Really!?! with Steve and Steve

Really Marlene Davis? You had no idea the developer wants to raze the existing 1960s flying saucer building? Really?

Really, you told me on the phone Wednesday nobody has mentioned demolition to you? Really!?!

Really, you introduce a board bill last week with the sentence “Demolition of the existing building in the Area is necessary and desirable to allow for redevelopment of the Area in accordance with the Plan” and then email me saying “the bill I presented today was for tax abatement”? Really!?!

Really, haven’t you heard of this thing called the internet?  You didn’t know people can easily fact check and compare notes? Really!?!

Wow! Really!?!

My apologies to Seth  & Amy.

Further reading:

• Del Taco to Close Tomorrow; But Board Bill May Actually Save Building
• Aldermen advance blighting, and tax abatement, of Del Taco
  
• That Googie on Grand and the fabric of a city

– Steve Patterson

Stastny: Grand Center Needs to be a Community, not a District

Last week I attended the Grand Center Master Plan Public Forum held at Powell Hall. Rather than email in my feedback I thought I’d post it here and email the committee a link to this post.

Background

Here are a few paragraphs from a recent press release to introduce you to the topic:

Top executives of Grand Center’s major institutions have taken a significant next step in the district’s redevelopment process by launching an initiative to create a master plan for the Grand Center District. The plan will address such areas as recommendations regarding land use, zoning possibilities and design guidelines.

At the request of Grand Center Inc. and several key executives of district institutions, Mayor Francis G. Slay has asked 30 institutional, business and community leaders to serve on a Planning Committee to create a common vision for the next phase of development in Grand Center. To achieve that goal, a Steering Committee made up of 14 members of the Planning Committee agreed to engage Donald Stastny, the Portland, Ore.-based, award-winning architect and urban designer, to lead the creation of an overall vision and implementation plan.

The goal of the initiative is to develop a long-range vision for the Grand Center District that is commonly created, enabling a shared ownership. The plan will be based on the input of the cultural institutions, community organizations, businesses, residents and patrons who visit the district as well as interested citizens throughout the region.

Stastny is not new to St. Louis. Last year, he and his team led the process that resulted in the selection of lead designer Michael Van Valkenburg and museum planner and architect Scott Newman to create a new master plan for the Gateway Arch grounds. Visit www.stastnybrun.com for more information about the firm.

The planning process is expected to wrap up over the summer with a presentation of the final master plan in the fall.

Selected Institutions/Venues

• Fox Theater
• Saint Louis University
• Jazz St. Louis
• St. Louis Symphony
• Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis
• Scottish Rite
• Moto Museum
• St. Louis Public Radio
• Nine Network of Public Media
• Grand Center Arts Academy
• Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri
• Cardinal Ritter College Prep
• The Black Repertory Company
• Third Baptist Church
• KDHX Community Media
• Craft Alliance
• The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
• St. Louis VA Medical Center – John Cochran Division
• The Sheldon

Presentation

Donald Stastny began by contradicting the very people that hired him! He said Grand Center should be viewed as a community, not a district. Grand Center’s marketing of late has been all about making the area a district.  Stastny said his work is not to produce a master plan with a “pretty picture” but a framework for the community to evolve.  I agree with this approach, our long held notions of master plan is you build what the pretty pictures show, no matter how many years or decades later. Thinking instead, about desired outcomes and processes that allow an area to grow and evolve organically. Cities, including St. Louis, didn’t start with a pretty picture. They slowly evolved over time.

Stastny took several jabs at the amount of parking already in the area as well as local views on needing more parking, free especially. Hopefully he will be able to get institutions to share parking and to “connect the dots” by reducing the visual impact of the numerous large surface parking lots.

Stastny said the center point is Grand & Washington, showing a circle with a radius of 1/4 mile, the distance pedestrians are generally willing to walk. With that he said focusing attention to the public realm on Grand from Olive to Delmar and three east-west transects (Delmar, Washington & Delmar) made sense.

My bullet points

ok, here are my thoughts.

• Drop the name Grand Center, go back to Midtown.
• If you go a 1/4 mile from each of the individual institutions that someone may visit you get a much larger area (see map below). This is too large to do detailed streetscape drawings but typical street sections can be suggested that could be used for the entire area. Areas outside the planning area will never get any planning attention.
• Talk about the key elements needed to connect the dots so these can be applied to the larger area: wider sidewalks, building walls serving as walls to the outdoor room, etc. With that in place we can work to improve Grand north to Page and south to MetroLink on the new viaduct.
• Transit will be a key to reducing the massive parking lots. MetroLink at the south edge of my map (below) and four bus lines (#10, #70, #94, #97) serve the area. If the #70 and an east-west line became enhanced routes, with fewer stops & greater frequency, more people will use transit rather than drive their vehicles.
• Despite the neatly cut grass, walking along Grand through SLU is dull.  Sidewalks with no street trees to separate the pedestrian from passing vehicles and block after block of fencing that screams “keep out.”
• Breaking up the long blocks west of Grand makes sense but but eyes need to watch these pedestrian connector routes.
• Not crazy about using alleys for pedestrian circulation. The alley is a great asset for services such as the collection of recycling and trash.
• Also not crazy about having the ability to close Grand from Olive to Delmar too easily.  Doing so creates havoc for transit riders and motorists.

