St. Louis’ THF Realty Creating Anti-Pedestrian Sprawl in Colorado

Billionaire & Wal-Mart heir Stan Kroenke’s development company, THF Realty, is continuing to create more sprawl across the land. This time they are taking 2,000 acres of Colorado farm land and converting it to a generic wasteland of big boxes, massive streets and boring office parks.

To appease critics the project includes an 80 acre wildlife area for eagles. The remaining project will be a devotion to the automobile. The most glaring example is the last sentence from the following from contractor RG Brinkman:

“The Buckley Road Street Improvement consists of constructing 2 miles of major arterial roadway to connect the north end of the Prairie Center site to the south end. Buckley Road is an essential connection of the new residential construction occurring south of the Prairie Center project. This new construction includes all necessary utilities and paving required to serve the retail portion of this site. A pedestrian underpass with a skylight also is being constructed to allow for access to the future school.“

A pedestrian underpass for the kiddies!?! Wow, that sounds really appealing — a street so challenging to cross we must put pedestrians underground. I can’t imagine spending $500 million destroying 2,000 acres and at not at least making it so people can walk from place to place without having to duck under roadways.

I found this quite telling as well:

The mass grading for the Prairie Center project consists of the mass overlot grading for a 250 acre commercial section of property. Approximately 1.5 million cubic yards of material had to be moved in order to provide the required elevations for the building pads and parking lots for the Prairie Center project.

That is some serious earth moving. But when you are plopping down 100,000sf big boxes with parking you just can’t keep natural grades like so many small town main streets.

If such a development was created fifty years ago or even thirty years ago I might understand, most planners just didn’t know any better back then. But in the last 20 years we’ve seen the rise of alternatives to this commonplace sprawl in the form of New Urbanism. THF Realty must know of New Urbanism and the concepts of making developments accommodate both pedestrians and cars. It just seems they ignore good planning in favor of continuing the old ways.

Additional Information on Prairie Center:

Additional Information on alternatives to THF’s typical sprawl:

Remember, “this land is our land.” We are the ones that should determine the fate of our built environment. Will it be sprawl as usual or will we return to places for people?

– Steve

San Francisco Contemplates Something St. Louis May Never

St. Louis loves parking. Surface parking lots, new parking garages where historic buildings once graced the streetscape, and parking within warehouses being converted to lofts.

Land values in San Francisco make surface parking lots an economic impossibility. But as dense as San Francisco is, those crazy California’s love their cars as much or more than we do in the midwest. In an effort to reduce car use the city’s Board of Supervisors is considering a drastic measure.

From the San Francisco Examiner:

Proposed legislation that would limit the amount of off-street parking built in new housing was endorsed by the majority of the Planning Commission on Thursday. But the commission recommended the legislation be amended to allow for more parking than currently proposed.

The legislation, sponsored by Supervisor Chris Daly, intends to reduce downtown congestion, promote walkable streets and lower the cost of housing.

The commission on Thursday recommended a maximum of three parking spots for every four units of new housing downtown, while Daly’s legislation calls for one spot for every two units. The legislation would also ban freestanding parking garages downtown.

Yes, San Francisco’s urban-minded supervisors want to restrict the number of parking spaces in downtown residential developments. Keep in mind that San Francisco is far more dense than St. Louis with over twice the number of people per square mile. The downtown resident in San Francisco has many more choices for mass transit along with goods and services within walking distance.

Existing warehouses in downtown St. Louis have a parking limit of sorts — the buildings will only accommodate so much indoor parking. Thus, many downtown loft developments end up with one space per unit. But we are already seeing a point where all the old buildings have been purchased for development. This means we’ll soon see new buildings filling in the vacant gaps around the edges of downtown. With these new buildings may come the call for two spaces per unit.

So while San Francisco is debating 2-3 spaces for every four units we may see 8 spaces for every four units. At this rate, we may never encourage more walking, biking or mass transit use while pricing units beyond the means of many. I’d like to see a cap of say 6 parking spaces for every four units. We could trigger some incentives such as building higher (more units = more $) if parking is reduced to one space per unit. Thinking ahead we should set progressively tighter parking restrictions published well in advance.

So let’s assume we, in the next year or two, impose a limit of six spaces for four units with bonus hight incentives for a 1:1 ratio. Five years later the regular limit might become five spaces for four units with incentives for three spaces for every four units. Another fives years could see this drop again.

