Downtown Still Going Strong; Neighborhoods and Inner Suburbs Need Leadership

I got a call from developer Kevin McGowan on Saturday, you may recall the last time he called me was to defend himself over the pets issue in his own building (see post). So McGowan calls me all excited and thought I’d be interested in his news — super fast loft sales. I’m not in the business of acting as a free PR service to profitable downtown developers but as we talked I saw enough in this that it is more than a press release for his firm.

OK, here is the story. McGowan | Walsh has been unsure about what the composition should be for their three buildings at Cupples Station located to the due west of the ballpark (#s 7, 8 & 9). They’ve hung banners on all three for “Ballpark Lofts” but they’ve been looking at office use instead of residential or in addition to. They began to market lofts in the center building — #8 to test the market. They’d been taking deposits to get on a list. Saturday they asked potential buyers to firm up and pick their units — wanting to really see if the buyers would stick around or seek their deposit back. Well, McGowan reports they sold 57 out of 68 units — in just over an hour. Needless to say, he was ecstatic. This represents, he said, over $12 million in loft sales.

So I began to ask more questions. The selling prices were roughly $146K to $400K for square footage ranging from 750sf to roughly 1,500sf. Just a few years ago lofts were easily ranging from 1,200sf to over 2,000sf but we are seeing a shift to smaller units. McGowan confirmed the smaller and more affordable units are where the market it going. Still compared to other lofts downtown these prices seem on the low side but there is a good reason for that. Parking.

You see, McGowan | Walsh did what is called “unbundled” parking — a parking management technique discussed in Todd Litman’s book Parking Management Best Practices whereby a parking space is not included with the unit. Some rental units downtown have unbundled parking that costs extra each month but I don’t know of any other for sale loft downtown where this is the case, save for perhaps the Marquette building by The Lawrence Group. Anyway, buyers at McGowan’s Ballpark Lofts were given the option of purchasing a parking space for the tidy sum of $18,000. Parking is expensive to provide and it is good for people to see the real cost by not hiding it in the purchase price.

McGowan said that roughly 20-25% of the buyers decided against a parking space which, to me, is a very big deal. McGowan credits the MetroLink stop a block away for the buyers willingness to forgo parking and presumably a car. They do have a free scooter with each loft so perhaps these buyers are comfortable with transit and the occasional scoot.

While they are still undecided about the other two buildings this latest round of fast sales may push them toward residential and away from commercial office space. McGowan fully acknowledges the impact of the new Busch Stadium on the marketability of his lofts. He also gives credit to two unbuilt projects — the ballpark village and Chouteau’s Lake Greenway.

The area needs something because the most activity is the on and off ramps that intrude into the area. I’d like to see these simplified a bit so some of the land can be recovered for in-fill construction. Hopefully residents of these lofts will be open to walking, biking or scooting up to City Grocers, which will be moving to a bigger space in the Syndicate Building late next year (see Biz Journal story).

But we have a housing bubble right? Well, yes and no. The “Creative Class” have been seeking urban living options for a while now and downtown St. Louis is the only choice for such a lifestyle in the region. As such, downtown continues to see demand whereas tract homes in the hinterlands are stacking up unsold. The fact is nationally families are becoming a smaller and smaller segment. Singles and empty nesters are the norm, especially as the baby boomer generation ages. For many boomers there kids are long out of the house, they are divorced or have lost their spouse. They 4-bedroom ranch in St. Charles County just doesn’t appeal to them. But this doesn’t mean downtown developers can write their own checks. They are learning buyers have a ceiling they are willing to spend, unlike in the ‘burbs where many buyers will become house poor to own as big of place as they can get. No, urban dwellers want to enjoy life and need money for travel and other things often given up to afford the big house in the suburbs and the two (or three) cars in the garage. This is resulting in smaller living spaces — with residents getting out on the streets more often rather than go from the den to the living room to the family room to the sitting room to the media room when they feel restless.

Transit is a big factor, in my view, toward the choice to buy a loft without a parking space. This is also a factor for the conservative bankers to finance a project without a space per unit — McGowan said MetroLink was a key part of showing their bankers they did not need a space for every unit.. Sadly, we have very few places downtown where that remains a reasonable option. The development future of downtown is in the west area between 18th and Jefferson and into Midtown toward Grand. The near north side has great potential with the vacant Pruitt-Igoe and the largely vacant area between Washington Avenue and the emerging Old North St. Louis neighborhood. Getting a permanent transit option to these locations will enable developers to use vacant land not as parking lots for adjacent buildings but for new in-fill construction. We are at the key point in the development around the CBD and without good localized transit (aka streetcar or guided tram).

