Transit-oriented development finally coming to St. Louis?

St. Louis’ original light rail line, MetroLink, opened in 1993.  I was a young man back then (26).  I was so excited about the future of the city I had called home for only 3 years at that point.

The total system has been expanded several times since then but my hope of new construction clustering around the growing number of stations never appeared.  Some existing buildings around some stations were renovated but for the most part stations are surrounded by Park-n-Ride lots.

One such lot is in an older dense area, adjacent to the Forest Park Station (above, map).  Developer McCormack Baron Salazar wants to develop the surface parking lot into retail, housing and commuter parking.  Last week I attended a meeting hosted by McCormack Baron to introduce the concept to the area residents.

Richard Baron led the meeting.  McCormack Baron Associate Project Manager Cady Scott, a Saint Louis University urban planning graduate, is working on the project and was there to answer questions as was local architect Andy Trivers.

There are no fancy architectural drawings to show because this project is at the very beginning stages.  What I do know is they want street-level retail facing DeBaliviere (approximately 10,000sf), one and two-bedroom apartments above (approx 80 units) and parking for residents and commuters.  Parking was, as you might expect, one of the areas with lots of questions from those at the meeting.  Also not surprising was the opposite viewpoints raised.  Some favored little to zero commuter parking while others wanted more than the current 100+ spaces.  Scott & Baron also indicated resident parking would be segregated from commuter/retail parking.  They seek to have less than one space per unit.  All of the units would have universal design and they expect a number of residents to be car-free.  They are planning for two WeCars (car sharing from Enterprise).

Richard Baron referenced their 6 North project throughout the meeting (my 2005 review here).

Located near Saint Louis University at Laclede & Sarah (map), 6 North features retail and office space facing the street and universal design living units.  The units are rented at both market and subsidized affordable rates. Residents include the disabled and able-bodied.  To use this same model next to a transit station is ideal.

But some neighbors thought it best to wait for the market to rebound to support all market rate for-sale housing.  I disagree.  Besides the fact the site has been vacant for half a century, the disabled need more housing options near transit.  Those receiving housing subsidies are not deadbeat welfare parents with tons of kids.  They might be staff at nearby Washington University or a school teacher.  They must pay rent, just less than the market.  The 6 North project has a waiting list of people seeking a unit.

Now is the best time to develop this site.  It provides housing oriented to transit, needed for those who don’t/can’t drive, and desired by many that can drive but would rather take public transit.

– Steve Patterson

Changes to Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in the last year

Little along Dr. Martin Luther King Drive has changed since last year. Here is a look at the physical changes along the street that goes from downtown St. Louis to the city limits.

An auto-centric strip shopping center has opened.  On-street parking now remains empty.  Not an improvement.

The 3-story structure shown above was recently razed.  It was located on the NW corner of MLK Drive and Arlington (map).

A couple blocks West a church has completed a new building. I like the massing, the glass, and the materials used.  I don’t care for having a circle drive between the building and sidewalk.

If you are going to have such a drive this is the right way to do it, creating a planter to separate the circle drive from the sidewalk.

And at 18th & Dr. Martin Luther King Dr: a blank wall.  Sorry, the color change doesn’t make it acceptable.

– Steve Patterson

Number of floors should at least equal number of travel lanes

There are many formulas to determine the ideal relationship between street width and adjacent building height. They often involve drawing cross sections with precise measurements.  I’ve got a simpler idea – a rule of thumb, if you will.  Build up to the property line and the number of floors of adjacent buildings should be at least as many as travel lanes on the road.

Two lanes = two stories.  Three lanes (2 + center turn) = three stories, and so on.  If too wide streets like Jefferson were fronted by six story buildings they wouldn’t seem too wide.  It doesn’t have the precision of some of the formulas but it is simple – important for a rule of thumb.

It works for two-lane Locust (above).  Most of the buildings are two stories high.  Not far away we see taller structures along a stretch of Pine.

The curb-to-curb distance is roughly the same but the feel is totally different.  Clearly more than two floors doesn’t help Pine be a better urban street.  Of course many other qualities make this block of Pine the horrible street that it is – lack of building entrances, windows, through traffic, interesting architecture, etc…

The opposite of low suburban sprawl is the mega skyscraper.  Today the new world’s tallest building,  Burj Dubai, opens in the United Arab Emirates:

The building boasts the most stories and highest occupied floor of any building in the world, and ranks as the world’s tallest structure, beating out a television mast in North Dakota. Its observation deck – on floor 124 – also sets a record.  The finished product contains more than 160 floors. That is over 50 stories more than Chicago’s Willis Tower, the tallest record-holder in the U.S. formerly known as the Sears Tower.  (USA Today: Dubai to open world’s tallest building)

I’m not impressed.  I care more about the sidewalk perspective than a skyline seen from afar.  I personally prefer areas of 4-6 story buildings over those that are 40-60 stories, or more.

I see our major streets lined with active buildings of a height corresponding to at least the number of lanes.  Block by block, street by street, we can re-urbanize the core.  Don’t want to require 6-7 story buildings then reduce the number of lanes of traffic.  We must get the lanes/buildings in balance.

– Steve Patterson

Great buildings have been built in the worst of economic times

Last week AIA St. Louis noted Radio City Music Hall opened this week during the Great Depression (Dec. 27, 1932). Like our current situation with the stalled Ballpark Village project, plans for the site were stalled due to the economic conditions.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. held a $91 million, 24-year lease on a piece of midtown Manhattan property properly known as “the speakeasy belt.” Plans to gentrify the neighborhood by building a new Metropolitan Opera House on the site were dashed by the failing economy and the business outlook was dim. Nevertheless, Rockefeller made a bold decision that would leave a lasting impact on the city’s architectural and cultural landscape. He decided to build an entire complex of buildings on the property-buildings so superior that they would attract commercial tenants even in a depressed city flooded with vacant rental space. The project would express the highest ideals of architecture and design and stand as a symbol of optimism and hope. (Source: Radio City Music Hall)

Rockefeller saw the need to react and devised a new development strategy.

