New Arby’s has Required ADA Access Route

For a couple of years now I’ve showed project after project lacking a federally mandated ADA-compliant access route. The biggest culprits are often fast food joints with drive-throughs taking priority over the pedestrian (see post on recent Starbuck’s locations). Shopping centers are no exception and it wasn’t until I began highlighting the flaws at Loughborough Commons did they make changes to the original access plans. To date there is still not proper access to the Lowe’s. Granted a person in a wheelchair doesn’t come off the street to take home drywall but smaller items like light bulbs are still in need when you are disable.
I think the city’s former commissioner on the disabled used to just count the number of disabled parking spaces and give projects an OK if it met the required number. But I can assure you that not everyone arrives by car which means if they are not bicycling they are walking or using a wheelchair. And the ADA access route provides equally good access for those who are able bodied and those that are not. Those who are out pushing a baby stroller will appreciate the provisions as much as the person in a wheelchair.

So when the Arby’s on Lindell was rebuilt following the fire at the construction project next door (see post) I was not optimistic about what sort of pedestrian access they would provide. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the final outcome:

As you can see above it doesn’t take much — just a way to get from the public sidewalk to the main accessible entrance. Clearly here the pedestrian was given due consideration.

Given the urbanity of the apartment project next door it would have been nice to see the Arby’s be less suburban in nature — closer to the street, fewer auto drives, etc but at least they got the pedestrian access right. So if we are going to continue to build more suburban structures in the city, such as this Arby’s, we need to ensure they all have pedestrian access to the public sidewalk as this does.  Anything less is unacceptable.

The Future Outlook on Downtown St Louis

It is probably easy to think the good times are over downtown: Nearly a month ago I brought the city the news of the closure of prominent developer, John Steffen’s Pyramid Companies. The new modern high rise SkyHouse planned for 14th and Washington has been abandoned and Centene is no longer moving their HQ from Clayton to St Louis and Ballpark Village. Big deal.

Generations of all ages are seeking something besides typical suburbia — houses hidden behind garages, strip malls, big box centers, the indoor mall, the office/industrial park , etc… This doesn’t mean everyone wants to live in downtown St Louis because that is not the case. However the perception of downtown has changed considerably over the last decade or so. This is not to say the current mayor or the current crop of downtown civic boosters deserve all the credit. They deserve some but much of it is simply a shift in demographics and taste. Just as decades ago many people fled to the suburbs in large part because everyone else was too. Times have changed and in smaller and bigger towns all over the country inner city areas are seeing renewed interest while the edge suburbs are not the sure thing they once were. People want to be in real cities be that strolling down a downtown street or having your choice to walk over to a restaurant on Hampton or to a great urban park such as Francis Park.

Downtown St Louis will survive the latest setbacks if we allow it to. Over-hyping projects that are not yet sure things is certainly a good way to set up the public to be disappointed and perceive downtown as having failed again. The current financial market conditions will not allow the rate of growth we’ve seen in the last decade but we will move forward.

Many storefronts remain to be leased. Many. It will take some time for the market to absorb these spaces. Eventually something will open. The more we patronize our local commercial districts the better they will do. This includes locally owned and chain places — such as the new Sprint store at Tucker & Washington Ave.

So many factors are in the right spots for a good next 10-20 years.  The trick now is to not screw it up with bad decision making.  We should now be looking at form-based zoning to guide new construction downtown and the rest of the city.  Now is the perfect time to envision how we’d like to see our city develop over the next few decades.  We should take advantage of this financial break to plan for the future.

National ADA Symposium and Expo Assistive Technology Consumer Fair Monday & Tuesday

I would have been interested beforehand but now that I am disabled I’m very interested in the National ADA Symposium and Expo Assistive Technology Consumer Fair to be held Monday & Tuesday:

May 12-13, 2008
Downtown St. Louis, America’s Center

Paraquad and ADA Great Plains Center are pleased to announce the National ADA Symposium and Expo and the Assistive Technology Consumer Fair are collaborating on this joint event.
The Assistive Technology Fair will educate and empower consumers of assistive technology devices, equipment, products, and services to promote community participation and independent living.  This is the only show of its kind in the Midwest.
There is a wealth of products and services that enable people with disabilities to live life to its fullest.  The AT Fair provides community members with information on disability-related services and opportunities to try new products.
The AT Fair is free to the public and will be held in Hall 1 of the America’s Center from 12:00pm-8:00pm Monday, May 12th and from 9:00am-4:00pm Tuesday, May 13th.
The AT Fair is hosted by the Enabling Mobility Center, MS Society, Paraquad, and the Spinal Cord Injury Support Group.

