One Year Later: Mississippi Bluffs Project Going Nowhere Fast

A year ago today I did a post about the problems with the proposed design for the Mississippi Bluffs condos, including the razing of the stately Doering Mansion. This was a follow-up post to the November 28, 2005 Preservation Board meeting where the project was given approval by a vote of 6-2. At that meeting Ald. Matt Villa (yes, of Loughborough Commons fame) spoke about how he selected this developer over others. Once again, we have Aldermen medling in development issues for which they are not qualified.

On February 22, 2006 I lamented about the Doering Mansion:

The once stately Doering Mansion is nearly gone. Today only a few walls remain standing as the machinery tears away at the structure.

It its place will be some vaguely interesting condos on an artificial bluff sited much closer to Broadway than people realize. Sadly this will be one of those projects where after it is completed people will be remorseful for the old lady that was razed.

This is how the building looked just over a year ago:

The experts and not-so experts said it was too chopped up and beyond saving. I disagreed. Turns out the so-called experts were wrong about what could be built on the site. If you recall the developer, Michael Curran, argued he had to have 56 condos on the site to make the project feasible. Without the mansion’s site, he’d have to build 120 units on the balance. By April 2006 something was up with the real estate agent returning deposits to buyers. In early September Curren went back to the city to amend his project from 56 units down to only 34. Ooops!

Well, it is December and the mansion is long gone and so are any construction crews. The site has been vacant for months. The development’s website has yet to be updated — it still shows the original 56 units to be constructed.

Who do we hold accountable? We can start with developer Michael Curran, the man that picked him for the project Ald. Matt Villa and the four members of the St. Louis Preservation Board that voted in favor of allowing the Doering Mansion to be razed: Richard Callow (now Chairman) Mary Johnson (vice-chair), Luis Porrello and Melanie Fathman (no longer on the board). Two architects on the board voted against demoltion: John Burse and Anthony Robinson.

Here is what Ald. Matt Villa had to say yesterday:

“I don’t know when the project will start, but I do know that Mike Curran plans to proceed.”

Developer Mike Curran did not respond to my request for a comment. And so one full year later we wait…

Rusk: Feds Institutionalized Discrimination

Over the years I’ve read various books that talk about the federal government’s role in the suburbanization of America, most are overly technical explanations or just exceptionally lengthy. But, David Rusk in this third edition of , does an excellent job summarizing the issue:

“For Whites Only” was the sign that the federal government hung out as America’s suburbs exploded with millions of new families in the postwar decades. The federal government did not create discrimination in America’s housing markets, but it institutionalized it on an unprecedented scale.(1)

In 1933, as millions of owners were losing their homes during the Great Depression, the New Deal created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). To help struggling families meet mortgage payments, HOLC offer low-interest, long-term mortgage loans. HOLC developed a ratings system to evaluate the risks associated the loans made to specific urban neighborhoods. HOLC designated four categories of neighborhood risk; on its “residential security maps” the highest risk areas were colored red. Black neighborhoods were always coded red and were “red-lined”; even those with small black percentages were usually rated as “hazardous” and residents were denied loans.

HOLC’s loan program was small, but the impact of its discriminatory practices was enormous. During the 1930s and 1940s, HOLC residential security maps were widely used by private banks for their own loan practices. When the Federal Housing Administration (1937) and the Veterans Administration (1944) were founded, they embraced HOLC’s underwriting practices. The 1939 FHA Underwriting Manual, for example, stated that “if a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that the properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.”

FHA and VA largely financed the rapid suburbanization of the United States after World War II. The federal government’s regulations favored construction of single-family homes but discouraged the building of multifamily apartments. As a result, the vast majority of FHA and VA mortgages went to new, white, middle-class suburban neighborhoods, and very few were awarded to black neighborhoods in central cities. Historian Kenneth Jackson found that from 1934 to 1960 suburban St. Louis County received six times as much FHA mortgage money per capita as did the city of St. Louis. Per capita FHA lending in suburban Long Island was eleven times greater than in Brooklyn and sixty times greater than in the Bronx.

Such government practices died hard. As late as 1950, FHA was still encouraging the use of restrictive racial covenants two years after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled them unconstitutional. FHA’s red-lining continued overtly until the mid-1960s, when Robert Weaver became the first African American HUD secretary. The weak Civil Rights Act of 1968 finally outlawed housing discrimination. However, the full extent of discrimination in mortgage lending was only revealed after passage of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (1975), and significant mortgage funds began to flow back into inner-city neighborhoods only with vigorous enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act (1977).

