New grocery co-op offers rare product in north city neighborhood: fresh vegetables

Last Saturday hundreds turned out for the ribbon cutting on the Old North Grocery Co-op.

They were still stocking the shelves but it was far better than when I saw the very raw space a week earlier. Congrats to everyone that made the store a reality!  You do not need to be a co-op member to purchase from the store so be sure to visit after you stop at the North City Farmers’ Market (Saturday before noon).  The farmers’ market is located at 14th & St. Louis Ave (across from Crown Candy Kitchen) and the co-op is a block east at 13th & St. Louis Ave.  Both are easily accessed from the #30 or #74 bus lines.

At the opening of the grocery co-op I talked with many people, two on camera.  First is farmer Rusty Lee of Lee Farms LLC:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Khc9S_FVcw

Second is Dr. Jon Hagler, Director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture:

The Old North Grocery Co-Op is initially open Monday-Thursday 3-7 pm , Friday 3-6:30 pm, and 9-3 on Saturday. Closed on Sunday.

Next door to the co-op is the 13th Street Community Garden.

Tonight at the garden “find out how to prepare your garden harvest.”  This event is at 7pm tonight, Friday July 23rd.

– Steve Patterson

Forced into the street to reach the bus stop

Last Saturday I decided to catch the #30 Soulard bus northbound to go to Old North St. Louis.  For new readers, I often use a motorized wheelchair to get around.

So you can imagine the challenge of getting past 14th & Lucas to reach the bus stop  on the curve, just before the building in the background.  I ended up going in the street until I got to a drive just before the stop.  My only alternative was to go several blocks further in the opposite direction. The lack of accessibility was no fault of the transit agency.  No, the blame is squarely on the city.  Just a hundred feet away is Washington Ave where tons of money was spent some years ago on a fancy streetscape.  So if I stay on one street the accessibility is decent.

– Steve Patterson

Readers happy about new single stream recycling

The weekly poll last week was about the city’s new trash collection fee:

Q: St. Louis has just started a trash fee of $11 per month per unit. Which of the following two best describes your reaction:

1. Glad single-stream recycling was added 75 [37.69%]
2. The fee is fair for the service provided 39 [19.6%]
3. Other taxes being collected to the city should cover trash collection 20 [10.05%]
4. I don’t mind the fee as long as they continue picking up twice per week 17 [8.54%]
5. I live outside the city and pay for my trash collection. 15 [7.54%]
6. Multi-family buildings should pay a lower fee per unit than single family houses 11 [5.53%]
7. I pay for private trash collection through my condo fee (or similar) 8 [4.02%]
8. The city went to once per week collection for a bit just so $11/month for twice a week wouldn’t seem so bad. 7 [3.52%]
9. Unsure/no opinion 4 [2.01%]
10. Other answer… 3 [1.51%]

Voters were allowed to vote for two answers.  No matter their view on the fee, they liked the recycling.  Had the recycling not been added I think we would have seen a revolt.

The three other answers were:

1. I MAYBE trash 1 bag/2 weeks. Everything else is composted/recycled.
2. I think the whole thing is crap.
3. If we would work on increasing the population

Share your thoughts on the fee below.

– Steve Patterson

Who cares about ward boundaries?

The boundaries of St. Louis’ 28 wards change every 10 years, following the decennial census. The idea is each ward should have the same number of residents after redistricting.  But does anyone care about where the lines are drawn? Does anyone care if a business relocates from one ward to another within the city? The answer is yes, some aldermen obsess about the ward they represent to the point a property across the street from the ward doesn’t matter to them. This provincial way of thinking hurts the city as a whole.

In May Ald Kacie Starr Triplett tweeted the following from @KacieStarr:

“Patricia Stevens College is relocating to the 6th Ward. That’s approx 200-300 college students walking, visiting, shopping in downtown”. 6:53 AM May 26th via UberTwitter

Wow, 200-300 more people downtown!  Wait, where are they relocating from? Oh, from North 4th St, less than a mile away and also downtown.  They are leaving the current 7th ward and moving to the 6th ward, not really a gain.  Someone walking from the old location to the new location would pass through a bit of the 5th Ward on the way. Most of our aldermen are guilty of this.

I’m very pleased Stevens Institute rehabbed a building near me for their new facility, I just wish our aldermen weren’t so narrowly focused on their 3.6% of the city. We need elected officials who will view the city as a whole and work to improve 100% of the city.

– Steve Patterson

Filling the void at Broadway & Washington Ave

A week ago I did a post looking at a stretch of Washington Ave downtown (Improving Washington Ave between 10th Street and the Eads Bridge/Mississippi River).  Everything I suggested was basic active street 101 — fewer travel lanes, on-street parking, movable street furnishings at large plazas and active facades.  Not banners or other lame efforts that don’t work.  But I did have one suggestion that went beyond the basics — a new restaurant structure at the NE corner of Washington Ave & Broadway.

The existing corner, as you can see above, is lifeless and dated.  Ideally this corner would once again be filled in with buildings as was the case in 1909:

But that isn’t going to happen, unfortunately. The blue in the above map indicates a building with a stone facade so my guess is when this corner was razed the stone wall we see today was offered as a consultation consolation prize to make up for the lost building(s).  It doesn’t cut it.

So here I will detail my suggestion from last week.  Build a 2-story restaurant at the corner (blue, above) with an outdoor patio (purple) surrounded by landscaping (green).  The orange would be a future thin “liner building” to provide storefront spaces facing Broadway that would screen the surface parking lot. The remaining parking lot would need to be reconfigured as well as providing a walkway from the parking lot to both Washington Ave and to Broadway.

The restaurant might be a national or local chain looking to open a downtown location in their own building or even a public restaurant owned and operated by the Missouri Athletic Club, offering a casual outdoor option for members and the public.  An absolute must is the entrance to the new restaurant be at the corner, onto one or both public sidewalks. Building a new restaurant on the corner of this parking lot is not unlike the practice of building in mall parking lots. The difference here is the new building gets immediately connected via existing sidewalks.

With a MetroLink light rail station a block to the west, the new Downtown Trolley bus running right in front of the property, and the addition of on-street parking on both Washington Ave and Broadway the loss of the off-street spaces would be minimal. The new restaurant with outdoor patio and storefronts along Broadway would raise the visual image of this intersection, more in line with the upscale character of MAC.

With early bird parking rates of only $4.50/day it is not difficult to imagine a higher return on the land from occupied space, especially space that increases activity in the area.

– Steve Patterson