Poor Design Alert: New ADA Ramp Blocks Sidewalk

Last week I did a post about a sign blocking a sidewalk. “No big deal” was the attitude of some while the owner quickly removed the offending sign. In the post I asked if others new about similar issues. Well, thanks to a reader I got a tip on the following issue being built at the moment on Olive, just around the corner from The Tap Room. Like the issue with sidewalk parking on 14th street, I had seen this work happening but never stopped to take a closer look until someone brought it to my attention.

The attractive buff brick building on the left has been offices for at least a few years now. The dark brick building is now getting a makeover as well — a welcomed change. But, some of the work is problematic. Before we get to that, let me explain the issue.

Many of these old buildings had several steps leading from the sidewalk to the main level which presents a challenge during a renovation for meeting the access requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). To make matters worse, Olive Street actually has a downward slope as you go from the west to east (left to right, above).

The generally accepted solution is what you see above. The sidewalk is allowed to follow the natural grade of the adjacent street while heading to the entrace is a ramp to the door. Depending upon the grades & floor heights the walk to the entrance might simply be level but in this case it required a slight upward ramp.

The only potential issue here, and I am not sure if it is or not, is what is know as “cross-grade” — the angle of the sidewalk pitching toward the curb. While trying to push a wheelchair an excessive cross-grade might sent someone toward the street with them constantly having to compensate. Again, I’m not sure if this is within limits or not as I don’t yet have a digital level.

But moving east to the work being done on the dark brick building and we encounter an obvious problem.

The generous width of the ramp leaves little room on the actual sidewalk for someone walking, much less in a wheelchair or mobility scooter.

From the other side you can see how constrained this space is.

I don’t see how this can possibly be acceptable. How this got through the design firm and past the city’s review process is beyond me. Even then, you’d think someone on site would stop and think about this when they laid out the forms to build the foundation for the brick wall. The footing would have been inspected by someone from the city’s building division.

The irony of creating an accessible entrance that actually limits those that might use it from reaching your door is rich. Many professionals were involved in decision making and review of this project and yet common sense did not prevail. Sometimes a fresh set of eyes, reviewing a project’s drawings, would catch mistakes such as this before any concrete is poured. To chose firms out there designing and buliding work in the public right of way, consider bringing in someone such as myself to spend a couple of hours reviewing the project and site conditions to see if costly situations such as this can be avoided.

I do not know who the developer, contractor or designer are for this project so I am unable to reach them directly. However, I have brought it to the attention of 6th Ward Alderman Lewis Reed as well as Dr. Deborah Dee, the city’s director of the Office of on the Disabled. Basically, I feel the new brick wall needs to be removed and rebuilt in such a manner as to not constrict the sidewalk. The adjacent ramps at the buliding next door serve as a good model.

Third Establishment Gets Valet Zone, Others Remain Out of Control

Last night I drove around for a bit over an hour looking for all the valet parking areas I could find. Starting at 9pm, I figure I hit pretty much all of them. In the past I’ve pretty much focused on the 1100 & 1200 blocks of Washington Avenue with Copia and Lucas Park Grille, respectively. Just over a week aga the Department of Streets set up new valet guidelines which includes the establishment of designated valet zones, they started with Copia & Lucas Park Grille. These keep the valets within a certain boundary but also alert motorists where they cannot park after a certain time.
Keep in mind the intent of the valet zones is to provide an on-street space for customers to drop off or pick up their cars — it is not intended to provide any sort of “VIP” parking for really nice cars. Here were my findings last night.

Restaurants w/valet zones:

• Lucas Park Grille, 12?? Washington, a Range Rover was parked within the no-parking valet zone. Keep in mind they have an 88ft long zone which by many accounts is too long. If they can keep a Range Rover parked there then they don’t need the space.
• Copia, 1122 Washington, a Maserati and Mercedes were parked within the no-parking valet zone. The Mercedes was parked in a designated no-parking area blocking fire access to stand pipe for an adjacent building — the fire marshall needs to keep a closer eye on them. Copia’s zone is an amazingly long 129ft so it is no wonder they feel they can park two cars within that
• The Loft, Olive east of Compton, no problems to report. Zone is a very reasonable three spaces long, all were empty around 9:45pm.

