Bus Tour of Dilapitated McKee-owned Properties Ignored Other Issues

This past Thursday morning I attended, as did many others, the press conference and bus tour relating to 500+ properties owned by Paul McKee through various companies in his control. For those of you living under a rock for the last year, McKee had quietly bought hundreds of properties mostly in the city’s 5th ward through companies with names like “Blairmont Associates, LLC” and “Dodier Investors LLC” (see list). Blair and Dodier are both street names in the area. In the last Missouri State legislative session McKee’s attorney Steve Stone wrote a tax credit bill worth $100 million for anyone that assembled large acres of land in distressed areas. All sounds good so far, right?

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Planned and Unplanned Destruction of Neighborhoods and Churches

Yesterday the historic St. Alphonsus church on North Grand, better known as “The Rock”, suffered a devastating fire as a result of lightening. The church building, dedicated in 1872 per a KSDK report, is known for its rock exterior and stone wall.  To me the church was a rock for another reason, actually surviving the surrounding neighborhood being leveled — twice!

Last year the church, above, stood in relative isolation to the north as land once occupied by a thriving neighborhood sits vacant and paved.  Taller buildings in the Grand & Washington area can be seen in the background.  This is the corner of Page & Grand, looking south.

Stepping back to Dr. King and Grand the church steeple still reminds us of how great this neighborhood once was, before the generic public housing projects and the proliferation of gas stations.

These images, taken on October 12, 2006, show the old Blumeyer housing project just before demolition.  Of course, this area once contained a real neighborhood prior to Blumeyer took that all away in a costly planning experiment.  Through all this destruction, The Rock church survived.

Above, in October 2006, is a 15-story Blumeyer building being prepped for demolition.   This building was located along Page with The Rock church just out of view to the right, back a block or so along Grand.

By early January 2007 all that remained of the Bluymeyer complex was a pile of rubble that had yet to be hauled away.  The Rock remained one of the few stabilizing forces in the neighborhood.

A firehouse that also survived the planned destruction of the old neighborhood for the Blumeyer project once again survives the second wave. 

Sometimes we think we know best so we continuously destroy and rebuild, burning through resources and lives.  Other times nature (or God depending upon your views) does the work for us such as yesterday’s fire at The Rock, the recent earthquake in Peru and two years ago, the hurricane in New Orleans.  I have no choice but to accept the results of nature, but I refuse to accept the way we handle public space and buildings in St. Louis.

Yesterday morning I scootered by The Rock church on the way to a press conference about Paul McKee’s vast land holdings in North St. Louis.  I wish now I had stopped and snapped a few shots of the building — it is one of those that you just always think will be around serving the community as it has done for generations.  My sympathies to the members of the parish. 

Halliday St. Illegal Parking Pad Fiasco Continues

Third time is a charm, so goes the old saying. Well, for the third time now the unapproved parking 4-car parking lot at a condo project in Tower Grove East is back on the agenda for the Board of Adjustment. Eventually the neighbors will capitulate on the issue and the developer and alderman will have their way. But as I’ve said before, this really is a bigger issue than simply this single block of Halliday.

Ald. Conway, the son of a former one-term Mayor (wiki), is trying to convince the public this is a rare situation and should be allowed to remain. After all, he had to help shut down the drugs and prostitution that once existed in the building. Yes folks, whatever you do, make sure that drugs and prostitution do not come into your neighborhood for the obvious reasons but also because they will forever be used to justify bad design decisions in the future. The choices otherwise, so I am told, are either a big ass parking pad for condo dwellers’ cars or section 8 housing. In St. Louis politics, a middle ground does not seem to exist.

But could this situation occur again? Well yes, and very nearby also in the 8th ward.

This wonderful 1925 apartment building located at Magnolia & Thurman contains, per city records, 38 apartments. To the back is the Bi-State bus loop property. This building has only the land it sits on.

The front interior court is a wonderful space.

Above: Stepping back a bit we see the interior court and the small front lawn between the building and sidewalk.

Looking west we see how the line of buildings is maintained down the Magnolia with Tower Grove Park on the left.

All I know about this project is that it is to be condos. I don’t have a clue who the developer is, how many units they plan or how parking will be accommodated. I do know it is also in the 8th ward where Ald. Conway might rationalize that paving this front yard might be a good solution. Again, I don’t know the specific plans for this project — I am simply using it to illustrate that we have numerous buildings that do not have extra land for off-street car storage.

We must decide, as a city and not block by block, if we are going to renovate dense urban buildings such as these despite lack of parking. To me this location is an ideal place to live — the park is stunning, bus routes are convenient, Shaw is a great neighborhood, the Botanical Gardens are close, shopping on Grand and Morganford is an easy bike ride away. On-street parking is adequate.

Getting back to Halliday. The immediate neighbors have made it clear — the front yard parking lot needs to go. The Tower Grove East neighborhood has made it clear — the front yard parking lot needs to go. Other city residents, such as myself and many of you have made it clear — the front yard parking lot needs to go. The solution, worked out over a month ago, would provide angled on-street parking — a good solution for a quiet tree-lined residential street.