And of course the bulk of the city is not downtown yet it only gets passing attention. The inner-ring of suburbs in St. Louis County are as urban as much of St. Louis and deserve renewed focus as well to offset losses in population many of them are experiencing. Natural market forces are coming together downtown with the trick being keeping the “leaders” and their outdated zoning and thinking out of the way. The same simply doesn’t work outside the immediate downtown area — the neighborhoods of the city and adjacent inner-ring suburbs need strong leadership to bring good zoning to them. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions it is just not happening. Downtown will continue to strengthen while the rest of the region is going to suffer from our 1960s urban edge growth mentality. Meanwhile, other regions in the U.S. will continue to outpace our region in terms of population and job growth.

Parking Meter Study on South Grand

South Grand is undergoing a transformation of sorts, new parking meters. These are not just an update on the traditional meters. No sir, these are the latest in parking technology.

From the Suburban Journal:

The city is studying two devices, one by Duncan Parking Technologies and another by Parkeon. Both handle about five to 10 parking spaces.

In the Duncan machine, a person enters the number of his parking space when feeding coins or using a credit or debit card. A meter reader pushes a button on the device and then learns which spaces have time on them and which are expired. Then he writes his tickets on cars parked in expired spaces.

In the Parkeon machine, a motorist parking his car doesn’t enter a space number when purchasing time. Instead, he gets a receipt which he puts on his dashboard for the meter reader to see when he walks through the area.

So let’s take a look at both systems and see what we think. These are generally referred to as Pay-Per-Space (the Duncan system, PPS for short) and Pay-N-Display (the Parkeon system, PND for short).

Pay-Per-Space (PPS):

The PPS units are quite small & short, especially when compared to considerably taller PND units. They’ve put up signs to help you find the units but in this block the sign is a good distance from the unit. In other cities they don’t have the signs, you just know to look for the meters mid-block.

The units are pretty straight forward. With these you make note of your parking space (see below for how they are marked) and add money after indicating the space number. You can add coins or credit card but not bills. I guess if I had to make a trade off between bills or credit card I’d go with the latter. There are plenty of times I’ve had no change and only $5 or bigger bills but with a credit card I can still pay. Visa/MC logo debit cards also work.

The former polls for the traditional parking meters are capped with numbers indicating the number of the space in which you are parked. If this system is accepted, the number of polls can be reduced roughly in half as they don’t mark both ends of each space. Depending upon where you park, your number will be at the front of your car or the rear.

With the PPS system once you pay your time you are free to go — no need to run back to the car to display a paid receipt as with the other system.

I’m not sure what the Suburban Journal article was saying about the enforcement person pushing a button to know who is paid and who is not — the street-side of the unit displays a big red circle for those spaces that are unpaid. This makes it easy for parking enforcement to go down the street to see who is paid and who is not.

The PPS system does have some shortcomings. Basically, it offers credit card payment where regular meters do not. Otherwise, you are still working with conventional spaces — the ‘one size fits all approach’ even though a Chevy Suburban is nearly 6ft longer than my Scion (222.4″ vs. 154″, respectively). What does this mean? It means you’ll still get folks that want to squeeze in on the no-parking end and block the crosswalk like this SUV did by the Post Office on Grand. Without fixed spaces on this block, this SUV may have been able to fit.

Pay-N-Display (PND):

The Parkeon PND unit is much taller than the Duncan PPS unit. Does size matter? Well, perhaps this extra height might make it more visible to people trying to locate the unit on the sidewalk. The solar panel on the top gives a decidedly “green” factor which adds a certain hip factor in addition to being very effective by not running solely off of batteries. Jim Merkel of the Suburban Journal indicated these units cost roughly $12,000 each, quite a bit more than the other units.

As you can see from the graphic you are supposed to place the receipt on the dash on the driver’s side. Well, it doesn’t say driver’s side but that is what it shows on the image. This is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, that means that after paying for the time we must return on the street-side to place the receipt. If it gets blown out of our hand or off the dash it will blow into traffic. These put people at greater risk than if we put them on the passenger side as is the case in places like Seattle. The other issue with driver’s side placement is enforcement —- there is no way an officer can safely check for expired receipts via car or even scooter on the driver’s side. They really need to be on foot to check these, especially if the time is expired (or not displayed at all) and they need to issue a ticket.