Extreme segregation of America’s housing markets was not the result of some natural process of self-regulation. For decades it was force-fed by discriminatory rules of the game from federal, state, and local governments.

Rusk has one misstatement above that should be noted. In 1948 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a St. Louis case, Shelley vs. Kraemer, that it was unconstitutional for the government to enforce racially restrictive covenants. The covenants themselves as private agreements, however, were not ruled unconstitutional. The 1968 Civil Rights Act, as Rusk indicated, outlawed housing discrimination based on race.

In cities such as St. Louis, by the start of the Great Depression some of the oldest areas were already showing signs of excessive wear. Combined with the depression and the inability to obtain a mortgage many people simply had no choice but to move to the suburbs. Generous terms on these new mortgages often made it cheaper to live in a new house in the suburbs than to rent an old apartment in the central city. Government policy, not natural market forces, accelerated the shift to the suburbs.

The only money central cities saw for many decades came from federal “Urban Renewal” programs, a misnomer if ever there was one. The renewal was not needed investment in basic maintenance neglected during the depression or updating structures with wiring and plumbing, but wholesale clearance and replacement. Today one of those areas targeted for replacement of its “functionally obsolete” housing stock is one of the highest demand areas, Soulard. Soulard’s structures, once thought to be of no value, have been reborn as new living spaces. offices, restaurants and retail stores. The term functionally obsolete continues to be used today to justify destructive policies of demolition, land clearance, and auto-centric development. Whenever you hear (or read) the phrase functionally obsolete from developers, engineers, politicians or others, do so only with many grains of salt.

Historically cities, going back centuries, were a mix of economic classes. St. Louis’ 19th Century neighborhoods exemplified this with streets of more affluent housing around the corner from the housing of the common workers. Long before the car became so dominant in our society, the feds determined neighborhood stability depended not upon centuries of history but on a new idea of separating people based on “social and racial classes.” This false notion of neighborhood stability has undermined inner-city neighborhoods for decades since and has helped create wealthier suburbs and concentrations of poverty in cities. Again, this is not born out of natural market forces — this was the result of poor public policy.

This is not to say that we would not have seen suburbanization or class/racial divisions without these federal lending policies — we must certainly would have. But we have to wonder to what extent our cities, namely St. Louis, would have been different had black areas not been red-lined so that they could receive loan guarantees. And what if the FHA guidelines would have been open to all types of housing, not just single-family detached, would suburbanization have taken on a different form that included multifamily buildings and corner stores? We most certainly would have taken to the car post WWII regardless of these lending policies but with so many far-flung new houses being built as a result of these policies one has to wonder if the adoption of the car would have been slowed if lending policies were at least neutral or favoring a more dense development pattern?

Today’s decisions seldom consider the long-term consequences. If decision makers had been told in 1937 their neighborhood security map would lead to devestating & costly consequences for America’s cities over the next 5-6 decades they may have revised their thinking. In reality, concerns about the consequences would have likely been ignored as politicians then, as today, look mostly to short-term solutions. This is why we must carefully consider those people we elect to public office.

Review of Today’s Preservation Board Agenda

The St. Louis Preservation Board meets this afternoon at 4pm. A number of items are on the agenda, I’ve listed them all below.

4270 Castleman in the Shaw Historic Distirct:
• Condo developer has zero parking due to small lot with no alley.
• Wants to buy LRA property next door which faces Tower Grove Rd (and the Botanical Gardens) for parking.
• Seeking parking for eight cars — two per condo.
• This is a good example where parking should be “unbundled” from the actual units. If someone wants to live alone or doesn’t have a car why should they have to pay for two spaces? Build the parking lot with six spaces, not eight. Give each owner the option of buying a space and after each of the four has done so see if anyone else wants to buy the remaining two.

2027 Lynch Street in the Benton Park Historic District:

• Proposal for new construction.
• Design looks good.
• Nice to see in-fill construction happening within neighborhoods, really not necessary to wipe away the old to provide new housing.

