Discover the Potential of Ivanhoe Street

St. Louis has many great little neighborhood commercial streets and Ivanhoe between Arsenal and Fyler is one of the most charming. At this time Ivanhoe is neither bustling with activity or abandoned. Like many of St. Louis’ neighborhood commercial streets it is in that middle ground, just shy of being discovered.

Ivanhoe’s potential is great. Based on the scale it will never be a Delmar Loop or Cherokee Station, but that is OK. What it can be is an excellent street serving the adjacent blocks which contain mostly early 20th century single family residences. It also has the potential to become a place where folks like myself from outside the neighborhood go for shopping or dinner.

Located in the Lindenwood Park neighborhood and in the
23rd Ward the street is surrounded by an increasingly popular area to live. Unfortunately the Lindenwood Park website makes no mention of Ivanhoe. Their December 2004 Newsletter does mention a couple of new restaurants open. I’m not certain whom, if anyone, is working to market this street. On a side note, their newsletter shows bus routes on their map. Good idea!

Buildings on Ivanhoe range in size, height, use and age. This grouping of buildings is one of the best but if you look close you can see that some storefronts have had some unsympathetic remodeling.

Nevertheless, the bones are there for a charming street. Every time I’m on the street I begin to grin uncontrollably. It just feels good.

Sidewalks have a nice width and can certainly accommodate a good many pedestrians or sidewalk dining.

Speaking of sidewalk dining, this is the new Cafe Ivanhoe located at 3257 Ivanhoe. I haven’t eaten there so I can’t vouch for the food. The interior looked very nice but the menu was a bit too meat oriented for me.

Not every building on the street is commercial. Next door to Cafe Ivanhoe is a four family building. It was nice to see that someone had cycled to the area. Hopefully we’ll see bike racks included as part of future improvements.

In the middle of the area is a new mid-block parking lot. I’m not a fan of parking lots but with a couple of restaurants and the popular Babe’s Tavern I can see the street parking all being taken very quickly. Of note is the lack of parking meters both on the street and in the parking lot.

I mixed on the lack of meters. On one hand meters keep things active with people coming and going. It encourages turnover. On the other hand they add to street clutter and discourage some people.

I saved the best for last. Colossus is a new Greek restaurant on Ivanhoe with lots of indoor & sidewalk seating. Three generations of the family owned business were present during my lunch. If you need an excuse to check out the charm of Ivanhoe this is it.

– Steve

We Need a Trader Joe’s in the City of St. Louis

The Spring issue of “New Towns” just arrived in the mail today. Formerly known as Town Paper the quarterly focuses on Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND). There on page 12 is a story titled, “Little Trader Joe’s, Big Business,” which tells the tale of a Trader Joe’s in Old Town Alexandria, VA.

Trader Joe’s is such an awesome place to shop for groceries. I know many city dwellers that make the trek out to Brentwood to do their shopping. But where would be the best location?

Some ideas that crossed my mind are the old Aldi at Jefferson & Lafayette. Someplace downtown West of Tucker would be good but we don’t want to ruin business for City Grocers. Perhaps in Midtown near SLU? Perhaps on Delmar in the new East Loop area?
Anywhere closer than Brentwood!

What do you think? Have you been to Trader Joe’s in the St. Louis area or in other cities? Are you fine without a Trader Joe’s in the city? Can you see a Trader Joe’s fitting into the mix? Where would you like to see a Trader Joe’s in the city? Use the comments below to let me (and others) know what you think.

Also in this issue of New Town is a great insert with part of DPZ’s SmartCode – A Comprehensive Form-Based Planning Ordinance. This is available online as a 24-page PDF document (6.6mb). I highly recommend checking this out – click here.

– Steve

Beggars Can’t Be Choosers – Or Can We?

