St. Louis’ Ballpark Village Changing Mix, Includes New Centene HQ

This past Summer the Missouri Supreme Court told the City of Clayton and the Centene Corporation their project area doesn’t meet the qualification of “blight” — therefore they could not force adjacent property owners to sell. Rebuffed by the state’s highest court, Centene began opening the doors to any and all offers. Using their number of employees — both current and projected — as a major bargaining tool, Centene had the upper hand in negotiations with those who were interested.

So this past Sunday Mayor Slay and Centene’s President jointly announced that Centene would be building a new corporate HQ building in downtown St. Louis, and in a portion of the mud hole formerly occupied by Busch Stadium II (1966-2006). This is, without a doubt, a very big deal. But to hear the Mayor and others talk about it the decision was reaffirms past decisions — such as the convention hotel and razing the historic Century Building for a parking garage. Downtown didn’t empty out overnight and the recovery was certainly underway before Mayor Slay was elected in 2001. Developers Craig Heller, John Steffen and others were already converting warehouses to living spaces. The nationally known City Museum opened in 1997 due to the vision of one elected and affluent artist, Bob Cassilly. The wheels were already in motion when Slay moved down the hall from the Board of Alderman to the Mayor’s office in 2001.

What we cannot do is create a laundry list of past decisions and definitively conclude these are all responsible for downtown’s turn around. Take the convention hotel, for example. I’m really glad the old hotel at the SE corner of 9th & Washington was incorporated into the project. The former lobby makes for a stunning restaurant (An American Place). But did we have to close off St. Charles street with the monolithic parking garage in the process? The convention hotel has struggled to make its debt payments and reserves have been nearly depleted. Occupancy rates, however, are increasing. In the end it probably was a good decision to supplement the convention center with a hotel — we had to do something to save it. But this does not mean that the final design was the best choice to make — that different design decisions might have connected more of downtown together and had better results.

We are in a time when people are simply bored with their lives in the suburbs. The baby boomers dutifully raised their children in the ever expanding suburbs — it was perceived as the right thing to do and their parents certainly approved. But now their kids have families or are perhaps off to college so those boomers don’t need the big house on a half acre lot anymore. They are finally ready to have some fun, travel, walk and see things. The kids of the boomers, having grown up in the burbs, are also seeking a more interesting lifestyle. They are staying single longer and waiting to have kids longer than their parents and grandparents generation. As a result, suburban municipalities across the country are scrambling to build walkable town centers to keep a hold on their tax base. These suburban areas, like Creve Coeur in the St. Louis region, is realizing they cannot survive simply on large single family detached homes, the occasional apartment complex and the arterial lined with generic strip centers. Suburban communities that once placed minimums on the size of residential units are dropping or lowering them so that people can stay in the area but still be able to downsize. St. Louis’ Mayor Slay did not create these conditions.

Of course you can’t blame the Mayor for attempting to put a good PR spin on changing demographics that are naturally working in the city’s favor. Part of his job is to market the city and a major past obstacle has been about perception. The Slay administration, to their credit, has been working overtime to change the perception of downtown and the city. Unfortunately, they’ve done nothing to change the perception of how business is conducted. If anything, they’ve reinforced negative ideas about back room deals and he with the most money gets what they want.

Back to Ballpark Village and Centene. We all knew, several years ago, that something was going to get constructed on the site of the old stadium. The Cardinals would never leave a big hole next to their new stadium. The Cardinals, developer Cordish, the City and the State have been in continual discussions about the various components and how much of the tab the tax payers should fund for developing this private land.  One of the things that has annoyed me is the claim of it being six city blocks in size.  I took exception to that, saying it was only 3 city blocks — 3 blocks east to west and one block north to south —Broadway (5th) to 8th and Walnut to Clark.  I wasn’t around when the street grid changed back in the 60s so I looked at a map from a recent used book to prove my point.  Turns out, I didn’t know about Elm.

I’ve circled the area above that is the Ballpark Village site.  Clark used to jog a bit at 7th.  Clark, if you recall, was closed from 1966-2006 with the previous stadium.  With the current stadium Spruce, formerly open, is now closed.  But as you can see in this pre-urban renewal map, a street called Elm used to run between Clark and Walnut.  So originally it was divided into five blocks, not three and not six.  Given the shape of Clark today — going around the north edge of the stadium, the total area is a bit less than it was back in the day.  Also, I suspect that Elm was sorta like St. Charles Street or Lucas St — more of a wide alley.  Elm was obliterated during the massive urban renewal project in the 1960s when basically everything in the area was wiped away.

