Tragedy Can Happen Anywhere

Yesterday a tragic even occurred on Cherokee Street:

Four people were shot to death after an apparent murder-suicide inside a Cherokee Street building Thursday afternoon.

Ambulances and police cars responded to the scene at 2715 Cherokee Street at 1:29 p.m. The Cherokee Place Business Incubator is housed at that location and is home to many individual businesses. (KMOX)

What we must all remember is there are unstable individuals everywhere who settle disputes with guns. This is not a reflection on the people who live or work in the area where these individuals snap. I have seen Cherokee Street blossom in the 23 years I’ve been in St. Louis. One of my first jobs upon arrival was working for an antique store east of Jefferson, almost nobody went west of Jefferson in 1990. This doesn’t change my positive view of Cherokee.

The suburbanites reading this may think this is another city shooting and that these types of things don’t happen in their community. Again, these things happen everywhere.

Less than a year ago:

The shootings happened Monday morning in the 700 block of Hawbrook Road, in Glendale, Missouri a wealthy suburb about 10 miles west of St. Louis.

Mitchell Murch II called police Monday to say his wife Catherine, 42, had killed the couple’s two children, then herself at the family residence. (KMOV)

Glendale is wealthy compared to much of St. Louis but it pales in comparison to Frontenac.  In 2003 my then-boss and I met a couple at their home, they were considering hiring us for a remodeling project . We didn’t get the job, disappointing because we had another project in the same subdivision.  Two years later came this news:

Three people are dead following a shooting and high speed pursuit in the west St. Louis County suburbs of Town & Country and Ladue. Police say a man, identified as John Alexander of Frontenac shot and killed his estranged wife Kelli Alexander, 35, also of Frontenac and the caregiver of their children 29 year old April Wheeler of St. Charles, who is a friend of the family. John Alexander shot his wife, who was in her car with their three children, outside a home in the 2600 block of Bopp Road shortly before 6 p.m. Friday night. Video: Police Press Conference Corporal Jeff Myer, spokesman for the Town & Country Police Department, says police received several calls about a possible shooting outside a home on Bopp Road, which is just south of Clayton Road in Town & Country. (KSDK)

I sat at their breakfast table just a couple of years earlier! Do his actions put at black eye on Bopp Rd? No, these things happen everywhere. Wealthy neighborhoods don’t have immunity from senseless tragedy.

The families of yesterday’s victims have my deepest sympathies.

— Steve Patterson

Picking Up Trash A Good Way To Volunteer

Returning to our loft from a visit to Union Station last week, my boyfriend and I decided to check out the Meeting of the Waters fountain by Carl Milles in Aloe Plaza.

Timidly DFS asked me if I minded if he picked up some trash while we were there. Mind? Of course not! Knock yourself out…

A few times since he’s gone back to Aloe Plaza, and parts of the Gateway Mall to the east, to pick up more trash. He’s been looking for the right volunteer opportunity and helping clean the Gateway Mall seems to be a perfect fit.

Picking up trash allows him to volunteer on his schedule and doesn’t require coordination with others. DFS hasn’t even lived in St. Louis for four months but already he’s making a small impact. DFS is the perfect boyfriend for me!

— Steve Patterson

New Construction Should Have Urban Form, Not Have A Forced Historic Style

The issue of form & style is a hard one to address, but this is exactly where I think St. Louis has failed over the years. The form of buildings, how they relate to the street/sidewalk, has been totally ignored.

Here’s how it often plays out in St. Louis: One story building set back surrounded by parking on a block with 2-4 story buildings built up to the property line. No problem, just be sure to wrap it in red brick with some stone elements so it fits in. Frustrating!

The other view taken in some neighborhoods is the new infill building, in the above scenario, should be detailed from the period of the neighbors on either side so the untrained eye wouldn’t know it was built 100 years later.  Also frustrating, they wouldn’t have done this 75 years ago…or 64 years ago.

If the Wellston Loop in 1949 had a design code based on the one used by many St. Louis neighborhoods this structure, which I love, wouldn’t have been permitted. That is the problem I have with how we tend to define “fits in.”  Granted, this would be shocking to see on Park Ave in the commercial area east of Lafayette Park. Was it shocking to Wellston Loop shoppers in 1949? Very likely, but freezing an area in whatever period can be the opposite — boring or even offensive.

I don’t have the answers, I just think we need to give more attention to form and less to particulars of style.

Here are the results from the poll last week:

Q: New construction should…

1. …have an urban form in whatever style the owner desires 34 [41.98%]
2. …replicate period of surrounding buildings in some historic districts 24 [29.63%]
3. …look like older buildings, so a lay person might think it is an old building 7 [8.64%]
4. …NOT be a replica of an older style 7 [8.64%]
5. Other: 6 [7.41%]
6. …have any form (urban/suburban) in any style the owner desires 3 [3.7%]
7. Unsure/no opinion 0 [0%]

And the six “other” answers provided by readers:

1. New construction should entice people/business to want to be in and/or around itAdd as a poll answer
2. This guestion isnt a very good one for a poll steve-o
3. Needs to be complementary to existing architecture.
4. modern and fit/funtion well on its site
5. The owner should decide what his new building will look like. MONEY TALKS!
6. not as simple as the other choices – more dtls req’d

Thoughts?