Late last year a very misguided urban planning student from St. Louis University sent me the following email. At the time I decided to ignore his comments but I saved it for future use. [UPDATE 4/11: – the email was receieved on January 19th not late last year. I was in the midst of a campaign I didn’t take the time to respond] Below is the full text of his email to me:

Based on feedback I receive, most people get what I want for the City of St. Louis – a pedestrian & bicycle-friendly urban environment. From my posts you can sense that I seek good connections for pedestrians, street trees, and vibrant neighborhoods. To answer his first question, no, I wouldn’t deem any recent development as pro-urban. Most developments are bigger projects and we just don’t get those right. But, St. Louis has many great urban areas. Those just happen to be those that we haven’t destroyed yet.

I’m not sure if I can continue. The ignorance of his comments….

Beggars can’t be choosers? Starving and decaying city? This is from the same person that says, “I am firmly dedicated to city living.” Yeah, right. Is this what SLU is teaching young planning students? If so the future of cities is doomed.

I’m not begging anyone to come to St. Louis. We are not starving and decaying. People left the city because federal programs guaranteed loans for sprawl (and built new highways) while bigots wouldn’t drink from the same fountain as other humans. People all over the world are drawn to dynamic urban environments, not sprawl.

– Steve

Final Four and the Future of St. Louis

Tonight is the last of game of the Final Four in St. Louis. I could care less about basketball but I am glad St. Louis was chosen to host the Final Four. It was exciting to see all the activity downtown over the weekend. Celebrities were also in town for the event. In fact, I walked right past the SUV of Lil’ John and the East Side Boyz. Yeah!

Tomorrow the banners will come down and the City will begin counting the money made from tourists. We will return to a non-event economy. The take home message to City Hall will be that we need more conventions and sporting events. This is true but if only to pay for our investment in the convention center and convention hotels.

We have to work on getting a 24/7, 365 days a year economy. I’m talking residents, not tourists. Hopefully this weekend we put on enough of a show that some attending the Final Four might consider relocating to St. Louis after college. Five years ago we would have had little to offer downtown.

Whom do we thank for the change? The Rams? Cardinals? SBC? City Hall? Downtown Now Partnership? Sure – to a degree. But we need to thank the people that took the financial risk to get the lofts built. We need to thank the first wave of loft dwellers. These are the pioneers.

Some would argue that without major sports teams like the Rams or Cardinals we wouldn’t have the lively downtown we are seeing emerge. I disagree. I think money raised from these teams has likely been helpful in projects such as the Washington Avenue streetscape but the pieces were coming together anyway. Metropolis had spent a number of years successfully getting people downtown for The Walk with restaurant & bar owners responding.

If anything, the dome and Busch Stadium are an impediment. Yes, I said it. These venues have nothing to do with creating vibrant neighborhoods. They create vibrant hours on selected weekends. These few vibrant hours come at the expense of the remainder of the year where the surroundings are barren. By the vary nature of these venues the surrounding area will never be a vibrant neighborhood comprised of local residents, shops, restaurants and night life.

The “Ballpark Village” that is promised after the completion of the new Busch Stadium will at best be a tourist neighborhood. A tourist neighborhood will have things like a Barnes & Noble, Urban Outfitters, Gap, and plenty of chain restaurants. Larger cities all have this type of area and sometimes the locals mix into the area. If only to do some chain store shopping.

If I were trying to determine where the first St. Louis area Urban Outfitters store should be located I don’t know that I’d pick the new Ballpark Village. Looking at downtown St. Louis I’d see that residents and the street life are located North of Market and West of 8th street. The most energy is on Washington Avenue between Tucker (12th) and 14th.

Between the Ballpark Village site and the home grown excitement is the useless Gateway Mall and too many boring parking garages and generic office towers to count. This is a dead zone. A ugly and lifeless pedestrian barrier. Unless the ball players stand on the street corners around the clock sports will do nothing to help this area become lively.

Lets keep working to bring events to St. Louis. When we get them here we need to make sure we keep a few as residents. In the meantime we need to look at the dead blocks downtown and see how can add life. In some cases this will mean putting up a building where none exists, to encouraging street vendors to replacing/renovating lifeless buildings.