The difference however, was that back in the days of active cities the buildings turned outward toward the public streets.  All the indicators I have of BPV is that it will be like a mall only without a roof — it will focus inward.  But who can blame it?  To the east and west are the sterile stadium parking garages. To the north is the back side of the two-blenders on a base hotel.

Ballpark Village, with or without Centene, was going to need delivery areas.  Where will this end up?  Not in the center food court!  And certainly not along Clark next to the stadium.  No, Walnut and Broadway will likely take the brunt of the docks and trash receptacles.  Walnut will likely be no more pleasant than it is today.

And a year ago we were told of the 250 condos and 1,200 parking spaces in Phase 1 (view PDF of handout).  Now it is zero condos and 1,750 parking spaces!  The city’s new math.  And are these spaces underground?  Of course not, they are out in full display along the north edge of the inwardly focused site.   The jobs created was listed at 1,969 with salaries totaling $54.5 million (an average of just under $28K/year).  Why was this important?  To illustrate how much additional tax revenue the city would bring in due to earnings tax — $545,000/yr based on their estimates.

So now with Centene’s 1,200 jobs the city will bring in zero additional earnings tax because while Mayor Slay bent over he dropped an agreement to exempt Centene from the city’s 1% earnings tax.  Nobody likes the earnings tax but every time it is mentioned to do away with it the city claims it is necessary.  Maybe this is a clever way for Slay to eventually eliminate the tax?  Why?  Well, you think that Wachovia (A.G. Edwards) is going to bring all their new jobs to the city without a similar deal?  And the brewery, they are not going to like this.  AT&T and all the other big players are going to scream foul and they’d be right.  The little guy, however, will keep paying the tax for a long time.

I think the Mayor is right, some of these new 1,200 jobs may well translate into new city residents.   They’ll buy places with 10-year tax abatement!  Still, new residents means new local shoppers which, in our city, will be justification for new big box developments like Loughborough Commons.  Ugh.

Still I am concerned about all the cars this project will bring to such a concentrated area.  How backed up will the streets be at 8am and 5pm?  How vacant will the streets be on a Sunday afternoon?  The city should have asked for more.  For example, Ballpark Village/Centene HQ is an excellent location for a downtown bike station — a small area with showers, lockers and bike storage.  This allows office workers to bike to work, shower and get dressed for a day’s work.  A.G. Edwards provides such facilities for their employees but downtown needs this in the bigger picture.

The city could have also could suggest to Centene they not offer free parking to employees — going so far as to tell an employee they’ll get an extra $50 and a transit pass each month if they don’t take up a parking space.  It is called parking management, St. Louis study the practice sometime.  Cities like Portland OR actually set maximum numbers of parking spaces for new construction — a limited supply creates higher demand, driving up prices and encouraging alternate modes.  St. Louis is still in the ‘we can’t have too much parking’ mode of thinking that has ravaged our downtown for decades.

So while I am pleased the Slay administration & the Cardinals/Cordish team managed to land the Centene HQ for downtown I’m wondering if the price was too high.  If you give enough away we could attract many more jobs, residents and retailers but at some point the numbers don’t add up to a net positive.  Once the initial hype and popping of champagne corks settles down perhaps we’ll get a clearly picture of the deal.

Rollin Stanley Presented “Lessons from St. Louis” at Louisiana State APA Conference in New Orleans

A guest editorial by Matthew Mourning

On Friday, September 21, 2007, in a city noted for its amalgam of cultures and linguistic influences, Canadian citizen and St. Louis’ Planning and Urban Design Agency Executive Director Rollin Stanley served up generous portions of “aboots” and “pro-grums” to an eager smattering of planners, architects, and students assembled at the Louisiana Chapter of the American Planning Association’s annual conference, this year in New Orleans.

In a seminar entitled “Lessons from St. Louis,” Stanley proceeded to showcase a PowerPoint (in a room without audio capabilities) of St. Louis’ ascendancy from contemporary equivalent of the ancient sacked city of Troy to an urban exemplar whose recent success story is, though remarkable, also replicable.