For more information see atfair.org.  Come out and see everything from vans with slide out ramps to can openers for those of us with only one good hand.  Once you see some the products that are out there you begin to realize how much you take for granted.

Lead with your strong side

Today I did something stupid which can serve as a good analogy for cities.  For new readers I had a stroke on Feb 1st that took out my left side.  Through more than two months of rehab I can walk again with a cane.  So today I decide to pick something off the floor.  In rehab I had done squats to pick up stuff before.

Here is where the analogy and lesson part come in…

I was in a hurry and ignored all that I had learned up to this morning.  Rather than positioning my feet and body so that I was more relying on my strong (right) side I just squatted down as I would have prior to the stroke.  Conditions had changed but I tried the old way.  I ended up sitting on my butt on the floor.
Cities do the same thing— they don’t use their strong side to support then.  St Louis’ strong side is great urban architecture on a nicely scaled grid of walkable streets.  The suburbs don’t have those strong areas.  Yet here we tend to lead with our weak side — suburban anti-city stuff.  The more of this we have the less of the strong side we have.  Ok, so I was sitting on the floor now.

No harm done, people stumble just as cities stumble.  Unlike many cities I had a backup plan.  You see getting off the floor with only one good arm, one good leg and one weak leg is not just a pop back up sort of affair.  In therapy I practiced getting up off the floor — the assumption being that I’d end up there eventually.   Cities and their political leaders just don’t practice how to recover when they fall.  I knew to scoot across the floor and make it to the sofa.  From there I could leverage my strong side to get myself off the floor and seated again.  Cities don’t have such a backup.
St Louis has had a number of bad falls —such as the very expensive downtown indoor mall, St Louis Centre.  Had St Louis built up its strong side rather than coming from a weak position we would have focused on traditional storefront shops along streets.  Instead we went with the suburban mall model sans the acres of free parking and it flopped big time.   St Louis, like me this morning, was trying the quick route.  I recovered fairly quickly but a city’s mistakes are harder to recover from.

Remember that is is best to use your strong side for needed support.

Curb ramps useless when blocked by illegally parked cars

Sunday was such a nice day I decided in the afternoon to make my way the 9-10 blocks from my house to City Grocers at 10th & Olive.  Knowing of at least one curb ramp issue ay 16th & Locust I took the power wheelchair Eastbound on Washington Ave.  Everything was fine and dandy until I turned on 10th Southbound:

A block South of Washington at St Charles St I encountered this white Pontiac in my path.  To an able-bodied person they’d just walk around but when you are in a wheelchair your options are more limited.

I thought about ramming the side of the vehicle with the chair but then I realized that would probably do more damage to me than the car.  My cane on the other hand could have done a number on the car without hurting me.  But I thought if the owner came out I would be a sitting target.   Plus I am not really the type that would damage another’s property — even if they are insensitive and need a good lesson in where not to park.

The sensible thing would have been to call the police.  But it was a nice day and I didn’t want to get all worked up.  I also presumed the dispatcher would have been less than enthusiastic about the problem.  I let it go and back tracked to Washington where I then crossed to the other side of 10th.

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful, I got a large canvas bag full of food.  Leaving the store I looked up 10th and saw the car was still parked there.  So I headed Westbound along the sidewalk on the South side of Olive.  To my surprise at 11th there was no curb ramp at all.  Oh the other three corners all had ramps but they were of no use to me.   So again I doubled back from 11th to 10th and took 10th to Locust.  Locust was fine until I got to 13th St (by the Shell building) where my options to continue Westbound basically ran out.  I was able to take 13th up to Washington where I was able to continue the remaining blocks to home.

In all of this the basic message is that without curb ramps on all the corners, or a car blocking a ramp, it becomes increasingly harder to navigate through the city.  In the end it was doable –  just required a bit of backtracking on my part.  Added to my memory now are those routes where lack of ramps make getting from A to B a challenge.