Here is a close-up of the main information section of the PND unit. I just used my credit card to purchase a 2-hour receipt for $1. I went ahead and did the buck even though I was not going to be staying 2 hours, even with lunch.

The buttons are located just below the screen and information section.

Here is my receipt showing I am paid through 1:53pm. If we had these all over the city I could drive to my next stop and park as long as I was done before the time expired. However, some cities recognize this and discourage it by printing the name of the street on the receipt. Thus, a Grand receipt would not be valid on say Chippewa. Still, being able to take your time with you is very customer friendly. Besides, it is better to allow someone to take their unused time with them rather than leaving it on a conventional meter. As it is, I left Grand with over a hour remaining on my receipt but the next person that parked in my space had to pay rather than using my left-over time.

They don’t have all the kinks worked out of the PND system being tested yet. For example, an old meter pole was used to indicate paying at the meter with an arrow pointing mid-block leaving it unclear is someone can park in the 20+ feet between the yellow curb and the sign.

Nearly a year ago I talked with St. Louis’ director of Planning and Urban Design, Rollin Stanley, about these systems. He indicated he has been trying to get a test going here since he arrived several years ago — talking to anyone that will listen. In February, when parking was finally permitted on part of the two blocks on Washington Ave between 10th and Tucker, I had hoped this was going to be the test area (see post). But, the Treasurer’s office began installing conventional meters shortly after putting up the parking allowed signs. I called Rollin Stanley again today to get some current feedback.

First, Stanley was unaware the test units had been installed, although he knew it was going to happen on Grand. Second, he was unaware they were testing two different types of units. I don’t get overly confident about St. Louis when our director of Planning and Urban Design is not consulted on these things. I just hope he is involved in helping to evaluate the systems which the Suburban Journal indicated will happen at the end of the trial run at the end of February 2007.

Stanley is pretty clear, he strongly prefers the latter Pay-N-Display system indicating it is “more sensible” than other systems precisely because it gives you more spaces and helps increase revenues. Stanley indicated the small town where his parents live (and where he grew up), 200 miles north of Toronto, uses similar systems. He points this out because that town has a population of only 50,000 or so. The point? This is not necessarily a big-city type of solution. Indeed, I have used a pay-per-space system in downtown Tulsa.

Stanley didn’t have an answer for how to use the Pay-N-Display system with motorcycles, scooters or convertibles where it is not possible to display a paid receipt without it blowing away. He suggested I call Parkeon, which I did. I talked with Bob in technical services and he wasn’t much more helpful. He did suggest in higher traffic areas having designated motorcycle/scooter parking which could be metered on a pay-per-space basis. He indicated some cities have a small pouch that can be placed on the bike to insert the receipt. He indicated that many cities in lower demand areas simply ignore motorcycles and scooters as they take up so little space — that it is not enough to worry about. He didn’t have a good answer on the convertible issue.

I called my friend in Seattle and he said their PND system has a removable strip on the receipt that makes it like a post-it note, where it can be stuck to the inside of a windshield or a motorcycle windscreen. I suppose those types of receipts cost more than the basic paper ones being tested here.

These tests are being conducted on both sides of Grand in the 15th Ward (west side) and the 8th Ward (east side). I personally favor the Pay-N-Display type as it eliminates the need for numbered fixed-length spaces. This will allow more cars to be parked on-street which will lesson the perceived or real need for additional off-street parking. The increased revenues from this type of system and the lower operating costs (solar powered) should offset the additional up-front capital expense.

What do you think?

Railvolution Speakers Comment on St. Louis

The 2006 Railvolution Conference continues today in Chicago. Here are a few more short videos from national experts commenting on St. Louis:

Todd Litman:

Executive Director of the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute and author of the new book Parking Management Best Practices. Litman led an intense 4-hour symposium on Sunday afternoon at the headquarters of the American Planning Association.

M. David Lee, FAIA:

Mr. Lee has been one of the most dynamic speakers so far in this conference. He brings to the table an impressive resume: a partner in the architecture & planning firm Stull and Lee as well as an Adjunct Professor at Harvard. He has been doing work this summer in New Orleans:

Harriet Tregoning:

Ms. Tregoning is the Executive Director of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute in Washington D.C., but is originally from the St. Louis region.