— Steve Patterson

b

Potential Development Sites Along Proposed Streetcar Line, Part 6: Compton to Vandeventer

As I’ve done for the last month, this is another post on potential development sites along the proposed initial route of the St. Louis Streetcar.  The sections already reviewed are as follows:

1. Olive 15th-16th
2. Olive 16th-18th
3. 14th & Olive To North Florissant & St. Louis Ave.
4. Olive 18th to Jefferson
5. Jefferson to Compton
   

This post will cover the section from Olive & Compton to Lindell & Vandeventer (map). For those unfamiliar with the area, Olive splits off to the north but to motorists Olive becomes Lindell (pronounced Lindle). The entire south side of this stretch of Olive/Lindell is the campus of Saint Louis University (SLU). The north is a mix of SLU, private, and institutional properties.

We’ll start at Compton and head west.

The buildings & land on the other side of Lindell from SLU’s Compton Garage are ripe for development, I’m just lacking images of them.

The corner of Lindell & Grand should get major new buildings. There are already substantial buildings in the area, especially to the north & west. These two corners were land banked by SLU so the streetcar is the perfect time to withdraw them and put them to good use activating the intersection.

An interesting paragraph from the 1978 midtown nomination:

Unfortunately, Midtown is still perceived by many as a dangerous area riddled with street crime and all manner of urban ills, the most prominent of which is the current “black sploitation” fare served at the Fabulous Fox. In spite of this onus, a 1977 walking tour sponsored by the St. Louis Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and New Town/St. Louis, Inc. drew hundreds of curious and concerned

St. Louisans to Midtown. The solution for the revitalization of existing structures and the continuing education of the general public will not be easy, but to abandon Midtown is to dismiss one of the strongest concentrations of architecturally significant buildings in St. Louis.

There is more developable area north of Lindell and  west of Spring, both vacant buildings and vacant land.

— Steve Patterson

Non-Profit Carr Square Tenant Corporation Has Massive Annual Deficits

Tenant management of public housing projects was a new thing forty years ago:

In 1971, brought together by frustration with poor management and maintenance, the residents of the Bromley-Heath public housing development In Boston formally Incorporated the nation’s first resident management corporation That same year, St. Louis’ public housing residents waged a rent strike against their housing authority to protest poor maintenance and rising rents In the wake of the strike settlement, the authority eventually delegated control over a number of management functions to newly-formed resident organizations at several Sites, Including Carr Square and Cochran Gardens. These events marked the beginning of the resident management movement, which today is viewed by resident advocates and policy makers as a potential solution to many of the problems facing America’s public housing stock and the people who live In it. (HUD – Evaluation of Resident Management in Public Housing – 1992)

The St. Louis Rent Strike actually took place in 1969, it took a few years to get to tenant management.  The Carr Square Tenant Corporation was incorporated as a non-profit on September 27, 1972, before Cochran Gardens. Initially tenant management corporations had limited roles but over the years this has expanded greatly, especially at Carr Square. Rodney Hubbard Sr. is the Executive Director of the Carr Square Tenant Corporation.

Cochran Gardens leader Bertha Gilkey became a high-profile face of tenant management with a May 3 1991 visit by President George H.W. Bush to Cochran Gardens (read speech) and was honored by Oprah Winfrey in 1992. In 1998 the Post-Dispatch discovered Gilkey had charged thousands of dollars on Cochran credit cards for personal use.  The Housing Authority demanded the return of the credit cards and questioned expenses at Carr Square:

The new leaders of the St. Louis Housing Authority are questioning hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenditures at the Carr Square housing complex.

The biggest expense in question: a contract for at least $ 616,000 for telephone work at the development.

Meanwhile, Thomas P. Costello, interim executive director of the Housing Authority, said he also wants top officials of another public-housing development, Cochran Gardens, to return their credit cards. That demand followed publication Sunday of a Post-Dispatch investigation that showed that Cochran board chairwoman Bertha Gilkey made thousands of dollars of purchases for herself and her consulting firm on her Cochran- issued credit card. (St. Louis Post-Disptach 1/14/1998)

What’s this about deficit spending? Take a look:

I obtained the 990s (non-profit tax return) for 2008-2010, the 2008 return also includes figures for the prior year, 2007. I’ve uploaded these to Scribd for review:

• 2008
• 2009
• 2010

In the four years covered above they had revenue of $4,530,275 and expenses of $7,864,725, for a cumulative deficit of -$3,334,450. I’m not an accountant, but I know you want revenue to be higher than expenses. Much of their revenue is from HUD and other government agencies. I don’t understand how this continues.

The St. Louis Comptroller’s Office has reviewed compliance for an annual daycare contract of less than $40,000. In December 2001, May 2009, and November 201o the results were the same: “Conclusion: The Agency did not fully comply with federal, state, and local CDA requirements.”

Maybe everything here is on the up and up, I just see red flags that don’t make sense to me. I’m notifying the HUD Office of Inspector General and the St. Louis Circuit Attorney, hopefully they’ll look into this.

— Steve Patterson