1310 & 1312 Mackay Place in the Lafayette Square Local Historic District:

• This is to construct two townhouses on a vacant site.
• The cultural resources staff correctly points out the site has a distinct slope from one side to the next but the two units maintain a level appearance (windows, overall height) whereas original housing would have stepped down the hillside. By stepping down the hillside it helps give the appearance of two townhouses rather than one big mass.
• Lafayette Square has had recent issues with utilities and front doors so we will see how that is addressed at the meeting.

2028 S. 9th Street in the Soulard Local Historic District:

• Hammerstone’s Bar constructed a fence and covered bar area without a permit.
• Cultural Resources says the structure does not meet the standards (maybe this is why they did not get a permit?)
• Structure should have been based on a “model example” from the neighborhood. This means, the owner should have found a a historic example of a covered bar. Yeah, right.
• I think the structure could have been a bit more attractive in the composition of materials — it looks a bit generic. Still, I think the preservation standards wish to keep us in the year 1900.
• It is probably time to review some of these standards to see if they should be updated to deal with newer materials and changing development patterns.

4485 Vista Avenue in a “Preservation Review District.”

• A Preservation Review District is not a historic district but an area where demolitions of “contributing structures” must be approved by the Preservation Board.
• This very historic and rare home is in The Grove neighborhood (aka Forest Park SE).
• Structure is small, in poor condition and has ugly siding. Still, it is quite rare in the city.
• Staff is recommending that a decision be deferred for six months.
• Most likely this area will see a wholesale clearance program, a very retro urban renewal program that totally sanitizes the area of anything worthwhile.
• I can understand neighbors that are tired of seeing a vacant and boarded house. The fears around safety are also valid as such a building can invite a criminal element. Still, we simply cannot afford to raze every vacant structure in the city — we’d have too little left.
• The city, in my estimation, does a poor job of marketing these properties. Why aren’t they on the real estate multi-list system? Where is our homestead program to aggressively market these types of properties and literally give them to someone qualified to fix them up? Instead the city holds these properties for years to the point where the neighbors demand demolition. This is not a good system.

Extending the boundaries of the Central West End Historic District

• Boundary would extend north to include a number of blocks of Olive in wards 18 & 28.
• A lot is happening in this area and being in a historic district would afford some of these properties access to historic tax credits and protection from being demolished (especially those in Kennedy’s 18th Ward where he refuses to place the ward in a Preservation Review District).
• One of my favorite buildings in the entire city is in the new boundaries so it would be nice to see it rehabbed (see p. 46 of agenda, building on right).

How Does St. Louis Stack Up To Detroit

I’ve only been to Detroit once, this past July. Actually, it would be more accurate to say I’ve been through Detroit. I was returning to St. Louis from Toronto via Greyhound and had a brief pitstop in the U.S. Customs check point as well as the bus terminal. Neither, as you might expect, were impressive.

As the bus returned to the surface after going through the tunnel under the canal connecting two great lakes: St. Clair & Erie, I managed to snap the shot you see at right. The tall towers are Renaissance Place, home to General Motors and one of Detroit’s costly “urban renewal” attempts. The towers looked much better when viewed from across the canal from Windsor, Ontario.

Detroit has many things in common with St. Louis, besides being in the 2006 World Series. For starters, we both have a Fox Theatre. In fact, our Fox and their Fox are twins. The attractive similarities end there. Tragic similarities include massive highway projects that divided both cities, large scale urban renewal projects designed from an anti-city perspective and massive population losses. St. Louis has Delmar as a racial dividing line while Detroit has 8-Mile as the separator between city and county.

Detroit, at its peak in the 1950s, had around 1,850,000 in population for a density of 13,309 people per square mile. St. Louis, also peaking in the 1950s, had roughly 850,000 in our smaller 62 square miles for a population density of 13,709. Today, however, detroit is more densely populated than St. Louis. Per MayorSlay.com, Detroit has “approximately 950,000 residents” and is “approximately 139 square miles in area.” To refresh your memory, St. Louis has roughly 350,000 residents within 62 square miles. That works out to a density of 6,834 people per square mile in Detroit and only 5,645 people per square in St. Louis. To look at this another way, to equal Detroit’s recent population density we’d need a total of 423,708 residents — an increase of 73,708 people! That represents more than a 20% increase over our current population numbers, and that is just to get to their low number with respect to density. I want to see St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay bet Detroit’s mayor not on the outcome of the World Series but that we’ll match their population density in say 10 years.