The conference includes a session this morning looking at over 30 funding initiatives that were on ballots around the country yesterday. This will be interesting to see as we in the St. Louis region (at least city & county) will be asked in the near future for a tax increase to help fund operations & expansion for Metro (light rail & bus operations).

[Note: The videos stop before the end credits but you can see all of each commenter. I will fix this tomorrow as well as the spelling of Harriet Tregoning's first name on the open credits. But, today I'm heading back to the conference and then driving back to St. Louis. Yes, I drove my car because it was a last minute decision to attend this conference plus I am picking up stuff at Ikea --- I get nearly 40mpg so it is not so bad.]

Valet Video: Cones & Sign in Bike Lane

The valets were out in full force tonight: Central West End, Midtown, Washington Avenue, Downtown, Lafayette Square. In the CWE they had cones running around the new fountain on Maryland Plaza — some event or new venue in the courtyard space behind Design Within Reach (the new rooftop place?). Cones also blocked off various empty spaces on both sides of the street. Also across the street and to the east were more cones and a sign at Bar Italia. And a few doors east of there cones blocked spaces for Sub Zero on Euclid. I didn’t stop.

I did, however, stop at Dante’s on Olive just west of Compton. Here the valet company was taking numerous spaces but the real offense was the placement of their valet sign and cones within the bike lane. Cyclists, especially those doing so at night have many things to worry about (such as drunk drivers) they don’t need to have an obstacle course placed in their path.

Here is short video (under a minute):

I actually talked to the very courteous and professional valets as well as a patron of the bar that said he was a buddy of the owner. The valets, as I said, were professional. The owner’s buddy couldn’t believe I cared about this issue and was razzing me but in the end we actually had a series of conversations that were very pleasant. He was really funny too, great sense of humor. While I was there I noticed many people arriving, most on foot (presumably not wanting to pay $5 to park when they could just walk a block). The crowd was really diverse in age and appearance which made me think this might be a cool place to hang out some evening.

Just a block east on the south side of Olive ‘The Loft’ also had a sign in the middle of the bike lane. All the usual suspects downtown had cones out although many on Washington Ave no longer had them on the street. Over on Locust Ten14 had cones everywhere around 11:15pm. They had a long line to get in the door, not sure if folks who valet get preference for entrance or if you valet then wait in line. The new place downtown, Dolce, had cones on two blocks of Broadway and adjacent to the new Marquette lofts.

Aldermen are now looking into this issue and hopefully will come up with a workable ordinance in the next month or so.

Copia’s Valet vs. St. Louis Fire Department

Sometimes I have really good timing. Tonight was one of those times. However, I didn’t have my camera with me to capture the event. It just so happened I was walking back to my car (at 14th & Washington) after having dinner at 10th Street Italian (between Washington & St. Charles). Anyway, I was walking along cursing myself for not having my camera with me. I pass by Copia and see two cars running, lights on and not a person in sight. No valet, no customer. Just a Lexus and Saab running. I keep walking, debating if my camera phone is worthwhile but I decide to let it go. As I get to the corner at Tucker I look back and see a Fire Department SUV has pulled up in front of Copia. After crossing the Tucker I see it has it’s lights on.

Curious and heading to City Grocers anyway, I drove past Copia to see if I could figure out the problem. First, a bit of background. In the last couple of weeks, since my popular video has been out, Copia’s valets have been parking cars on the street rather than leaving all the space empty. It is a start. While I’d prefer to have most of the spaces open for the public I’d rather see them park cars there than leave the space looking desolate. But it looks as though they parked one vehicle where they should not — directly in a no-parking zone in front of a fire hydrant, directly in front of the restaurant. I was able to go around the block and come back on Washington as the valet finally got the keys for the vehicle (an SUV of course) as he moved it from the spot. For a good 5-10 minutes Copia had a fire vehicle in front of their place with the lights flashing, I’m sure the patrons were wondering what was going on. Just another day with Copia and valet parking….

Washington University Medical Center Provides Motorcycle Parking

Today I am attending the St. Louis Great Streets Symposium being held at the Newman Center on Euclid in the midst of the Washington University Medical Campus. I’m actually writing this from the event — you gotta love wi-fi.