The city of New Orleans has lost more than half of its population since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in August and September of 2005. Many neighborhoods remain partially ruined; water lines tell the story of the storm’s destructive remnants and extant FEMA spray paint on row after row of New Orleans’ flamboyant Creole-style architecture indicates the number rescued from (and the number deceased found within) each splendid but forlorn structure. While it’s hard to believe, certain neighborhoods near the Levee breach have few structures remaining at all. The often spoken of Lower Ninth Ward, including part of the tight knit Holy Cross neighborhood, saw nearly complete devastation. Only concrete slabs and, against odds, a determination to rebuild persist.

Stanley’s concept was rather simple. St. Louis is like you, New Orleans. St. Louis’ “Katrina” is, in fact, worse and more debilitating than yours, a half-century long storm of urban blight, white flight, substandard schools, a bleeding population, deindustrialization, disinvested infrastructure, and abandoned solid brick architecture. Quipped the Canadian at one particularly bleak demonstration of St. Louis’s extant urban problems: “I’ll sell you a 5,000 square foot Victorian for $1,000…and I’ll give you a 10 year tax abatement.”

Stanley’s speech dichotomized St. Louis as a city with unique and monumental challenges which it is now gracefully and astoundingly seeing some triumph over. And while comparing St. Louis’ half-century free-fall to the overnight ravages of Katrina on one of America’s most celebrated cities is not particularly popular with native New Orleanians, it lent the presentation a tone of gravity that captured attentions that in previous presentations had been on the coffee thermostat, complimentary snacks, and conference packet materials. Rollin set out to show New Orleans how it could best lick its own wounds, using the St. Louis example.

The Einsteinian City, the presenter maintained, is the successful one. That is, the energy of a city (E) equals its mass of services (m) times its density, or concentration (c) squared to produce the well-known equation. In this urban planner’s twist on it, maximizing density justifies services and creates an energetic city. The theme that sound urban planning is much like this simple equation was echoed throughout the presentation. At one point, Rollin scrunched up his face and searched for a word—“What do you guys call it—TOD? In Canada, we call it good urban planning.”

In showcasing what he and conference organizers termed the remarkable turnaround of St. Louis, Mr. Stanley had to relate the raw product that he, upon entering the position, had to work with. And so, a wide-angle video shot driving down Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. popped up on the screen and evoked an audible audience reaction. “I know. It’s hell. It’s absolute hell,” Stanley stressed. He augmented the visceral decay with the numbers to back it up—a loss of 508,000 residents since 1950 as well as the loss of stature having been the nation’s fourth largest city in 1900. He even featured a slide of Pruitt-Igoe’s demolition to detail the loss of 3,000 housing units in the City of St. Louis over the course of just a year and a half.

When the audience had been bludgeoned with the point that St. Louis “was crap,” as Stanley concisely summed up the state of the city, he moved on to the strategy that could lift New Orleans out of its storm-induced doldrums. Ironically, Stanley seemed to have done no research on New Orleans, however. He asserted that, unlike St. Louis, New Orleans had no powers of Tax Increment Financing, only to be corrected. He also lent no time to the acknowledgment that New Orleans too had been losing a considerable portion of its own population pre-Katrina and suffered from an as-bad or worse crime rate as St. Louis for the last decade.

He included all of the expected topics: building diversity, improving education, thinking regionally, increasing density, and introducing new and improved transit options. Up until this point in the presentation, Stanley was engaging, energetic, witty, and, most importantly, rather accurate. In discussing St. Louis’ climb upward, however, he mentioned in passing that he and Mayor Slay had proven and continue to prove themselves panaceas to past planning blunders and even to urban blight itself. In one of his strategy areas, leveraging historic resources, Stanley appropriately pointed out that the state of Missouri is the leader in the nation with its generous historic tax credits program. Further, St. Louis has proven a tremendous beneficiary. But Rollin depicted these tax credits as his own tool towards selling St. Louis’ venerable but dilapidated beauties. He made the Mayor and himself seem ardent preservationists, salvaging inimitable structures that once fell to the wrecking ball of urban renewal. Homer G. Phillips Hospital was one of his examples of the city’s (and his own) recent reclamations—while in the next breath he appeared frustrated that the city had to resort to eminent domain to demolish a row of historic (but, to him, “unmarketable”) Ville shotgun houses. A slide bragging of new development in the low-income Ville projected the image of suburban style homes (far set backs, vinyl clad) that stayed on the screen only long enough to perhaps convince the audience that this was some collection of New Urbanism or HOPE VI pastel housing units that New Orleans itself has seen popping up in place of outmoded low-rise public housing.