– Steve

City To Blight An Entire Block Downtown

When you first read the headline you probably assumed the City of St. Louis, right? Wrong. The city faced with blight in their downtown is the City of Clayton. Don’t let the expensive restaurants and valet parking fool you, Clayton is full of blight. So much so they are ready to give tax breaks to a company already located in Clayton.

From a KSDK story:

I had dinner last night a few blocks away from the blight. I didn’t see any boarded up windows or anything but with all that blight I was careful as I walked from my car to the restaurant. If something happened because of the blight would the valet across the street parking someone’s Range Rover be able to help? Doubtful. As I left the restaurant I drove past the blighted block, doors locked of course. What amazed me were some of the businesses located among the blight — a couple of high-end restaurants, some fast food places in urban storefronts, a fancy jeweler, a title company, and two real estate brokerages. Clayton’s blighted area contains an interesting mix of building types and materials. Maybe that is why it is considered blight — because it is not one big long boring block like so many of the others in downtown Clayton. Could it be blighted due to the fact MetroLink mass transit will come to Clayton in about a year. Perhaps the critics of mass transit are just getting ahead of the curve and blighting areas before mass transit arrives rather than waiting and blaming it on the type of ‘element’ that doesn’t have their own Lexus?

The City of Clayton should not blight this block for a number of reasons. First, this is a big block with multiple buildings that adds interest to an otherwise sterile area. Second, just because the area doesn’t have a brand new building on it doesn’t make it blighted!!! I really wanted to use an expletive in that last sentence — took all my strength not too.

Those of us in the City of St. Louis should look for the positive side to all this. Clayton’s old buildings can’t even come close to competing with the old buildings we have left. Also, we are on the upswing with a number of new condo projects not receiving tax abatement. Looks like the tables have just been turned.

– Steve

CBD Traffic Study Becomes Downtown Transportation Plan

From the Downtown St. Louis Partnership:

I have several thoughts:

Two-Way Streets and On-Street Parking

I’m really eager to see how changing a street from one-way with on-street parking to two-way will mean we have to lose the parking and loading zones. I know some of the city buses have trouble with some corners and some bus routes might need to be rerouted. Fire engines likely have the same trouble. We are probably going to hear a bunch of BS from traffic engineers about traffic counts and how on-street parking impedes flow. I’m fully expecting the worst in convoluted logic.

Traffic Flow vs. Pedestrian-Friendly

Anything would be better than what we have now. Some blocks don’t have pedestrian signals at all. Other blocks simply turn off the pedestrian signal because they aren’t programmed to deal with things such as right turn only lanes. Most blocks take so long to change that people cross against the signal. I’ve been at lights on my bike/scooter/car and waited and waited for the light to change when no other cars are even around.

By the way, are you all aware that it is not legal to make a left from a one-way street onto another one-way street. I was one of the people that thought it was legal to do so. I didn’t get a ticket, just heard it at a meeting at East-West Gateway Council of Governments.

One-Way vs. Two-Way Streets:

We need to eliminate every one-way street in the city of St. Louis. An exception might be a few really narrow streets — those that are under 30ft wide. Otherwise they should all be two-way. Two-way streets are more intuitive when you are unfamiliar with an area. And let’s face it, for downtown to continue the rate of prosperity we need more and more folks that haven’t been downtown in a while to stop by. We don’t need lots of confused suburbanites in SUV’s going the wrong way on one-way streets.

Two-way streets are just psychologically friendlier to pedestrians. With traffic going in two different directions it adds a layer of visual interest beyond one-way streets. With one-way traffic the pedestrian is either walking the entire way against traffic or with traffic. Either way it is boring. When walking with one-way traffic you feel like you are not getting anywhere fast because all the traffic is moving in the same direction much faster. Walking against traffic you feel overwhelmed by all the traffic going in the opposite direction, as if you are going to the wrong way. With two-way traffic these forces cancel each other out.
A Study becomes a Plan

A few months ago this was a study and all of a sudden we’ve got a “Downtown Transportation Plan.” This is the first time I’ve heard this called a Transportation Plan. All prior announcements were simply talking about survey, study and updating signals. I’m not so opposed to a plan but I’m wondering how it became a plan from just a study. Did they finally realize just how messed up the current system is and needs a more comprehensive approach? Let’s hope so.

Downtown Now! vs. Downtown St. Louis Partnership

Yes, they really are two separate organizations. Never mind that each executive director is on the board of the other organization. In a continuing tag-team approach the Partnership continues to announce the study which was funded in part by Downtown Now! Sometimes I think they are deliberately trying to blur the lines between them so they both seem relevant.