Upon arriving I found an out of the way place to lock my scooter. As I was getting ready to secure the lock a Wash U security person drove by and said the city would cut the lock and tow my scooter. He said I should take advantage of the motorcycle parking a block to the west. I had no idea they had motorcycle parking!

I thanked him and headed over to the area where he pointed. How wonderful to see a special section just for motorcycles and scooters. I’ll have pictures tonight but it was roughly 10 spaces in an unused area adjacent to a building. It is actually covered by virtue of the design of the building. Two motorcycles were there as well as two scooters, one a blue Honda Metropolitan.

So pulling out my computer this morning I began searching the Washington University Medical School website for a guide to motorcycle and bike parking. I found a nice map indicating where parking garages are located but nothing on their very helpful motorcycle parking. What is interesting is this symposium is about great streets. The topic includes making streets open for people, not just cars. But the literature on the event didn’t make note of the fact we are next door to a bus transfer station and MetroLink station. What a statement that East-West Gateway Council of Governments didn’t mention alternative means of arriving and “parking” for the event.

It is encouraging to see Ald. Phyllis Young (D-7th) and from Jim Shrewsbury’s office, Brandyn Jones and Pam Ross attending. It would have been nice to have seen more folks from city hall.

City of Clayton Threatens to Tow 49cc Scooter/Moped

The note wasn’t very friendly. Here I was attending a luncheon (Society of Professional Journalists) and my wee little moped parked at the tail end of a parking space seems to have offended the City of Clayton’s sense of order. You will recall a month ago I had a similar issue in Clayton while attending a different luncheon, see post. In that case, I was parked on a really wide sidewalk, out of the pedestrian path, and the parking enforcement person came up as I was leaving. At that time I was told I must park in a full metered space.

So yesterday I am heading to Clayton for this event and I just can’t bring myself to take up an entire full space. Plenty of spaces were available and I could certainly afford the pocket change to feed the meter. The issue is two-fold: use of space and personal safety. In short, a “vehicle” that is only a few feet long and weighs less than 200lbs only needs so much room. It certainly does not need the amount of space a 3-ton SUV requires. And it is that 3-ton SUV that has men concerned — will it see my scooter before rushing into a parking space?

Looking around the area I found this sweet little left over spot along a parking zone on Forsyth. This last parking space is considerably longer than those immediately in front of it. In this little left over section I was out of the way of all pedestrians, including those at the adjacent bus stop, and cars had plenty of room to come and go from the main space. My only alternative would have been to ask the restaurant management if I could have parked somewhere on their private property but looking at the situation that would have likely involved compromising one of their pedestrian entrances. So, I went with the little bit of left over street.

… Continue Reading

Valet Video: New & Improved — Now Confrontation-Free!

My post from Tuesday evening with video of the owner of Copia received much attention and a fair amount of both praise and criticism. Curious if anything had changed I returned to Washington Avenue Thursday night with camera in hand. This time I did a couple of things differently — I did not talk to anyone, staying completely away from the valets and the restaurants themselves (Copia in the 11xx block and Lucas Park Grille in the 12xx block). The video is far less exciting than the confrontation on Tuesday evening but it is telling about the extent of the situation.

Every non-coned public parking space between 10th and 14th was taken last night when I was there after 9pm. The only empty spaces in this four block stretch were spaces coned off by a single valet company, Midwest Valet, while employed by Copia and Lucas Park.

The video and sound quality are a bit poor as my still camera’s video feature doesn’t do too well when moving at night. But, you’ll be able to get the idea. The first video is in the 11xx block of Washington Ave. I start at Tucker and walk toward 11th. I’m on the north side of the street looking over at the block containing Copia (it is the beautiful 2-story building with the 3 arched windows). Once the valet sees me he begins to make a few calls and eventually moves the cones from the street. Remember, the police were there just two nights ago and told them to move the cones.

The 11xx block of Washington Ave has a total of 10 marked parking spaces. Four are in front of Baseline which is to the east of Copia. The SUV parked in the far east end of the block is actually in a yellow no-parking zone. Moving to the west of the four spaces in front of Baseline we have a fire hydrant and then a single parking space directly in front of Copia. We then have another no-parking area for a buildings’ fire standpipe. Five additional spaces are on the western half of the block. The valets should be able to operate by taking the single space in front of the restaurant combined with the two non-parking spaces. I will return to measure this width to see what that would give them but it is greater than 60ft. This would leave 9 public spaces for patrons of Copia or other establishments (or friends of residents). Copia is in the 7th Ward.