And on the note of historic preservation, I have to ask, did Rollin Stanley protest the infamous demolition of the Century Building for a parking garage (quite sardonically dubbed the “Garage Mahal” by embittered opponents of the garage that is said to draw its “architectural inspiration” from the marble clad turn of the century mid-rise it replaced)? What about the wholesale clearance of the McRee Town neighborhood, part of which rested in a local historic district? Or the erosion of the last remaining fabric of the Bohemian Hill neighborhood for strip center shopping? Ongoing demolitions within the historic districts of Hyde Park and Murphy-Blair/Old North St. Louis? The mysterious destruction by Bobcat of the rear corners of buildings in McKee’s targeted neighborhoods of St. Louis Place and JeffVanderlou?

To his credit, Stanley did belabor the point that he was a progressive in a decidedly backward city and state. He expressed disillusionment that Walgreens felt it needed front parking lots to develop urban sites and that fast food restaurants required drive-thrus. “If you can’t get out of your damn car for a hamburger, something’s wrong,” he remarked to the delight and applause of the crowd. He also attacked the stature of planners in St. Louis, saying, “In Canada, you can’t make noises with your armpit without going to a planner first. In Missouri, they shoot ‘em [planners].”

In a strategic point entitled “Implement Big Ideas,” he used the Chouteau Lake project (spearheaded by McCormack Baron Salazar) to offer up but one of St. Louis’ big ticket development projects while simultaneously rejecting it as coming too soon. He believed that it would drive up demand for lakeside real estate outside of downtown, causing a shift of development away from the downtown proper that he stated he wanted to see filled up first.

In the “putting it all together” slide, Rollin praised the recently passed Urban Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Act and called it a great opportunity to redevelop large sites in the City of St. Louis (to be brief, or convenient, without a mention of the Paul McKee, Jr. controversy). He lauded the King Louis Square development (whose photo on the slide, I would note, did not reveal the “mullet” style brick-in-front, vinyl-on-the-sides-and-back construction)—“all done with tax credits!” Pointing out that the new Busch Stadium was one of the least publicly subsidized stadium projects in the country, he offered a bit of helpful advice to Cordish, the developers of Ballpark Village. “We need retail and restaurants that don’t exist anywhere else,” he emphasized, even though he called for a Disney-owned ESPN Zone on the site.

In a slide entitled “How We’re Doing,” he tells of increasing population after decades of decline, decreasing poverty, and the city’s coveted “Urban Renewal” award bestowed by the World Leadership Forum in London this past year.

He then closed his presentation and opened it up to questions. I found myself still bothered by an urban planner calling MLK Jr. Blvd. “hell” and championing the demolition of historic structures in what was St. Louis’ premiere African-American neighborhood all within in the same presentation. And so I asked, “How does one interested in historic preservation balance the idea of preservation as economic development with the political and economic pressure to tear down vacant buildings and replace them with buildings that do not even approximate the older structures?” He told me that the City of St. Louis vigorously protects anything in a historic district, which covers 40 percent of the city, and that he can’t reasonably save every structure. After all, he noted, St. Louis needs new construction anyway, and nobody will buy a shotgun house these days. Wow. I suppose New Orleans must really be having a difficult time with recovery if no one will live in a shotgun! And of course, images of demolished Garden District bungalows make me question what this city’s idea of good new development is.

If the city is to recover, and especially to the point where it is felt that it can present an example to even more beleaguered cities, historic preservation and quality infill housing become ever more important focuses. St. Louis’ political structure, its acceptance of Aldermanic fiefdoms and aldermanic courtesy, preclude Stanley’s idea of “good urban planning.” As long as zoning codes reflect the “urban renewal” mentality of the 1940s and beyond, St. Louis, as a city, will see its “renaissance” give way to another protracted “dark age.”