I’ve posted a few more pictures, including a couple of Detroit as seen from Windsor, Ontario, on my Flickr account in group on Detroit. Not that Wiki is perfect but here are links to St. Louis and Detroit.

Well, time to stop writing and start rooting. It is top of the 7th in Game 4 of the World Series and we are down a run to Detroit.

McMillan Seeks to Rezone Property for a Walgreen’s; Ignores City’s Strategic Land Use Plan

In what may be one of his last bills as Alderman, Mike McMillan (D-19th) is seeking to rezone a large area for a Walgreen’s to be located at Grand & MLK. The properties facing Grand are already zoned “H-Area Commercial District” but the Walgreen’s suburban design is reaching far back into the block which is zoned “C-Multi Family Dwelling District.” See Board Bill 249 introduced today, Friday the 13th.

If this Walgreen’s is built by Stephen M. Schott of Komen Properties, sole manager of property owner Page Partners III LLC, the area will be further eroded due to this “investment”. Besides the loss of the beautifully detailed structure shown at right, a major corner will for decades loose its urban form.

Since the days of “urban renewal,” a misnomer if there ever was one, government policy has been largely anti-city — seeing the mix of commercial and residential as a bad thing. Dating back to the depression, lending policies largely avoided mixed urban areas considering them too “cluttered.” Hundreds of millions have been spent through the last 50-60 years razing and “reconstructing” large tracts of the city under the false assumption that cities don’t work. We now know that many of these old concepts about cities were wrong and damaging.

Politicians these days don’t seem to care much about the quality of the development, just the total price tag to add to their campaign literature. Never is this more true than in the 19th Ward. At opposite ends of the urban quality scale are great new housing developments (where poorly planned “projects” once stood) and really horrible new sprawl-based strip development. McMillan seems unable to distinguish between the good development and not good development. He likely takes on the city’s low self esteem approach of ‘any development is good development.’

The building at right is located at 1408 North Grand (map) and it stands in the way of parking for a new suburban-style Walgreen’s. Since this area is not included in either a historic district or even a Preservation Review District, the city’s Preservation Board will not review the demolition permit. It will become one of the many thousands of urban buildings that are razed so suburban thinking can continue its invasion into a once urban city.

But the land where the above building is sitting, facing Grand, is not at issue for a zoning change. It is the land behind the building, currently vacant, that needs to be rezoned to permit the sprawl to happen. Rollin Stanley, director of the city’s Urban Planning and Design Agency, made a big deal about creating and getting approved a new “Strategic Land Use Plan.” Indeed, it is a tremendous effort. Sadly or perhaps expectedly, it is ignored like so many other plans that line corners of city hall. It is ignored because it has no teeth. It is completely unenforceable at this point. More good money down the drain.

The area where the Walgreen’s is to spread its asphalt is in two designated areas, Neighborhood Commercial Area and Neighborhood Development Area. These follow the current H-Area Commercial District and C-Multi Family Dwelling District for the area in question, respectively. If we look at the phrasing of the Strategic Land Use Plan which was passed by the Board of Aldermen you’ll see it is clearly attempting to take the city back toward its urban roots:

Neighborhood Development Area

Residential /non-residential areas with substantial amounts of vacant land and abandoned buildings suitable for new residential construction of scale/associated neighborhood services, respecting stable properties that may be considered as part of any new development. Opportunities for new housing construction/replatting at critical mass scale defining a new neighborhood character over time.

Neighborhood Commercial Area

Areas where the development of new and the rehabilitation of existing commercial uses that primarily serve adjacent neighborhoods should be encouraged. These areas include traditional commercial streets at relatively major intersections and along significant roadways where commercial uses serve multiple neighborhoods or where the development of new commercial uses serving adjacent neighborhoods is intended. Mixed use buildings with commercial at grade and a mix of uses on upper floors are an ideal type within these areas. These areas may include higher density mixed use residential and commercial and may initially include flexibility in design to allow ground floor uses to change over time e.g., ground floor space that can transition from residential to commercial use as the local demand for retail goods and services strengthens in the area.
[Note: picture at right is actual picture used by the city in conjunction with this land use designation]

Looking North up Grand from the site we see existing structures maintaining the urban form along Grand. However, with each new notch in McMillian’s investment belt the urban form is replaced with suburban forms. Well, at least commercially. Let me explain.