The future of St. Louis depends on creating vibrant neighborhoods, not on weekend events. Yeah!

– Steve

Philly’s ‘South Street’ Offers Lessons for St. Louis’ Cherokee Street

Philadelphia’s eclectic South Street offers lessons – good and bad – that could be applied to St. Louis’ Cherokee Street. Actually, the lessons could be applied to nearly every street in St. Louis. But for now I am focusing on our own Cherokee Street – specifically the blocks West of Jefferson. You’ll note in the picture to the right that South Street has a similar scale to our own Cherokee Street.

The things I don’t care for are the one-way streets and lack of street trees. Philadelphia seems really fond of one-way streets but they seem to have enough pedestrians and auto congestion to overcome the negatives. One-way streets are typically designed to move traffic faster, not ideal when creating a friendly pedestrian environment. Same is true with the street trees, they have enough going on that their benefits (other than blocking the sun) are not needed.

Lesson #1 – South Street makes no pretense of being a suburban strip center. No uniform canvas awnings lining the street here. No consistent signage. Individuality is the name of the game here and it works well. The Starbucks (not pictured), a bastion of uniform design, actually makes good company among all the louder store fronts.

Lesson #2 – make bike racks available and spread them out. All along the street were bike racks so that no matter which block or side of street you were headed a bike rack was near. Smaller and more frequent is better than large but seldom. Visibility is key to making sure the bike is there when you return. Here they have so many bike riders some must use sign posts to secure their bikes. We will hopefully be so lucky as to have thousands of bike racks throughout the city and still be short.

Lesson #3 – let the storefronts take on unique looks. Storefront material, design and color should be as varied as the stores themselves. I yawn in most historic districts because the places are often so staid. I’m not advocating closed up storefronts – I think they need lots of glass and wide doors but they don’t need to all be the same cutsie historic look with the same detailing and proportions. Shopping streets are meant to be fun and interesting. The fronts should scream, “Come in here and max out that Visa!”

Lesson #4 – Capitalism can be great at the pedestrian level. In response to all the pedestrians on South Street many restaurants serve food from service windows. The first thing people in St. Louis will say against walk-up service windows is that it will contribute to more trash in the neighborhood. But, if an area is doing well and you’ve got tons of people around you are not likely to throw your wrapper on the sidewalk. Not only do you get safety in numbers but you also get a sense of pride in numbers. Sure, it is not free of trash but I’d say they have no more than many of our streets which is awesome considering the much greater number of daily users.

Lesson #5 – Allow for changing weather. Not that the fabric over the service window is part of an awning that can be opened if the weather requires it. This lets the place be responsive to changing weather while also providing a different look. Flexibility and variety.

Lesson #6 – Make sure the sidewalk is wide enough. South Street sidewalks were a perfect width, wide enough to allow folks to stand and talk (or eat) but not so wide that you felt alone. Determining the best width is a tough job.

Lesson #7 – light the way. Note how lighting is included to help light the sidewalk. This scale of lighting is so much more pleasant than relying simply on street lights. The down lights in this front are effective in that they produce little glare in the face of the pedestrian. I’ve seen some new down lighting on Cherokee Street but they are a bit on the chunky side (kind of the Kirstie Alley of light fixtures if you will).

Lesson #8 – mix old with the new but keep it urban. This Fresh Fields/Whole Foods store serves the neighborhood as both an employment center and as a grocer. The size of the building contrasts sharply with the width of the fronts on most of South Street. However, numerous entrances along the street keep up the rhythm. Cars are accommodated in the garage above.

I think many St. Louis natives see South Street as chaotic and inappropriate. I see it as vibrant and exciting. I also see it as a driving force behind increased commerce (read: sales tax revenue); increased property value (read: more property tax revenue) and greater demand for the area (read: more people paying more taxes).

The above pictures were taken on an overcast Saturday afternoon on 10/27/2001 – just over six weeks after September 11th. The whole East Coast was worrying about anthrax poisoning and other terrorist threats and still the street was busy. We need that kind of draw!

– Steve