Much Needed Change at City Hall

No, I’m not talking about Charter Amendments A, B, C, & D. I’m talking about beverage & food service at City Hall. Brother & Sister team of Scott & Lynn Josse will be serving food & coffee at City Hall as they expand their ‘People’s Coffee’ business.

Scott & Lynn started their first People’s Coffee at The Commonspace. Then they expanded to the Carnahan Courthouse. Scott & Lynn closed the Commonspace location a few month ago – shortly before Brian Marston & Amanda Doyle closed the physical location of The Commonspace. I’m glad to see Scott & Lynn doing well and expanding as well as seeing Brian & Amanda still working hard to make St. Louis a better place.

Below is from STLToday .

Ready To Vote?

Missouri voters are being asked to stop diverting funds from transportation to the general fund. This is simply misleading. The transportation lobby wants more money at Mo-Dot for road building. They don’t want to work on mass transit solutions – just roads for cars. How does that help us in urban areas? We can’t continue building auto-dominated regions.

Furthermore, this state wide amendment will take millions of dollars from the general fund. How does the state then balance the budget? The supporters claim this amendment has no fiscal impact yet they can’t say how the state’s budget will be balance. Cut services? Raise taxes? Both? I’m voting no on Amendment 3.

In St. Louis we have to decide on some charter amendments which will bring about major change to St. Louis government. I have long thought St. Louis as both a city & county was fucked up. We need change. However, the proposed amendments are funded by the civic progress types which are acting in their best interests. They are seeking a stronger mayor type government which I don’t necessarily oppose. I believe their goal is to streamline government so it will easier for them to purchase politicians. Fifteen aldermen rather than 28 can save a lot of money. A stronger mayor means not having to suck up to the President of the board of aldermen and comptroller. I’m voting no on A, B, C, & D.

Good things come to those who wait

Today I shopped at the new City Grocers downtown (920 Olive, no web site yet). Those waiting in St. Louis for things to happen have been rewarded yet again.

Yes, the historic Century Building isn’t even razed yet for a massive parking garage and signs of a renewed downtown neighborhood are everywhere. A neighborhood, unlike a business district, is full of residents and an active street life. City Grocer will do far more for downtown than the Old Post Office project ever will.

A whole new group of people, myself included, will seek out downtown residences simply based on having City Grocers and the smaller but very niceLucas Park Market as urban amenities. These new residents will encourage other businesses to start in downtown or relocate from other areas to downtown. We are witnessing the reverse of what happened as people & businesses left downtown and the city in the mid to late 20th Century.

I have many more thoughts on many more subjects. Please bookmark my blog and let me know what you think.

Kirkwood Station Plaza, another great idea with questionable execution

Nearing completion is Kirkwood Station Plaza in the affluent St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood. The site was, for several decades, a huge parking lot and a Target store. Prior to the Target store it was the site of a historic hotel. Some in Kirkwood opposed the project because they thought it was too dense. I personally think the density is appropriate for the location. Like many projects this one had the right concept but falls short in the details.

A plaza complete with patriotic flags, detailed paving and even a fountain does a nice job of welcoming the public to the project. The main building in the first photo is a bit too retro-colonial for my taste but this is the suburbs where originality is not considered a virtue. From an urban perspective it does a pretty good job. However, the ground floor is store fronts and from the sidewalk along the main road you really wouldn’t know it. The entire plaza has something like four trees. The only real shade is provided by the pavilion seen in the background – a mockery of the stunning Kirkwood train station across the street.

MLP had this to say about the project, “Designed with a pedestrian-friendly emphasis, a highlight of Station Plaza will be the European-Inspired plaza and fountain that will provide a community gathering point, directly across from City Hall.” Source.

In good urban fashion the developer, MLP Investments, has re-cut Madison street through the site and reconnected the project with the surrounding charming downtown area known as Kirkwood Junction.

But take a closer look at the photo below. As you walk along the sidewalk heading toward other housing down the street you see this big yellow box forcing the sidewalk to jog out of the way.

As you get closer (below) you see this mechanical box jutting out from a parking garage covered in the same yellow fake stucco. This is the main connector street from the housing to the East to the Plaza and main downtown district to the West.

Below is the view heading West from the apartments on the East end of the project.

