St. Louis’ Riverfront to get yet another makeover

The St. Louis Riverfront as seen two years ago from the re-opening of the Eads Bridge. Beautiful stainless steel arch and lush grounds below. But where are the people?

Yesterday I attended an open house and presentation by the Riverfront Design Team (aka RDT for the remainder of this post) as organized by the Great Rivers Greenway District. For more information on the team and the plan click here for a PDF document.

Their primary focus is the area immediately in front of the Arch and grounds with the areas to the North and South being secondary. I think this is backwards because you’ve got a better chance of drawing people from the city through the adjacent areas rather than the Arch. St. Louis Director of Planning Rollin Stanley agreed with the team and said, “Trust me.” Rollin is one of the few that work for the city that I do tend to trust so I’ll keep an open mind. The total area is about a mile and a half long and about 200ft wide (depending upon the height of the Mississippi river).

OK, back to the riverfront and the lack of people two years ago…

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Whom Do We Wish To Attract To St. Louis?

I had great conversation today with some interesting people, all part of making St. Louis the cool place that it is. The question arose about the people that are clueless to the urban life that is emerging in our neighborhood. These are namely people around us in the city that don’t get urbanity (note: many have offices at City Hall); people in our own suburbs and finally those from other cities.

I think the least likely group to get it are the suburbanites. I said I didn’t care if the suburbanites ever got it. Others disagreed. So here are my thoughts.

You will always have the East and West coast snobs that will ignore everything in the middle of the country with the possible exception of Chicago. We could have the most urban life here in St. Louis and they’ve never give us the time of day. But, I think we have a lot to offer urbanites of all ages that are more open minded. The big question is how to we get the word out to urbanites in other cities looking for a great combination of architecture and urbanity that we can offer?

I think many people in the city still think the dream is in suburbia. This is why they are so supportive about tearing down our urban neighborhoods and building strip centers and front facing garage houses. When so much of that is already available I don’t know why we need to create it here. I’m not sure if they can be reached. I can only hope that those that can’t be reached will at least be priced out of the city so they can have garage and strip mall.

But I don’t want everyone priced out of the city. I want all urbanites to be able to stay, regardless of income. Sure we need a good tax base but that will come with an increased population. I want to make sure we don’t become too focused on upper income people. The low income person that rides a bike or takes mass transit to work is making a positive contribution to our street life.

This brings me to the suburbanites that frankly don’t get the concept of street life. The idea of an active street is totally foreign to them. You see a few making their way to the city not for a ballgame other “big” events but just to check out urban life. You can see the fear in their eyes. Young and old, black and white, gay and straight all sharing the same sidewalk. Urbanity is about diversity. Suburbia is about segregating uses and incomes — the complete opposite of urbanity. Suburbanites fear life. Their environment is totally lacking of life and that gives them a sense of security. Dinner at P.F. Chang’s isn’t living.

Again, a few venture out of their safe world of equally priced atrium ranches. For some the light clicks on and they get that an alternative exists. I think people that are in their 40s or 50s that always lived in suburbia are lost. That is all they’ve known and they are now too old to change. Others in that age group that grew up in more urban environments might be able to break away from the pack. Adults in their 60s or older didn’t grow up in suburbia because it didn’t exist. We are seeing a good many of them leaving suburbia and returning to city life. Suburbanites in their 30s and younger are ripe for city life. Most are open to new and different experiences.

St. Louis needs to attract people from all ages and incomes from other cities. If that is you please come visit St. Louis and consider staying. If you live in our sprawling suburbs get in the minivan and come into the city. Bring your bike along and walking shoes and really experience the city. I think you’ll like it if you turn off those little voices in your head about the city. And to people already in the city just wake up and enjoy the energy we’ve got. Don’t fight the changes and increased urbanity.

– Steve

Is the Chesterfield Flood Plain The Finest Location in the St. Louis Region?

Today I was looking at the website of the Kemp Auto Museum and I found something more interesting than the stunning collection of Mercedes. Their viewpoint.

Really? Focal point huh? Maybe until we get another good rain… They continue to justify their location:

Active the area is. Bustling is not exactly the kind of term I’d personally use. That seems more appropriate for a pedestrian area. Despite the numerous amounts of commerce and the fact they started from scratch the area is dreadful.

“Finest location in the whole of St. Louis?” Are they dreaming? Maybe some of the car exhaust is getting into their offices? If an area covered in flood waters 11 years ago and now surrounded by every generic chain store known to suburbia is our finest we are in trouble.

This has to be the least desirable place in all of the St. Louis region!