Restaurants w/o valet zones:

• Eleven-Eleven Mississippi, 1111 Mississippi, large amount of space, cones in street reserving spaces.
• Pepper Lounge, 2005 Locust, cones reserving large number of spaces on both sides of street.
• Kyo, 14xx Washington Ave, cones in front of business,
• Dolce, Broadway @ Olive, massive quantity of spaces reserved on both sides of Broadway, charging $5. Midwest Valet.
• Tony’s, Market St, block-long no-parking zone in front of restaurant was full of cars presumably parked by valets. Should be designated as parking with time slot for valet service like all other establishments or cars should be ticketed or towed from no-parking zone. Tony’s should not receive any special treatment simply because they are Tony’s.
• Ten14, 1014 Locust, cones on both sides of street.
• Harry’s, cones on both sides of street creating lanes with cones and signs.
• Dante’s, Olive west of Compton, cones reserving spaces on both sides of club, Midwest Valet sign placed within marked bike lane.
• Mandrin, Maryland Plaza, a few cones out but using limited space not yet marked as valet zone.
• Bar-Italia, Maryland, cones reserving quite a few spaces.
• Sub-Zero, Euclid, four spaces taken.
• Restaurants on Laclede @ Euclid. Valet sign out, two cars parked on Laclede at narrow area.

I have no idea how many of the above actually posses a valid permit. If they do they will, at some point soon, be forced to comply with the new valet regulations and be limited to a still genereous valet zone. Those operating on the streets without permits will become more and more obvious to everyone as the will be the places lacking a designated zone.

In the past I’ve seen on-street valet service at a few other restaurants but none were observed last night. If you can think of additional locations where valets routinely operate let me know using the comments below. I will keep an eye on them and make sure they are all known to the Department of Streets – I’m just thinking they don’t have the staff to drive around at 9pm on a Saturday night.

Dante’s on Olive just west of Compton:

The actual club is up where the cars are parked. These three spaces plus about that many on the other side of their club are being reserved for those willing to shell out $5 to park at public parking spot after you are no longer required to feed the meter. Note the bike lane to the left of the image above.

Midwest Valet has placed their sign within the bike lane, a complete disregard for the safety of others. In more urban minded cities this sort of abuse of bike lanes would not be tolerated.

Harry’s on 22nd at Market Street:

Here they are using public parking spaces across the street from their restaurant to establish a valet lane. This place creates an interesting delima in that most customers will arrive off Market Street (behind me) and their parking lot used to park valeted cars off-street is up ahead. So here a valet zone directly in front of their location might present functional problems for both customers and the valet operator. That said, a reasonable solution needs to be worked out as they are taking up way too many public parking spaces but unless someone is visiting the FBI at night (behind fence at right) they literally are the only users of this street.

Dolce at Olive & Broadway (SE corner):

Once again Midwest Valet is up to old tricks. Here their sign is actually out of the way along Olive but that is only because Olive is two lanes between Broadway and 4th street to the east. My observations on several occassions has been they use Olive for customers to drop off or pick up their cars. It appears they take the cars to a parking garage and do not use the spaces coned off on Broadway.

Dolce is located at the far corner of the building on the right. They’ve coned off 10 spaces on the east side of Broadway and another 3 on the west side (visible at left above). The balance of the west side is no parking in front of the Metropolitan Square building.

This shot gives you a good overview of how empty the area looks, a false impression. Again, I think they park cars in a garage and simply cone off all these spaces so customers will be forced to use the valet service. If customers self-parked, how would they make any money? Again, these are public spaces and someone visiting a friend at a nearby hotel might wish to park there or perhaps going to see friends in the newly opened loft building seen in the background.

It is pretty clear these valet companies, especially Midwest Valet, will continue to abusively take spaces away from the general public until they are forced not to. I’m just glad the Department of Streets if finally taking charge of the problem.

Cacchione Gets Endorsement of 6th Ward Democrats

Tonight the 6th Ward Democrats, in a packed meeting, voted to endorse current committeeman Patrick Cacchione. The votes were as follows:

• Cacchione, 115
• Triplett, 51
• Saller, 5 (1/19 – 10am — I’m told this might have been 20 rather than 5)

I’ll have some commentary and hopefully some video in a separate post at some point tomorrow.