Sharing Information:

My last thought has nothing to do with the above quote but how I obtained it. First, a regular reader shared the above as a comment today on a prior post on the topic. It seemed more worthwhile than being simply a comment on an old post. So I went to the Downtown Partnership website to verify the information. It is how the Downtown Partnership shares information that I find so…uh….interesting.

Many choices exist for sharing information on the internet, some better than others. I like information sites that incorporate blog technology to have the most recent updates on the top of the page. These news updates can also be sent out via RSS/XML feeds to people like me that like to monitor hundreds of sources. Other choices include updating the web page, perhaps linking to a page with latest news. PDF documents are certainly popular. When sending emails placing the text in the body of an email is popular as is a more deluxe email in HTML format. Attaching a PDF to an email is also common. What isn’t common, however, is the practice of using a fully editable Word document.

Yes, the Downtown Partnership sends out a weekly email with an attached Word document. If you go to their website and seek information such as their weekly notice or even a list of board members you immediately get a Word document downloaded to your hard drive. I happen to have Word and use my own computer so it really isn’t a big deal for me but I have friends that use the computer at the library or other such places where you can’t save documents to a drive or where Word isn’t an available application. The beauty of PDF documents is that a reader is free and is widely available. Does Bill Gates pay the Partnership to keep Word alive? If the Partnership’s website had this information as a PDF document then more people would be able to read the file. Plus, it would not be editable the way their current Word document is.

But PDF documents as a way of distributing news items is really outdated as well. Unless someone saves every week’s file they really can’t search for information reliably. However, as a blog tech site each post has its own unique web address, is searchable and can be found via search engines such as Google. This is not new but is certainly a long way away from the 1996 era of sending out Word documents. Richard Callow — please go over and help bring the Partnership into the 21st Century.

Past Posts and Final Thoughts:

New St. Louis CBD Traffic Study, July 3, 2005

Mayor’s Office Shares Details About the CBD Traffic/Access Study
, July 5, 2005

Downtown Partnership’s Jim Cloar Takes Action to Keep Parking off Washington Avenue, July 15, 2005

What Happened To The CBD Traffic Study?, August 3, 2005

CBD Traffic Survey Limited to Select Few!, August 3, 2005

Given the whole secrecy around the initial survey I’m suspicious about the results. We’ll know more, hopefully, in a few weeks.

– Steve

“A Good Old Building Is Better Than A Bad New One”

I ran across an interesting commentary on St. Louis:

Except for the arch and the old courthouse, which form some genuinely provocative urban views, downtown St. Louis is a monument to chamber of commerce planning and design. It is a businessman’s dream of redevelopment come true.There are all the faceless, characterless, scaleless symbols of economic regeneration — luxury apartments, hotels, a 50,000 seat stadium and multiple parking garages for 7,400 cars. Sleek, new, prosperous, stolid and dull, well served by superhighways, the buildings are a collection of familiar profit formulas, uninspired in concept, unvarying in scale, unrelated by any standards, principals or subtleties of planning or urban design. They just stand there. They come round, rectangular, singly and in pairs. Pick your standard commercial cliche.

The new St. Louis is a success economically and a failure urbanistically. It has the impersonal gloss of a promotional brochure. A prime example of the modern landscape of urban alienation, it has gained a lot of real estate and lost a historic city.

Wow, pretty harsh words. Tragically they are nearly as true today as the day they were first published — February 4, 1968. Yes, the words above are from nearly forty years ago.

Ada Louise Huxtable, Architecture Critic for the New York Times from 1963 – 1982, had plenty to say about Architecture and planning. I read a compilation of articles called Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger: An Anthology of Architectural Delights and Disasters while I was in architecture school in the late 80’s. Today while boxing up some stuff I ran across the book, long since forgotten. I recall enjoying her writing when I was in college so I look forward to re-reading the book to see how her views have stood up to the test of time and my own personal experiences in the last 15 years.

I’ll leave you with another quote from Huxtable. Remember that in 1968 our symphony hall, Powell Hall, had just opened:

The success of Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis is probably going to lead a lot of people to a lot of wrong conclusions. In a kind of architectural Gresham’s law, the right thing wrongly interpreted usually has more bad than good results.

The first wrong conclusion is that Powell Hall represents the triumph of traditional over modern architecture. False. The correct conclusion here is that a good old building is better than a bad new one. Powell Hall represents the triumph simply of suitable preservation. And, one might add, of rare good sense.

Ms Huxtable was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism in 1970.

– Steve