In the next video I am in the 12xx block of Washington Ave where Lucas Park Grille is just as abusive by taking two sides of the street. We start off with a valet that just made a u-turn in the street to park a car across from the restaurant in a public space they had coned off. It should be noted, the Director of Streets Jim Suelmann has issued LPG a permit to have all these spaces but indicates they are only for the drop off and pickup of cars — that all cars should be moved to sites elsewhere. Clearly, that is not what is happening here. A couple of clubs are open and active in this block and several places are open late in the next block to the west. However, the only vacant spots are those coned off by the valet company for the use by LPG and the sushi place next door.

The point of all this is we do have things going on downtown and along Washington Ave but a few businesses are being overly aggressive in their use of the public street and public parking. We need balance. Lucas Park Grille is in the 5th Ward.

Currently nobody is taking any responsibility for the problem. The valets say they are doing their job. The restaurant owners say they (via the valet company) have a permit for this much space, the Treasurer’s office (which is responsible for parking revenues) has no policy, the aldermen won’t act on a complaint unless from a constituent, the Director of Streets says he doesn’t have the ability to enforce the permits he issues and in reality the police have much more important things to worry about. But the reality is we paid dearly for these streetscapes and much is riding on their long-term success. The demand for the spaces is there but they are reserved for a select few.

Clayton: No Scooters on the Sidewalk

Today I was having lunch at the posh Dominic’s Trattoria at the corner of Bonhomme and Brentwood. Upon arrival in my scooter, a bit on the wet side, I parked as I often do within the public right-of-way. Remember, the ROW is everything from one private property to another — sidewalk and street. In this case I was parked out of the line of the pathway of the main sidewalk.

Ideally, I’d not park in such a random place but in this part of the country parking for anything other than a car is hard to find. Don’t scroll down and tell me not to park on the sidewalk just yet — at least hear me out.

I was in Clayton attending this month’s luncheon for the Society of Professional Journalists, the group that I was on panel for last month. The topic this month was Freedom of Information requests! Upon leaving the restaurant I walked across the street to snap a few pictures and noticed a parking enforcement cart pull up behind cars parked on the street near my scooter. The enforcement officer was either there for my scooter or the cars — it quickly became apparent he was there because of my scooter.

As I approached I asked if there was problem. He said he was about to give me a ticket and that I could not part on the sidewalk. I said I was completely out of the path of the sidewalk. I asked where I should park. “In a metered space,” he replied. My scooter, technically a moped due to engine size, is tiny and would surely get run over in such a small space.

Aside from getting hit, it simply doesn’t make any sense to take up a 20ft long parking space for my scooter. How can that possibly be good public policy? I asked where, if I had bicycled instead, I could have parked my bike. His response? At a bike rack. Duh, right? Well, I looked up and down the street and no bike rack was in sight. In fact, I can’t think of a single bike rack in central Clayton. If one exists anywhere, it is well hidden.

Attempts to break our reliance on the single user car are often met with more obstacles rather than solutions. Clayton, like the City of St. Louis, needs to come to grips with bicycles, electric bicycles, mopeds and registered scooters. They will continue to increase in numbers so it would be wise for them to be pro-active.

The fun part of this story was the timing. As I am discussing this issue with the parking enforcement officer out comes one of the panelists from this month, KSKD reporter Mike Owens. Mike asked, “Are you getting a ticket?” When I turned back to the enforcement officer and asked if he knew Mike Owens, his look was priceless. It only took a minute for him to be in his cart and be on his way. Priceless.

Electric-assist bicycles have been around for many years but these are increasing in the marketplace. Really small mopeds, some with pedals and some without, are also becoming a good urban option. And finally, we are seeing electric scooters and hybrid scooters within the realm of affordable. With all these variations on small two-wheel motorized transportation where is the line drawn? If it has any motor at all it cannot be secured on a sidewalk? Would Clayton expect me to park an electric-assist bicycle in a full metered parking space simply because it has a motor and battery?

I have an idea but it will take an old scooter that can potentially be sacrificed. I’d take the scooter to Clayton and park in a metered space at noon, pay the meter and then hide in an adjacent location and film people’s reactions. I think you’ll see more than one person get upset of a small vehicle taking up such a large space. Look out Clayton, you may soon be on camera.

Ok, now you are free to tell me not to park my scooter on the sidewalk.