Valet Parking Makes the Post-Dispatch

Downtown resident and Post-Dispatch reporter Doug Moore had a nice piece in yesterday’s paper about valet parking in his everyday column called “Downtown Diary.” I’d link to it but the P-D still has this nasty habit of pulling their stories after a couple weeks, not good for a long-term post such as this. From the story:

…there are no hard and fast rules about how much area can be set aside for valet service — and that’s a bad thing. The cones block lanes of traffic and sometimes stretch an entire block. As more meters are blocked, those who seek free, on-street parking over valet get steamed. There’s been shouting. Cones have been moved or run over. Police have been called.

It’s an issue that caught city leaders off guard.

“Clearly, we need some rules,” said Alderwoman Lyda Krewson, who represents the Central West End, where valet parking also is common. “The self-policing thing hasn’t worked.”

For the record I have never run over a cone, although I know someone who has. Moore continues;

Restaurant managers say they want to be good sports and work with the city.

“I have no problem with the city chiming in,” said Copia owner Eyad Tammas.

Lucas Park Grille manager Katie Herald said the restricted space could present a problem on busy weekends with cars blocking traffic as they wait for valet service.

Eyad Tammas sounds so willing to work with others doesn’t he? Back in October he wasn’t so cooperative, see video of owner (see full post). And for those of you that preferred Antonio French’s edited version of the video, click here.

Last Thursday when the new valet signs went up at Copia & Lucas Park Grille I wanted to get a few quick pictures. Turns out I arrived at Copia while a P-D photographer was there.

This caption is a bit misleading. I parked in a space to the right of the valet zone sign which was pointing left. The valet himself is pointing the opposite direction of where I parked.

Above is the sign in question the following morning. As you can see the arrow points left toward Copia (in background). The space to the right of the sign is not part of the valet zone, which is where I parked the night before when the picture was taken. This confusion on the part of the valets seems to have been cleared up as they were not trying to take this space over the weekend.

I still believe them having the space to the left of the sign is too much space. That gives them a total of 129 feet! The zone, in my view, needs to be moved one space to the left for a total of 106 feet — still a good amount of space (equal to roughly five parking spaces). As the above storefront is vacant and therefore not part of Copia it will be good to keep that space public to help encourage a new tenant as well as serve potential tenants in the adjacent Meridian Loft building (formerly the AD Brown building).

Overall I am pleased with the progress recently being made on this issue. We still have numerous other valet areas which have yet to be tamed by the zone signage but I believe the Streets Department is finally on top of the issue. Once they have created the necessary valet zones throughout the city it will be clear to everyone which businesses are operating without proper permits as well as which companies are trying to reserve an excessive amount of the public street for their private business.

A Look at St. Louis’ MLK Drive, Part 2 of 5

This post is part two of a five part series. Part two looks at MLK Drive from Tucker to Jefferson Ave. Click here to read part one.

Along Tucker (12th) we see ugly bright yellow “Jersey” barriers placed along the outside lane. I’m standing at the start of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive which is to the left, heading westbound. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is located on the right with literal acres of surface parking on the left.

Above is 16th Street as seen from Delmar, the next block up is MLK. Two years ago this was gated off forcing pedestrians traversing the area to seek alternate routes or as they had done when I posted on it back on November 18, 2004 pry the bars enough to allow a person to squeeze through. I’m glad to see it opened once again to traffic.

Former Franklin School, above, bounded by MLK on the north, 18th on the east, Delmar on the south and 19th on the west is getting rebuilt into affordable housing units for the active adult (55+). Thankfully I am still too young to qualify although I’m just a short 15 years away.

Near 22nd Street along MLK is a vacant city block, at least partially owned by Butler Re-Development. Part of an earlier city-backed development scheme for the area, many current owners have been sitting on these vacant parcels for years with little to no pressure from City Hall to bring the land back into productive use. Substantial amounts of land in this area are vacant. The city helped many of these owners acquire the land, maybe it is time to step in and demand they finally do something? Mayor Slay is a proponent of selective use of eminent domain, if this doesn’t qualify I don’t know what does.

A few additional photos from MLK between Tucker & Jefferson can be seen on Flickr. To continue to part three of this series click here.