Stanley’s presentation points out a single and incredibly important fact about St. Louis. Indicators haven’t looked this good in decades. Now is time to “think big.” But thinking big doesn’t necessitate large casino developments or more parking garages downtown. Thinking big, in St. Louis, means challenging the status quo rather than working within it. It means that developments such as Southtowne Centre on Kingshighway and Chippewa should be illegal. It means that demolition in Bohemian Hill (too small to be considered a neighborhood, I’m told by many) should be decried and rejected by nearby residents, business owners, and preservationists alike. It means that “Botanical Heights” should conform to setback and spacing guidelines. It means supporting the businesses of Cherokee Antique District, Cherokee Station, Grand South Grand, Euclid, Ivanhoe, Morganford, Macklind, Gravois, and, in the future, the 14th Street Mall, or Crown Village, especially the local ones (and NOT ESPN Zone). It means biking or taking public transit to work.

To borrow from Mayor Slay, “we’ll be a great city” again, but not until we start acting, investing, and building like we deserve to be one.
—

Matthew Mourning is a St. Louis native, from the Bevo neighborhood, with a bachelor’s degree in Urban Affairs from Saint Louis University. Matthew is a graduate student in the Masters of Urban and Regional Planning Program at the University of New Orleans.

Loughborough Commons Community Improvement District Meeting Today, 3pm.

The Board of Directors of the Loughborough Commons Community Improvement District are meeting later today at the downtown law firm of Greensfelder, Hemker and Gale, P.C.  This ‘CID’ was set up to use some of the tax revenues collected at Loughorough Commons to fund improvements.  It is a quasi governmental entity and therefore subject to open meetings laws.

At right is the public notice found today at City Hall, click to view PDF copy.

I’m Putting My Foot Down on 4-Way Stops

Despite St. Louis have way too many 4-way stops, this post is not about reducing the number of stops.  No, I’m tired of the way 4-ways are treated in this town.

First we have the locally famous rolling stop.  This involves letting off the gas and potentially applying the brakes in a very token effort.  Very common among the locals, including police.

We also have the basically ignore the stop sign types that simply fly right through the intersections as if nobody else existed.  These people are the reason we look left & right before proceeding.

Then we have the folks that think because they are on the bigger road that they have the right of way — regardless of who stopped first and who was to the right of whom.  Conversely, we have the people that are on a smaller side street that have the right of way but refuse to go until the person on the bigger through street go first.

And then we have people that see me on my scooter and they simply freak out — “oh my gosh, a scooter, I don’t know what to do!”  Seriously, it is often like people have never been to a 4-way stop before.

The rules are simple folks, whomever stops first has the next right of way.   Same time?  The person on the right has the right of way.  If someone is turning left, they need to turn behind the car that is going the opposite direction.

But drivers see my scooter and all of a sudden they want to toss out the rules and wave me through.  I appreciate the thought, really I do, but we need to focus on following the time tested rules of 4-way stops — not toss them out because of a really cute scooter.

I continually face drivers at intersections where, due to timing or placement, know that the other person has the right of way.  Often I get drivers that have the right of way try to wave me to go — but I know they have the right of way and that they will be turning right behind me.  Don’t wave me through and then get right behind me — that really steams me.  If it is your turn at the intersection, go.  I’ll be behind you and that is just fine.  Too often I’m working on stopping and balancing when someone already at the intersection is already trying to wave me through.
Now most skilled riders of 2-wheel vehicles can come to a nearly complete full stop without putting a foot on the pavement — balance is an excellent skill to have.   I’m pretty certain that technically a rider is considered to have run a stop sign if they don’t put a foot down but don’t quote me on that.  So from a balance perspective at least I don’t need to put a foot down but I often do a 4-way stops with other drivers simply trying to communicate to them I am coming to a complete stop.  Depending upon the situation, I will use my left or right foot to use body language to tell others drivers that I am still working on stopping.  It helps sometimes.

The other day, near my house, I pull up to a 4-way stop.  A guy in a large passenger van had already stopped at the left of me.  He was on the bigger street while I was on a narrower side street.  I looked at him and he wasn’t going.  Mind you, I don’t just take off through an intersection in front of 3-ton vehicles that have the right of way.  He had the windows down and started yelling something and making hand gestures (more than a single finger).  But I couldn’t tell what he was saying.  Finally, in a stroke of brilliance, the guy figured out a way to communicate what he’d be trying to say — he put on his right turn signal!!  Yes, somehow using the turn signal to signal a turn had escaped him.  Once I saw the signal I knew I could safely go.  I went as soon as another driver that had pulled up to the intersection from the right made a right turn in the same direction I was going.  Had the original driver communicated his intentions by using his turn signal things would have been so much easier.