Across from the proposed Walgreen’s box is a typical suburban strip center currently under construction, also by Komen Properties of Clayton. While the former buildings were nothing sacred architecturally at least they held true to the street. These new developments look more like something you’d see in a new suburb than in a city. But this is simply building upon the sprawl center across MLK built a few years ago.

MLK Plaza is a typical big box strip center ungraciously plopped down in the city. Bounded by Grand (sorta, see the map link above), MLK, Page and Spring it offers the area shopping choice but nothing else. It certainly does not build upon the areas urban form. The center turns its back to Spring Ave, a fairly busy street in the area. While this does offer better pedestrian access than say Loughborough Commons or Gravois Plaza, its auto centric origins are clear.

Along Page Ave many residents in the area, often unable to afford a person car, are pedestrians and users of mass transit. However, the suburban planning behind the MLK Plaza doesn’t really consider pedestrian access beyond a couple of limited access points. The development, at roughly 4.5 acres, is focused on the auto and its parking — not on pedestrians and urban form with parking behind or adjacent. The public street is ignored while the private parking lot is worshiped. A public street was closed as were a couple of alleys for this project.

Pedestrians have made some “adjustments” to the fencing in order to gain access and egress from the site where most convenient. The grass is worn and ground compacted due to the high number of pedestrians coming and going from this area. This shows a couple of things. One, the retail was needed in the area as it was long starved for quality choices but more importantly that many people access this retail via foot. Rather than reinforce the original urban form of the neighborhood and support the many existing pedestrians this project instead imposes the suburban value system upon the city.

These buildings which face both Page and MLK and are just south of the proposed Walgreen’s may be next to fall for the sprawl machine. Who’d want to invest the money to make these into lofts when they are being surrounded by nothing but sprawl. Had McMillan led his word toward a more urban vision it might bode well for fine buildings such as these.

But all it is not bad in the 19th Ward. McCormack Baron Salazar is remaking the area formerly occupied by the Blumeyer housing project.

Just a couple of short blocks east of Grand & MLK where the new Walgreen’s is proposed and where sprawl abounds is a handsome new senior living center. While not perfect, this complex of buildings holds to the odd street grid, reinforcing it rather than rejecting it. Entrances are well placed and the overall design is one that embraces the public street and sidewalk, a big departure from the old housing projects in the area. McCormack Baron Salazar should be proud of the project — how it reinforces the street grid and adds to the walkability of the community. They should be a little more than upset how a couple of blocks away the area is being suburbanized, negating much of their efforts.

The folks over at John Steffen’s Pyramid Construction should have checked out the plans for this project before moving forward with their disastrous Sullivan Place project.

Also by McCormac Baron Salazar is the Renaissance at Grand, new housing where the “projects” once stood. At right we looking north on Compton with the above senior project at the termination of the street at MLK. In this project they’ve returned the walkable street grid that was removed during the days of urban renewal and failed housing projects. Again, another commendable project.

The point of this is to demonstrate the area is receiving substantial investment, much of it through incentives, which helps reinforce the urban pattern and to create a walkable community. It is just blocks from all the sprawl commercial being constructed in the area. This is what happens when you don’t plan for an area, or you ignore a good plan like the Strategic Land Use Plan, and then allow just any development. Sometimes the result, as shown here, is quite positive. Other times, the sprawl that is engulfing Grand/MLK/Page, is tragic and conflicting with the strong inroads being made. We the public are helping to fund both.

We need political leadership that can help bring these urban residential projects in the area together with urban shopping environs. This does not mean a ban on Walgreen’s or other stores but fitting them into the fabric so that we have both a walk able urban environment that accommodates those in cars as well. It can be done, it just takes some effort and vision.

The good thing, I suppose, is McMillan can do little urban damage from the License Collector’s office. Unfortunately, his hand picked replacement for alderman will likely offer more of the same.

Komen Properties of Clayton, in addition to the sprawl here, had proposed a Home Depot for Goodfellow & I-70 (see prior post).
Additional photos available on Flickr.

[UPDATE 3:50pm: It should be noted I am a bit biased in two areas. One, I love cities and hate sprawl. Second, I am a very minor consultant to Mike McMillan’s opponent in the race for License Collector.]