Of course, the Alderman is trying to make that complicated. Rather than set up a permit-only parking area for the new condo residents he has actually proposed deeding a portion of the public street to the condo owners for their parking! Uh, hello, the public street is just that — public! I don’t give a sh*t if the condo owners will sue the developer for promising parking — he should not have made promises he could not keep. We simply can’t have developers running around promising parking they don’t have or tax abatement that was never approved and then change the rules after the fact to keep them from having made false statements (the tax abatement is just an example from other projects, that is not an issue in this case).

While I feel for the owners of the newly developed condos, I hope you have good documentation on the parking promise as well as a good lawyer. To potential buyers out there — this is a good example of why you need a REALTOR® when purchasing property — we help look out for issues such as this and ask for proof of future promises (such as evidence that tax abatement has been applied for and is in process). OK, the real estate sales pitch is over.

One of the big obstacles in development projects is getting financing without dedicated off-street parking. I’ve had numerous developers tell me it is an absolute must. The developers often are open to having less than one space per unit, knowing they’ll have sales/leases to people that take transit, walk, bike or simply don’t mind leaving their car on the street but it is the banking industry in St. Louis that requires a high level of parking. And here we enter the vicious circle: we are not going to have a public that uses the car less and other modes more until we live in more dense areas where it is forced by circumstances (lack of parking) or cost. On the other hand, we are not going to get this more dense development until we have a public that increasingly uses other modes besides the car. Bankers need to see more people with fewer cars to give them the confidence to lend on a project with few to zero parking spaces and people need to have good housing choices near convenient and frequent transit to comfortably live without a car. The solution is we’ve got to meet in the middle — people need to accept they may have to park their car on the street and bankers will need to be open to looking at walk-ability and access to transit when evaluating proposed projects. We simply cannot let a lack of off-street parking halt all the good renovation work happening throughout the city.

The Halliday St. parking lot is back on the Board of Adjustment agenda for Wednesday August 29, 2007 at 1pm. Room 208 of City Hall. For those keeping count at home, this is the third time on their agenda.

Prior posts:

• June 4, 2007
• June 27, 2007
• July 10, 2007

Walk-ins Welcome, Well Not Literally

As part of my monthly ‘appreciate the city day’ I visited a friend out in the older ring suburb of Richmond Heights. I’m working on a highly detailed post about the reconstruction of I-64 (aka highway 40) but in the meantime I wanted to share just one bit of what I saw yesterday. It is these little trips out to the burbs that help me remember that no matter how bad things are in the city they are usually worse in suburban areas.

So walking along Clayton Road between Hanley and Brentwood I spotted the above sign, “Walk Ins Welcome.” I immediately smiled when I saw the sign…

Despite all the cute architectural elements of this building, meant to evoke images of home, is as auto-centric as everything else. Sure, walk ins are welcome but only from the parking lot — they don’t provide a sidewalk to the front door from the public sidewalk. Oh the irony that someone had to walk through the grass to put out the welcome sign.

While I appreciate the care this facility offers I am continually amazed that the simple notion of providing a means for someone to walk to a facility is omitted. Conveniently they placed their phone number on the board so I pulled out my cell phone and called. The nice receptionist was a bit taken aback when I asked how I was supposed to walk in without a sidewalk. She said, “Are you in the parking lot?” “No” I replied, “I’m on the public sidewalk.” “Oh, I see you now.” I left a message for their director but I’ve not heard back.

So they are certainly not going to let those in their care, especially those with memory issues, out for an afternoon walk along a busy street. However, family and friends of those in the facility might live nearby and it would be convenient for someone to walk or bike over.

When planning new facilities we should make sure walk ins truly are welcomed.

New Signs for Gym Loom Over Sidewalk in St. Louis’ Loft District; Downtown Talk on Homeless

New businesses, such as gyms, are welcomed additions to loft districts such as the vibrant area in the 1300 block of Washington Ave in downtown St. Louis. We’ve seen some really great new signs of late at places such as Windows on Washington, The Dubliner, The Gelateria, Red and so on. St. Louis’ sign ordinance is about as modern as our 1947 zoning code so pretty much anything except uniform letters on the ends of boring awnings requires a variance. I’m quite pleased the city has worked with so many local businesses to allow the interesting variety of quality new signs.

But when it comes to the new signs at The Fitness Factory I am just scratching my head to think how anyone thought this was a good idea:

From the above angle you can’t even see the interesting sign for Flannery’s neighborhood pub to the west of the Fitness Factory.

To make matters worse, these are a matching pair!

From the opposite view, in front of Flannery’s, you can see the sign’s relationship to the buildings and sidewalk.

While the vinyl makes them look temporary (and cheap) the securing hardware makes them look more permanent. If I lived in the 2nd floor loft next door I’d be more than a tad upset about having my view up the street blocked to such an extent.

I’m going to see if Ald. Kacie Triplett (D-6th), shown at right, can take a look at these in person before her Downtown Talk on the homeless which starts at 7pm Monday August 13, 2007 at the beautiful St. Louis Central Library.

UPDATE 8/14/07 @ 7:30am:

The banners/signs for Fitness Factory are gone as one of the comments below indicates.  This was not due to my argument against them but the storm that passed through town in the hours before I posted this.

Last night’s talk was very good.  We didn’t really accomplish a whole lot other than have a pretty open and frank discussion about the needs of the homeless vs the quality of life for residents — but that is a huge step forward.  Hats off to Ald. Triplett for handling such a controversial topic so well.