Okay readers, add your thoughts below so the committee and professionals from Stastny’s office can read them.

– Steve Patterson

Pros & Cons of Saving the 1960s Flying Saucer at Grand & Forest Park

Uh oh, the modern preservationists are gearing up to try to save another interesting, but highly anti-pedestrian, building.  Yes, the fight is on the save a gas station turned drive-thru taco stand at 212 S. Grand.  With a few exceptions, commercial modernism translates to brutal and outright hostile to pedestrians but lovingly embracing all in single occupant vehicles.

Developer Rick Yackey plans to demolish the distinctive flying-saucer-shaped Del Taco at N. Grand and Forest Park Parkway, near St. Louis University, and replace it with new retail buildings, a city development official said Tuesday.

The St. Louis Land Clearance Redevelopment Authority approved a blighting and redevelopment plan for the building, which was built to be a Phillips 66 gas station. The plan, said LCRA staffer Dale Ruthsatz, is to knock down the Del Taco replace it with a more pedestrian-oriented retail building of 3,500 to 7,000 square feet. (STLtoday.com)

The Del Taco at the SE corner of Grand & Forest Park, is not one of the few exceptions.

You can see from the above photo that razing of buildings in the Mill Creek Valley began at Grand Ave & Forest Park by 1958. Grand Ave had the #70 streetcar starting in 1895 so the length from North to South was very active and designed for pedestrians.  It was the modernists that actively destroyed the pedestrian-friendly city to usher in the auto-friendly city. Why do people want to save that which destroyed the city?

Granted, I love many modern buildings.  Their simple forms, the absence of applied decoration, the use of materials other than red brick, all make forms often pleasing to my eye.  My favorite architect is Bruce Goff (1904-1982), but thankfully the bulk of his work was on private residences. Like his contemporaries, his (unbuilt) commercial projects were an assault on the pedestrian: non-active walls, large setbacks, etc.

When I read  developer Rick Yackey wants to construct “a more pedestrian-oriented retail building” I thought of several things:

1. More pedestrian-friendly anything is needed around the Saint Louis University campus. You’d think the university has only been around 5 years judging by the adjacent activity level.
2. It doesn’t take much to be more pedestrian-friendly than the existing Del Taco.
3. The developer had the opportunity to make the adjacent Council Plaza building more pedestrian-friendly during a recent renovation project but instead the situation is worse, something I didn’t think was possible.

Based on the developer’s record with Council Plaza I have little confidence any replacement would be pedestrian-friendly. Before removing a highly unique building I’d like to see controls in place to ensure the 9 acre site becomes pedestrian-friendly.  Saying a project will be pedestrian-friendly and actually delivering a pedestrian-friendly completed project are

I like the Del Taco building, it makes me smile when I’m in my car driving by or even at the drive-thru window but the entire nine acre Council Plaza site makes me furious as a pedestrian.  It should be noted that the unfriendly site planning that exists can change without altering the historic composition of buildings. We can improve the walkability and accessibility while leaving the buildings intact.

I won’t lose any sleep if the Del Taco is razed but I will be mad as hell if some generic anti-pedestrian strip mall is built in it’s place. We do have a unique collection of five buildings that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

But hey the developer needs retail space, that’s important too, right? But if the demand is so great why is every retail space in the renovated Plaza Council building vacant?

I can picture the Del Taco structure gone, replaced with a high-design modernist structure to compliment the other buildings. But I don’t think that’s what we’ll get.  Instead I picture a generic strip mall not connected to the public sidewalk on Grand or to other buildings on the site. The loss of such a great building can only be offset with a great building. Show me the designs, with proof it will be pedestrian-friendly, and I’m willing to listen. Until then not a chance!

If I were developing this site I’d use the Del Taco building as a draw. Renovate the building and accenting it with great lighting, new pedestrian-friendly site design connecting to a new structure to the east on the existing surface parking lot. I can see the building not as a fast food joint but as a pub with a focus on great outdoor patio seating. This could become THE corner where SLU students hang out.

Most developers would kill to have such a widely known building to attract customers to their development!  Certainly the 24 hour drive-thru is nice after you leave the bar but let’s face it, the use of the building can easily change.  Thousands on Facebook want to save the building, although some want to also save the fast food chain currently operating within the building. An online petition has been started as well to save the building.