Kevin McGowan Calls Me From the Dog House

This morning I received a phone call from developer Kevin McGowan of McGowan|Walsh. He was calling, as you might guess, in response to the flack over a pet ban in the loft building in which he and other members of his family live (see prior post). For the last week he has been in a PR doghouse.

I’ve known Kevin for some time now and we worked together last year on a team looking at the Gateway Mall. It was nice to have the opportunity to talk with him again. He appreciated my prior post on this take as I presented a “rational” perspective as did some of the comments from others.

Kevin wanted to set the record straight:

M|W projects have condo rules similar to most condos downtown or otherwise that allow for pets but place limits no pounds and number of pets. Once the owners take control of the association they are free to change the rules as prescribed in the binding agreement.

His building contains 13 residential units with only four of those being owned by a member of the McGowan family.

The vote to change the rules in the building was “nearly a year ago” and existing pets were grandfathered in. Kevin says he was not present for the vote.

Kevin said he is not an officer in the association now nor was he at the time of the vote.

The issue of late has been that a couple of owners wish to sell and claim the no-pet policy is hurting their ability to sell their lofts. Kevin said the requests to change the policy have been too numerous.

Finally, he says, he was so “exacerbated” by the repeated requests he recently sent off the email trying to put an end to the issue. Again, he is not an officer in the association but just one of the 13 owners.

He and his wife Erin, before having children, had a dog for a good five years. I didn’t ask what they are going to do when their kids want a pet dog.

But I couldn’t have him on the phone and not challenge him. I said it seems like much of the debate is over dogs in common areas as well as dogs barking which can be heard in adjacent units. He agreed. So I asked about having a single cat. I offered that a vote to consider keeping a ban on dogs but allow a single cat might appease the owners trying to sell units. He didn’t seem to have considered that option but was not optimistic they’d consider such a compromise. The other thing, we didn’t discuss, is why not have another vote on the issue of pets in the building? If the majority still feel it is a sound policy it will remain. Obviously an association shouldn’t consider and vote on the same subject every month but at some point if an owner asks to reconsider a policy it should be voted on.

The other thing we discussed was a dog park. It is common knowledge that Kevin was working on trying to get a dog park in Lucas Park for a while. Turns out the city has a policy that prohibits more than 30% of any designated park being separated and used for a dog park. Also, Larry Rice objected to park space being taken away from the homeless. But, he says, he is still working on a dog park because it is good for business. To that end he is looking to set up a non-profit to lease vacant land from the city to use as a dog park where owners could pay a small fee to help cover maintenance. The idea being that non-park land could be used 100% for a dog park. He is firmly convinced a dog park is good in helping attract new residents.

Kevin mentioned one person that, if we had a dog park, would buy a loft downtown: Mayor Francis Slay. He said, “Francis is a big dog lover.” The issue is many dog owners, the Mayor included apparently, want a place where they can take the dog off the lease and let the dog be a….well, a dog. Kevin says Mayor Slay and his wife would move downtown if we had a dog park. You heard it here first, not in Deb Peterson’s column.

A couple of other topics came up in our 45-minute conversation. As I had previously posted, McGowan|Walsh is offering free scooters with the purchase of a loft in the Motor Lofts and Packard Lofts. Kevin says they are now extending this to all McGowan|Walsh projects so it includes the GEW building on Washington at Jefferson and the Ballpark Lofts in Cupples Station adjacent to Busch Stadium. Their first order of nearly 200 scooters are expected to arrive in December and they just placed a second order of almost 300 more scooters. Wow, that is a lot of scooters! Kevin says he really enjoys his scooter. Blue Boat Designs on Washington Avenue was given a scooter from M|W and one of the staff, Jon Carlson, told me the other day he is having a blast riding it to work from home near Tower Grove Park. Kevin was excited about the idea of seeing all these scooters running around downtown.

I just couldn’t let him go without once again bringing up the issue of excessive valet parking downtown. Kevin is an owner in the building where one of the biggest offenders, Lucas Park Grille, is located. His brothers, but not him, are partners in that restaurant. Kevin generally agreed that the valets may be taking too much space and as more and more storefronts become occupied by retailers needing convenient parking for their customers this issue is not going away on its own. He suggested I talk with Ald Lewis Reed on this subject. Good idea as Reed is up for re-election in March so perhaps the matter of valet parking along Washington Avenue can become a campaign issue for him or a challenger.

– Steve