Many would argue that the development is an improvement.  There is room in STL for many styles of buildings.  The 100 Black Men could have built their building in the suburbs, but they built it in the city.

As far as what makes St. Louis unique?  It’s a lot of things besides cool architecture.  We are a great beer town.  We have great people.  We have the best baseball team in National League history.  We are a great music town.  We have great restaurants.  We have great attractions.  We have a world class symphony and botanical garden.  Need I go on?

You state that “for decades St. Louis’ “leadership” has thought that anything new — any investment — was better than no investment at all.”  So, you would be comfortable with a continuum of no investment at all as our best, vacant and boarded up as our median and crumbling structures and vacant lots as our worst?!  That sounds a lot like our sister powerhouses, places like Wellston and East St. Louis.

I agree, the urban form of many of our new investments isn’t very urban, but the older, more-urban stuff (that you claim to be critical to our success) simply isn’t attracting the types of tenants and users that are equally critical to our success as a city.  There are multiple commercial properties that have been sitting vacant for years, contributing little other than a physical pressence.  There are many others that have marginal, at best, uses.  A city needs jobs, commerce and tax revenues to succeed.  Vacant structures are drag on this dynamic, and when they reach the point where maintenance no longer makes any sense and isn’t being done and the buildings actually fall apart, they become a true disincentive to new investment.

Our struggles as a city stem from many sources – white flight, deindustrialization, automation, poor leadership, widespread access to automobiles and trucks, freeways, shopping malls, big box stores, incentives from suburban governments, etc, etc – but a lack of walkability (in the urban design sense) is a very small issue. 

Have you asked 100 Black Men why they made the choices they did?  Have you asked their architect?  Why they favored parking over pedestrians?  Why they set themselves back from the street?  I’m sure thay had valid (to them) reasons for doing so, while investing several hundred thousand dollars in the city.  Holding up examples (like this) help frame the discusion but do very little to change what’s actually being built.  What really needs to happen is a wholesale reeducation of the people with the money, the ones making the investments.  Architects can and do make suggestions and recommendations to improve designs every day, but we are beholden to our clients.  If they want to provide 50 parking spaces, while only 30 or 40 should work, most of us will figure out how to give them 50.

There’s a big difference between ivory tower, academic speculations and getting paid for one’s design work.  Most architects are hired to do specific projects and we can and will only push the design envelope so far.  Going too far outside a client’s comfort zone can either be a waste of time or a great way to be terminated and not paid.  Few clients, especially on new-build projects, want to ignore the automobile and go back to the urban realities of the 1920′s – streetcars and walking is what most people did back then, not so much now.  The city is pretty much in the same position.  They can only require so many concessions from a developer before they conclude it’s not worth the hassle and take their dollars elsewhere.

Actually, Steve, the building with the missing storefront was the result of a collapse sometime last year. Not really sure what the owners are going to do here, as they’ve got the remainder of the interior blocked off with a temporary OSB wall. There is also the building up the street–to the east–which has been under various stages of construction for about nine months. It is also set back from the street approx. sixty/seventy ft.

As for the comments of Rick, well, most every major city has a baseball team, most every major city drinks beer (and maybe several have their own micro-breweries). Chicago, Denver, Cleveland, DC–they all have nice people. Most cities have great music and restaurants, and attractions. You don’t need to go on, to be sure. I believe that the point Mr. Patterson is trying to make is that trying to remake the City, just for the purposes of making some kind of tax revenue, or because it’s “development”, will not be the bait which will attract businesses and people back to the STL region, much less the City. Why would anyone move to a city if it looks the same as Dallas, ATL, Orlando, Phoenix, etc? We don’t have soaring  mountains, beautiful seashore, forests of evergreen (well, considering the drought and a certain destructive beetle, neither will anyone else in the Rockies). Why would anyone interested in urban–or dense–living want to live in a City that is starting to look like Chesterfield/O’Fallon/Warrenton/Arnold? It’s depressing to travel in some parts of the City, not because of the devastation from the past (though that does hurt), but because increasingly the choices made about retail and housing development could have been picked up whole from any ‘burb in the US and plopped down at the corner of Kingshighway and Delmar. That intersection makes me sick. But that’s not the only place this has occurred. Don’t even get  me started on the vast acreage around SLU which has been leveled over that last few years. Is that good for the City? Doubtful. Good for SLU, and its marketing teams? Probably. See, parents, no dark-skinned people walking around the streets near the school or the hospital. Because their are scarcely any places to live in Grand Center/SLU anymore. See what we did there? SLU is isolating itself from the City by cutting off any chance of development, and the City not only doesn’t raise a finger in opposition, it blatantly encourages the policy of land clearance for what, nothing? And this is repeated over and over. Want to build a building, but don’t have money or a permit, but that building sitting on your site has to go? Sure thing, just drop a few ducats into the collection plate for your alderman, and your golden. Put in a QT/Walgreens/CVS, etc, etc, etc., but that pesky apt building or historic structure is in your way? Go for it! No accountability, no responsibility, no planning, no brains.

