple of months ago, I did a guest post on the work starting at Pietro’s Restaurant, to apparently construct an outdoor seating area (view post). Now that the work is essentially complete, I have some more observations:

One, the new work was done professionally and is a good addition to an established neighborhood business – it’s always good to see reinvestment, it’s evidence that an area is doing well.

Two, my original assumptions (based on the foundations in place) were correct – the new seating area is raised above sidewalk level by ±1′ and is covered by a large awning. I’m confident that “part two” will happen later this year, as the weather cools – the clear vinyl sides will be rolled down and the space heaters will be turned on, and what was once public space will truly become private.

Three, the remaining sidewalk is a mixed bag. On the positive side, all the old concrete around the new patio was removed and replaced with new, eliminating any potential trip hazards. Two, the on-street parking does buffer the remaining public space pretty well – it looks tight driving by, but it doesn’t feel overly tight walking by. But on the negative side, even though this is new work, the cross slope exceeds ADAAG limits, so it remains somewhat difficult for people with disabilities to navigate the area.

Four, I did get an email response from Ald. Hanrahan on why she approved the request to occupy the public right-of-way. Her “defense” was that Stelina’s Café (up the street) had established a precedent when they were granted a permit to place planters in the public right-of-way. In my view, the two situations are not at all comparable, but in her view, a valid case was made by Pietro’s. I guess that’s why I’m such a stickler when it comes to letting anything that can be viewed as precedential being approved with little or no public input.

And five, unlike Stelina’s planters (which were a small investment and can be easily removed), Pietro’s investment is going to be with us for many years. I just find it unfortunate that the process for allowing this usurpation of the public realm can and does occur with no apparent public input. Yes, I know we live in a representative democracy, that our representatives won’t always vote the way we would want them to, and that “this is the way we’ve always done things around here”. The public doesn’t need to comment on every building permit. But when it comes to semi-permanent changes to public property, there needs to be something more stringent and open than one person’s untrained opinion being the final say.

Bottom line, this a good addition to a neighborhood business that simply goes too far. The public realm is precious – once it’s “gone”, it’s very hard to reclaim it. It’s up to our city staff and our elected officials to sometimes be the “bad guys”, to do their jobs, and to say just no, you’re simply asking for too much. As I said in the first post, I’d be a lot more sympathetic if there were no other real options. But this is a case where the building’s owner had multiple options that would not have impacted the public sidewalk. The new patio could’ve been built shallower but wider, with the same amount of, or even more, square feet – the building is set back from the sidewalk. Or, heaven forbid, several of their many parking spaces could’ve been used instead. But for whatever reason(s), the decision was made that a patio of this size would be the “best” solution, with little or no consideration of the negative impacts to local pedestrians and the existing streetscape and its existing, consistent, urban setbacks.

Local Architect Jim Zavist was born in upstate New York, raised in Louisville KY, spent 30 years in Denver Colorado and relocated to St. Louis in 2005.

Steve’s added commentary:

Thanks Jim for your fine contributions to the dialog. I’ve visited this location twice since the first post ran in late June. Jim’s observations are spot-on. It is nice to see a local business doing well enough to reinvest in their location. However, in this instance, their location has been expanded into the public’s space.

The cross slope is a serious issue. This is the side to side slope relative to the path of travel. First, someone in a manual wheelchair has a much more difficult time trying to keep the chair going straight ahead — a lot of energy is consumed just trying to keep from getting pushed off the curb and into the street. And for those of us that do walk with a cane I can tell you that a cross slope is also a challenge to deal with. The general idea with new concrete work is to provide just enough slope to shed water. At the outer edges of sidewalks the cross slope does get excessive as the sidewalk is angled down to meet the curb. This is all the more reason to preserve a wider sidewalk space.

Interestingly there remains private land to the south of the new patio (as shown in the first photo above). They could have made the patio shallower so as to not invade the pubic right of way but made it longer to get sufficient seating capacity. As pointed out above they also have a very large surface parking lot which could have been used. However, I do like the idea of the patio being adjacent to the public sidewalk as that can enhance the pedestrian experience if done right. But this patio squeezes the pedestrian and diminishes the public space. In the very least I would have insisted they create some separation between their surface parking and the public sidewalk.

The remaining space is minimally passable. But we shouldn’t seek to reach for the minimums when it comes to pedestrian space. We must raise our standards.