– Steve

The St. Louis Region Needs a Quality Outdoor Skate Park

I can’t stand on a skate board for five seconds. My in-line skates are collecting dust somewhere because I used the knee and other pads a bit too often. Although I’m an excellent cyclists I can’t do any BMX tricks.

But I love watching youngsters doing skate and bike tricks. Their tricks are highly athletic and require great amounts of personal discipline.

Recently I was in Oklahoma City and I checked out their new skate park. Wow, impressive! An outdoor skate park on city park land. While St. Louis is building lame skate hockey rinks OKC built an awesome skate park with various ledges and bowls.

Look around and you’ll see signs that prohibit skate board riding. Property owners don’t want their railings messed up by the skates. Our city attorney probably doesn’t want the legal headache of the liability that goes along with such a facility.

But I was at OKC’s skate park on just an ordinary Wednesday afternoon and it was very busy. It is located in an existing city park along their riverfront in what is best described as a transitional neighborhood. Aside my our family doctor’s office being located in the area, it was a place as a kid my parents would never take me. It is more poor than unsafe.

But visiting this park I saw a change. There were the usual teenagers there but so were very young kids with their soccer moms. Grandparents were there watching as well. The diversity didn’t end there. All economic scales were represented from poor folks from the neighborhood to middle class to some more affluent looking people. Races were also mixed. A common interest can transcend all these unimportant differences.

St. Louis needs a public skate park. The YMCA on Arsenal just built a skate park but I’ve yet to make it over there to see it. I doubt it is anything on the level of this.

I say we build one not on a riverfront park but near a shopping district. Let’s have stores nearby where kids can buy water and snacks and return to the fun. Let’s have some cheap restaurants nearby with outdoor dining overlooking the skate park. Let’s use the skate park to bring people together and add vitality to an area.

[UPDATE 6/21/05 @ 12:15pm:
St. Charles County has had a skate park for a couple of years now! Who knew? It is not free or appear to have the deep bowls of the OKC park but it looks pretty good. I’ll have to check it out next time I’m out that way.
Click here for St. Charles County website on their Youth Activity Center. A virtual tour can be seen here. The St. Chuck County Suburban Journal has a story on the park – read it while you can as their links don’t last long. I think we’ve got enough youth in the City of St. Louis to justify such a park, ideally free like the OKC example.]

– Steve

Why Don’t We Have A Bike Parking Ordinance?

All the time say it is unfair to compare St. Louis to a bigger city such as Chicago or New York. I still think those are fair comparisons because they are simply bigger versions of what we have. But, I’ll go along with the critics that want a more balanced comparison. What if we compared the City of St. Louis to Springfield Missouri? When it comes to bicycle provisions they’ve got us beat.

Springfield has amended their “Land Development Code” to require off-street bike parking throughout their city. In fact, the one place that is exempt is their downtown. Springfield felt it is the city’s responsibility to provide such parking in the public right of way in the downtown area with a couple of exceptions. It is everywhere else that bike parking is required.

You want to build a new Wal-Mart with a huge parking lot? No problem, but you’ll have to provide bike parking as well. And not some tired old dish drainer type of rack that only holds the front wheel. Here is how they defined a bike rack:

“A bicycle parking facility that is fastened to a mounting surface, can accommodate up to two (2) bicycles, can support each bicycle by its frame in two (2) places and, allows the use of a cable lock or U shaped lock to protect bicycles from theft.”

Perfect. This definition of a bike rack eliminates all of the bike racks that are useless that people try to pass off as providing bike parking. This also leaves out the phallic bike racks on Washington Avenue East of Tucker. If only they had left them out literally. The ordinance includes a simple graphic of the types of racks meeting this definition as well as a provision for the city staff to approve a custom rack meeting the qualifications.

Let’s suppose you want to build that new big box in Springfield and the code says you need 250 auto spaces. You are also going to need six (6) bike spaces which, based on the above definition, means three separate racks holding no more than two bikes. Excellent. The ordinance’s supporting documents make reference that a 14,280sf Walgreen’s would need 3 bike spaces under the code which would mean two of the two-bike racks. The code also requires that bike parking be dispersed at various public entrances. Very good.

What is more amazing is their Chamber of Commerce and developers seem to have supported the ordinance. What is in their water?

Click here for a PDF copy of the ordinance
(first 7 pages) including background materials and letters of support from local Springfield cycling organizations.

So here is my challenge to the City of St. Louis and all the counties & municipalities in our region — where are our bike parking ordinances? People all the time say you’ve got to have parking. They are usually referring to plenty of free car parking. If it is true for motorists it is just as true for cyclists.

It is totally unfair to not provide bike parking and then say we are not going to provide bike parking because nobody bikes.

– Steve