I’ll be getting out of school next spring, and my wife and I have had some serious discussions about leaving the STL for–where?–I don’t know yet. But we are both a little tired of the shenanigans and the piss-poor planning which is turning St. Louis and her history–and the buildings in which that history was made–into a weak and unneeded doppelganger to the ‘burbs.

But, hey, your alderman just paved your alley, or put in another (unneeded) stop sign, so things are just fine, right? That’s why this City can’t have nice things. Because most of her residents have been programmed to accept shit as a substitute for real leadership, and positive and progressive development.  Hmmm, one could say much the same thing about the rest of the country. Nostrums and platitudes are no replacement for substantive and genuine advancement. I love this City, and this country, but I cannot close my eyes to the fact that we are moving backwards, and it’s scary to think that there are millions of my fellow citizens who are either ignorant of this, or are aware of it in some way, but just don’t want to look into the face of the Gorgon.

Cripes, that was long, even for me. I think I need a beer.

fewer things irritate me more than seeing these suburban style shitboxes being built in the city. Vinyl-sided houses with front-facing attached garages and driveway in the city?!? are you F@#ing kidding me?

Stay in St. Charles (or farther) if that’s what you want. Please. We don’t need you. 

Form Based Zoning. We desperately need it in the city. That and a change in laws that makes Historic rehabs more profitable than parking lots and gas stations.

Rick, the government replaces the forces of market everyday, that’s how we got into this situation, 100s and 1000′s of small and large policy decisions that allow gas stations and the automobile to dominate over walking and transit is the source of the decline of the city.
The change that has to occur is to put the pedestrian, the bicycle and transit on at a minimum of equal footing with the auto. In fact the city, if it is to maintain its unique character should make walking, and pedestrians the basic element of city planning.
Right now just about everything is designed for the auto: the inanimate object of the automobile is more important than the lives of people.
Compare this 100 men building to the business district on South Grand. Someone, I don’t know if it was the developer or the city who initiatied the solution, but they built a street front row of stores with parking behind at the intersection of Grand and Arsenal. (Bread Company, Kinko’s etc.)
How hard would it be to ruin the South Grand business district?, Not hard if that project was a strip mall instead with parking in front. If demolition was allowed and encouraged and auto centric development was promoted it could ruin the district quickly.
The ambiance and walking friendly atmosphere would disappear. Further impacting the appeal (and economics) of the businesses who depend on people outside of the neighborhood. In turn this impacts the base economic support of the surrounding Tower Grove South and East neighborhoods, making them less desirable and making disinvestment more likely.
Eventually the area would be a wasteland with a QucikTrip at Grand and Arsenal. That describes the choices the city makes every day.
A major point about the 100 men building is the lack of a publically stated strategy for the street and general area. What is the connectivity of this major street to the rest of the city? It is the role of government to take these actions. It is not happening. Where is that strategy? How does the 100 Men building or other new buildings in the area fit into a strategy into the city as a whole?
There is no strategy.
City government is a failure, in fact the continual decline of St. Louis, using the anything goes, free market, forget everything but the auto approach is the policy supporting that decline. Looking at the disaster of the population lost of the city for six decades is the ongoing proof of that failure. It is time to try something new.
Please don’t say the government can’t do anything, it is not true.
Start with heavy regulation of all gas stations, businesses with street front parking and parking lots along streets. This does not mean ban them, but to manage them.
Build the city for people, not for cars.