Razing this building makes zero sense no matter how you try to look at it, believe me I tried!  Board Bill 188 (redevelopment bill) has been assigned to the Housing, Urban Development & Zoning committee. I’m sure all 12 committee members would love to hear from citizens via email, fax, text, twitter or phone prior to the hearing at 10am Wednesday morning.

– Steve Patterson

Guest Opinion: Champaign-Urbana Transit Employing Useful Technology

Contributed by Matt Heil

When it comes to planning and this blog, in particular, public transit is a hot topic. In case you were unaware, transit funding is extremely different between the two states of Illinois and Missouri. I’m originally from the St. Louis area but spent the past few years living in Champaign, IL, going to school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Even though the Champaign-Urbana region (pop.120,000) is significantly smaller than St. Louis, their public transit agency, Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD), is much more organized, runs more frequently and has embraced many new technologies in public transit.

Some of their technologies include: GPS tracking, hybrid buses, a multi-modal transportation hub and elongated buses.

Their GPS tracking was extremely useful and, during my stint in Champaign, I used this feature almost daily but at least two-three times a week. Every bus is equipped with GPS receivers that forward real-time arrival and departure information to MTD’s website, which is accessible via-smartphone; their texting service, which every bus stop has a specific code you can text to MTD; and also high volume bus stops, which are all equipped with LED signs that post the arrival times of the next buses.

Hybrid buses were added within the last two years and incorporating hybrid technology into urban buses make quite a bit of sense. Buses mostly operate at lower speeds and make frequent stops, which are both, important for the regeneration of battery power.

Another great part of Champaign’s transit system was that the system integrated multiple hubs within the network. Most of these hubs were in and around the University of Illinois’ campus but two other important ones included Downtown Urbana and the largest one in Downtown Champaign. Illinois Terminal, located at the southeast portion of Champaign’s downtown, was built in 1999. At the time, it was a state of the art facility and continues that legacy today. Like the new Gateway Multimodal Transportation Center (Amtrak and Greyhound Station), finished in 2008; Illinois Terminal integrates intercity bus service (Greyhound and MegaBus), intracity bus (MTD=Metro) and Amtrak, all into one location and was designed as a multi-modal (intermodal) transportation hub.

As mentioned earlier, Champaign is significantly smaller than St. Louis yet their public transit works extremely better than St. Louis’. This is because Champaign’s main employer (13,000employees) and destination is the University. Additionally, the population living within a 2-mile radius of campus is quite dense. Both density and a central employment/destination hub are very crucial for maximizing public transit’s efficiency. MTD has much higher ridership on some of their routes, compared to St. Louis. To cope with higher ridership, some of the busiest routes use elongated or extended buses, which aren’t even seen on St. Louis’ busiest line: the #70 Grand Bus.

Champaign might be a sleepy college town and surrounded by cornfields but, when it comes to their public transit, Champaign can compete with some of the largest cities in the country. Some have even referred to the Champaign-Urbana area as a micro-urban area. Compared to St. Louis, Champaign built their multi-modal transportation hub almost an entire decade before St. Louis. So, we should probably expect Metro to incorporate other technologies like, extended buses and GPS tracking within the next decade too, but still lagging behind areas with less than 10% of our regional population.

- Matt Heil

Matt Heil is a native of Edwardsville, IL and current resident of St. Louis. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

Pedestrian Access Route Completed at Schlafly Bottleworks

Last October I posted about the lack of a pedestrian route to reach the Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood.  Pedestrians were forced to walk in spaces designed for cars, not people.  Pedestrians deserve their own route separate from crossing through automobile parking lots.  Furthermore, American’s with Disabilities Act guidelines requires such:

4.3.2 Location.

(1) At least one accessible route within the boundary of the site shall be provided from public transportation stops, accessible parking, and accessible passenger loading zones, and public streets or sidewalks to the accessible building entrance they serve. The accessible route shall, to the maximum extent feasible, coincide with the route for the general public.

Failure to provide this route is a civil rights violation, as well as being very anti-pedestrian.

I’m happy to report Schlafly has just completed constructing an access route!

Schalfly knows good  food & beer, not pedestrian access.  Responsibility to plan for pedestrian access falls to the architects & engineers hired by business owners. Unfortunately too many of these professionals fail their clients and the public by not considering how the pedestrian on the sidewalk will reach the front door.

I’m convinced that if design professionals actually informed their clients of the need to provide a route for pedestrians we’d see buildings get placed closer to the public sidewalk to reduce the expense of the concrete.  My preference, of course, would be for the buildings to abut the sidewalk — with no parking in between. Building codes must get caught up so this becomes something plan reviewers and building inspectors will check for.

In the meantime I’ve got thousands of business & property owners to persuade to do as Schlafly has done. I’ll probably start with Schlafly’s original location, The Tap Room, located in west downtown.

– Steve Patterson