St. Louis is lacking leaders with the courage to change direction in the face of adversity.   We need people to build lasting quality.  If the St. Louis Cardinals had political & financial pressure on them the Ballpark Village site would be platted for others to begin developing it piece by piece.

I’ve seen one show inside Radio City, the interior is stunning.

I simply don’t buy the argument Ballpark Village isn’t happening because of the 2009 economy.  The massive project was announced in the Fall of 2006.

12/1/2008: The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already believed about the state of the economy.  (source; CNN Money)

The Cardinals & Cordish had a year before the downturn started to get the project off the ground.  It didn’t happen because the entertainment district concept is not a sound investment.  The economy is an excuse to cover for a failed development concept.

– Steve Patterson

Growth of auto related structures

In the earlier days of motoring cities had a good balance of transportation options with most living within walking distance of goods, services and mass transit.  Gas stations, auto dealers and service shops sprang up but they did so in a more restrained way then. Early service stations used massing, design and materials to be compatible with residential neighbors.

The above service station at Bates & Morganford (map), once sold gas in addition to servicing vehicles.

840,000 people in St. Louis owned 165,000 automobiles and trucks in 1946. By 1970 it is estimated that there will be about 230,000 automobiles and trucks. This figure does not include streetcars and busses or the many thousands of new cars and trucks in suburban areas, all of which are potential users of city streets. The annual traffic in St. Louis will be increased from 1,531,000,000 to 2,403,000,000 vehicle miles by 1960 (Estimate by Missouri State Highway Department, Highway Planning Survey.). This is a lot of traffic. It cannot be accommodated on our present street system. It will require new and enlarged adequate flow channels as well as a high degree of regulation and control.(source: 1947 Comprehensive Plan for St. Louis)

So the city continued widening streets and requiring more and more parking. We know today the more you accommodate cars the more you will have to accommodate.  From a 2004 St. Louis Federal Reserve report, “The total number of registered vehicles in St. Louis City, St. Louis County and St. Clair County (the most populated areas of the St. Louis metro area) is about 1.4 million.” So clearly the number of registered vehicles has increased dramatically. St. Louis was not alone in this unattainable goal of accommodating the automobile, take Hartford CT as an example:

For the past half-century, city leaders in Hartford have worked hard to satisfy what they deemed to be a critical need – the need for more parking, so that downtown Hartford could compete with suburban office parks and shopping centers.

This summer the Center for Transportation and Urban Planning at the University of Connecticut conducted a detailed study of the cumulative effect on the city of 50 years of providing parking. What we found was startling: Since 1960, the number of parking spaces in downtown Hartford increased by more that 300 percent – from 15,000 to 46,000 spaces. This change has had a profound and devastating effect on the structure and function of the city as one historic building after another was demolished.

And what did the city gain from this assiduous drive to provide sufficient parking? Was it able to grow more prosperous by providing more jobs and housing for more people? If this was the desired outcome, we can consider the past 50 years to have been an abysmal failure. Over the period that parking was being increased by more than 300 percent, downtown was losing more than 60 percent of its residential population, and the city as a whole lost 40,000 people and 7,000 jobs.

Yet the perception of Hartford as a city perennially short of parking and in need of more parking has never slackened. How could this be?

Well, the simple answer is that parking and transportation policy in Hartford has had the perverse effect of inducing an unending cycle of more demand for parking. Like a dog chasing its tail, the city is constantly playing catch-up – the more parking provided, the more parking is needed.  (full story: Hartford: It’s A Parking Place)

I believe cities could have achieved a better balance by accepting the car as a given but not go hog wild to make driving so easy to drive everywhere. A look at architecture from the early 20th century gives us a guide for achieving this balance in the 21st century.

The first step is to build quality buildings that outlive their original use. Even auto dealerships need not be acres and acres of cars.

The above is about 6-8 blocks West of the Packard dealership.   This was St. Louis’ auto row back in the day.  The building on the left is now the popular restaurant The Fountain on Locust:

Our building was constructed in 1916 as the showroom for the Stutz Blackhawk and the Stutz Bearcat, both considered top of the line, high performance sports sedans of the time.

In later decades auto row moved to South Kingshighway. The scale was different than on Locust but the automobile didn’t overpower the people.

Above this service center, likely an early dealership, is adjacent to an apartment building with street-level retail.  Balance.

Further down the street we see (below) an auto service building nestled between a single family house (left) and a two-family (right).

Is it ideal? Far from it but I bet most that drive by don’t notice it.

Auto dealerships weren’t confined to Locust and Kingshighway.  Other major thoroughfares such as Natural Bridge and Gravois also had dealerships:

The buff brick building with the street trees in front was an auto dealership for decades.  The late Dave Mungenast got his start working at a motorcycle dealer on Locust while he was a student at Saint Louis University.  He operated a Toyota dealership in this building from 1966-1975.    Today it houses the Dave Mungenast’s Classic Motorcycles Museum.

Mini of St. Louis (above) at Maryland & Gay (map) in Clayton is the only current example I can think of where the dealership doesn’t overpower the neighbors.

The once charming service station has grown over the decades to become the now ubiquitous gas station that is seen everywhere:

Of course along with the above we have an increasing string of former gas stations that have little use beyond used car dealership.

So much in our cities has grown bigger but not better.  The old buildings and sites are disposable.

– Steve Patterson