I also see the people that try to wave me across but forget that it is dark outside and it is nearly impossible to see inside their car from across the intersection.  I’ve also seen people, barely, driving cars with tinted windows trying to do the same.

Of course you have the opposite where people pull up to the stop, wait a few seconds and then go — without looking to see who else is around.  Sometimes drivers simply assume that all intersections are 4-way.  I’ve had people pull out in front of me because they stopped and just assumed I was going to stop as well even though my street didn’t have a stop sign.   Better yet are the ones that stop at the intersection even though they don’t have a stop sign.

What are your favorite 4-way stop observations?

Six Years and Counting

Like the “where were you when Kennedy was shot” question from an earlier generation, we all know what we were doing as we watched on live television the unfolding of events on 9/11/2001. There I was in the living room of a client I had just met, watching that second plane hit the other tower of the World Trade Center. Any doubt about the first plane being lost in the fog was gone. I think what I remember most was the courage of those in the fourth plane, knowingly facing their own deaths, thinking of others on the ground — preventing the deaths of so many more.

In the weeks prior a friend and I had booked an exciting 17-day trip to the east coast — Washington DC, Pennsylvania and New York. Our flight to DC was October 19th. I had been to DC before but this time was obviously different — the Pentagon had a huge hole in the side. Still, people were out and about in the various neighborhoods. The Washington Monument, as you might suspect, was closed to visitors. We had planned a road trip from DC to New York via Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water in rural Pennsylvania and thus had booked a rental car. Getting off the city bus at National Airport was weird — the place was a ghost town as flights were still not being permitted in or out. My first time in New York was surreal. Hotels and restaurants were eager to kick start the local economy so tourists were welcomed. As you approached “ground zero” as it was becoming known, the smell hit you. Neighbors in nearby Battery Park were hosing out the filters on their ventilation systems. The skyline I had seen my entire life in pictures was different, the Statue of Liberty was closed. We walked through the upper east side on the day a person died of anthrax poisoning on the upper east side. Stores had signs indicating they sold the anti-anthrax drug.

I visited New York again in the Fall of 2005. By then the debate about the future of the 16+ acre WTC site was in full swing. It should become a memorial park, it should be rebuilt as it was, and we shouldn’t build targets anymore were among the numerous viewpoints. Others advocated for much needed housing rather than simply replacing vast quantities of office space. Still others sought to return to the long abandoned street grid.

When Minoru Yamasaki was selected to design the World Trade Center his Pruitt-Igoe public housing, designed a decade earlier, was already troubled. When the ribbon was cut for the WTC in 1973 St. Louis had already begun to implode Yamasaki’s insensitive work here. In the 50s and 60s there was little opposition to such large scale projects save for Jane Jacobs. Today the debate over the 16+ acre site in lower Manhattan continues. Such a massive site in NYC is a rarity.

Back in St. Louis 16 acres is nothing to us. The Schnuck’s City Plaza development at Natural Bridge & Union is 20 acres, the Southtown Plaza strip center (former Famous-Barr site) is 11 acres. The old arena site, now called The Highlands, is 26 acres. The remaining Pruitt-Igoe site is roughly 33 acres. At 30 acres, Loughborough Commons, the Schnuck’s/Lowe’s albatross, is nearly twice as big as the WTC site. Yes — Loughborough Commons is 87% larger than the World Trade Center site! Wow, they are debating how many blocks and streets as well as how much office, retail and housing they can squeeze onto their 16 acres while here just getting the ability for an ADA-compliant sidewalk clearly takes more than action by the Board of Aldermen.

Thousands lost their lives six years ago and many more were strongly impacted by the loss of family, friends, co-workers, neighbors and simply a smile from a passing stranger no longer with us on the subway. Decisions made about the future of the WTC site, as well as development sites here in St. Louis and throughout the world, will too have an impact on people’s lives, although in a different way. We must ask ourselves why we are not creating places beyond just the short-term — a place to buy a cordless drill or get a latte at a drive-thru window. Architecture cannot made us better persons but our environment can and does impact how we all engage each other in our daily lives. We must do better. If not, we are simply funding a self-inflicted form of long-term terrorism.