Aside from being really ugly, the structure is an assault to a pedestrian. This dramatically reduces the pleasantness of strolling from your new condo to one of the new shops or restaurants along Kirkwood road. So much for being “pedestrian-friendly!”

Additional mistakes abound. First, the sidewalks are not given any street trees to shade the pedestrian. Street trees also would have visually separated the pedestrian from parked cars. The sidewalk width is designed not for any real use but to give the illusion of being pedestrian friendly. Try to walk side by side past that ugly mechanical structure. The original site plan did not have these issues, click here to see the site plan.

Once the project is complete and businesses have moved into the retail/restaurant spaces I’ll take another look at the project and how it relates to the rest of downtown Kirkwood.

CITIRAMA A GOOD START, HBA’S BUILDERS DON’T QUITE GET IT

The former site of the infamous Gaslight Square district is now a residential street. The Home Builders Association of Greater St. Louis held the ‘Citirama‘ along a single block on Olive between October 8-24. Luckily, the presence of the existing street and alleys forbid the HBA and it’s member builders from subjecting us with the types of developments currently being built on greenfields at the far edges of the region.

The street is just that – an urban street that actually connects the city together. It is not isolated or locked behind a gate. Pedestrians, cyclists or motorists can freely make their way from one end to the next. This is completely opposite of today’s subdivisions which typically have a single entry off a major road. The suburban model is built for motorists only – pedestrians & cyclists need not apply.

The alley provides numerous benefits. First and foremost, the alley gets the garage at the back of the house where it belongs. It also moves trash & yard waste dumpsters off the public street. The absence of driveways, garage doors, and piles of trash greatly improve the friendliness of streets. A place where someone might actually want to walk to the store.

The photo below shows some of the new townhouses which are mixed in with new single family homes. In the ‘burbs such a mix is unheard of – the thinking is that to keep values up we need to separate each type of use from another. In a city the mix of residential styles is encouraged.

My main problem with the townhouses shown above is the builder’s selection of windows. They are white and they stand out like a sore thumb. For the doors at 2nd floor balconies have a nice dark taupe color and the front doors are stained. Combined with the dark brick the color palate is very pleasing and sophisticated – with the exception of those damn white windows. The white windows were chosen to save money and it shows. On a positive note, the builder selected appropriate window dividers – three vertical in the upper sash and no dividers in the lower sash. This is the most common type of window division found in St. Louis. The six over six divisions found in most new houses are completely inappropriate in the City of St. Louis.

Again, I’m really glad to see builders who normally only come into St. Louis for a ball game or annual HBA dinner actually building new homes within the city limits. However, I must point out details that in your typical suburban subdivision where everyone drives by just don’t seem to matter. But, you start building in a city where people actually walk on the sidewalks to get from point A to point B you must build to a higher standard.

Above you will see the side of one of the new homes. On the positive we see windows & doors of the same color (and thankfully not white) as well as brick veneer continuing around the side. While I would have preferred to have seen the brick continue up the gable or perhaps something more interesting than the siding and lack of details I think it is a pretty good compromise. What jumps out to me is the vinyl-clad box containing the fireplace for the front room. This looks like a tumor that needs to be surgically removed. This may fly in St. Charles county but in a city with real architecture it just doesn’t work.

Below is a side-view picture of a front porch on a single family house. I didn’t bother taking the straight-on picture from the sidewalk because from that view it really looks nice. Urbanists, such as myself, think front porches are great social tools because they encourage interaction between the person on the porch and a stranger on the sidewalk. A front porch separates the public street from the private home.

But this builder gave this home a suburban rather than urban porch. This is a joke but nobody is laughing. If you are going to do a porch then do a porch – don’t give us half a porch.

Details are very important but too often they are overlooked. The picture below is from a 2nd floor back deck. This detail probably exists on 99% of the new suburban houses in the region but by my taste it is an example of the lost art of craftsmanship.

The job of the vinyl plate behind the light fixture is to give the fixture a flat surface to mount against as well as to cover the edges of the electrical box. It does both of these jobs but fails to demonstrate proper proportion. Yes, I know, in the big scheme of things this really doesn’t matter. But, if you add up enough of the ‘doesn’t matter’ details and you’ve got a place that doesn’t matter.