The City in Winter & Taco Bell?

An urban city like St. Louis is beautiful in winter. Mt. Pleasant Park, adjacent to my block, was very tranquil Saturday morning. The blocks of beautiful brick houses with snow covering the branches of the street trees were also very beautiful. Those winding cul-de-sac streets with front-facing garages and no street trees can’t hold a candle to our streets – in any season.

But the picture to the right was taken by me Friday night on the way home – not exactly serene huh? I try to avoid fast food but I was still hungry after a party on Flora Place so a quick stop at Taco Bell on Grand seemed like a good idea. The normally ugly back of the Taco Bell with its hideous lighting, bright menu and waiting cars spewing toxins in the air actually looked interesting to me with the snow coming down.

In cities with more urban-friendly zoning & building ordinances drive-thru restaurants are not banned but altered. The buildings are built closer to the street with entrances facing onto the sidewalks. Parking is relegated to the back of the building and drive-thru lanes and driveways are kept minimal.

David Sucher, an urban developer in Seattle, has great information on this and other good ideas in his excellent book, City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village. You can order his book through a local bookstore (such as Left Bank) or through his website (which includes an index of the book and a sample chapter). Be sure to check out his City Comforts Blog which is linked from his site.

Fast food, bank & pharmacy drive-thru lanes are not going to disappear anytime soon but we need to look at creative ways to lessen their negative impacts on the urban environment. If we take the time to really think about the problems and possible solutions we can have our cake and eat it too!

UPDATE 10:45AM 1/9/05: I’m told the AIA Bookstore on Washington Avenue has Sucher’s book, City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village, in stock. Click here for AIA St. Louis website.

– Steve

White Middle Class Suburban Man

I don’t know about you but one of my favorite reasons for picking up the RFT is the cartoon called ‘The City’ by Derf. The best is when Derf brings out ‘White Middle Class Suburban Man’ to poke fun at life in the ‘burbs.

The derf website only has a few cartoons in the archive but for a good example of White Middle Class Suburban Man click here.

Ok, back to work on my campaign…

– Steve

Notes From Yesterday’s Planning Commission Meeting

As part of my civic duty I attended the Planning Commission meeting last night. Trust me, these are not riveting meetings but they are informative. I talked with some of the planning staff beforehand including director Rollin Stanley. Alderman Fred Wessels, who is on the planning commission, left early but made it a point to stop and say hello to me (I used to live in his ward). I couldn’t stay for the entire meeting but here are some of the topics that came up before the commission and my thoughts on them:

The Cascades – Boulevard Heights Neighborhood

Lawless Homes is proposing a “gated community” on the old St. Louis Public Schools landscaping grounds in what is called the Boulevard Heights Neighborhood – just South of Carondelet park. The site is 11-12 acres depending upon which resource you ask.

My first issue is calling subdivisions or other such developments communities. They are not communities. A community is a cross section of the population and includes residential, commercial and other uses.

The proposal calls for 12 condo buildings, each containing 8 units. A row of townhomes would also be built. The proposed development could not be any more suburban in nature. It is ugly neo-colonial crap with private streets that function more as big driveways than a true street. Access is limited to one gated entry. The entire property will be fenced (it is currently fenced as well). The commissioners dwelled on the issue of public access to the restored planting area and Mike Lawless said pedestrian gates would be at the entry but it would be up to the trustees of the new development as to whether the general public would be able to gain entry to the greenspace.

The point is we shouldn’t have gated communities in an urban city. We’ve got some private streets in the West End but as a pedestrian I’m able to walk through them to get from one street to another. They do not serve as a blockade. This 11+ acre site could be divided into blocks and lots with public or private streets in a way that embraces the surrounding street grid and gives a welcoming appearance rather than one of hostility through gates. The grounds portion would make an excellent pocket park.

Fred Wessels commented this project is done without any form of tax assistance. Perhaps if we offered some tax assistance we could try to get the project actually engaged in the neighborhood?

City’s reference to the development

Dogtown Walk II

Mark Rubin of Saaman Corp presented their plan for this in-fill project in Dogtown. Like Dogtown Walk I this project is townhouses which face a private street with a side unit facing the public street. I like the density but question some of the planning and building details. It just seems rather generic.

City’s page on Dogtown I

North Market PUD in Old North St. Louis

This like the others above are a PUD – planned unit development. These are a means of subdividing land when it doesn’t conform to the required zoning such as minimum lot size, and setbacks. As a planned development and enacted by ordinance, this is allowed to exist. These were developed when it was ruled that spot zoning – the practice of rezoning property piece by piece – was illegal.

New homes are already being constructed on North Market in Old North St. Louis and while I bit too conservative for my taste they do have pleasing proportions and avoid the tacky look of so many neo-traditional new construction we see elsewhere. But, here is the interesting part about Old North St. Louis. As one of the oldest neighborhoods in St. Louis the land is already divided into great urban lots. Why do a PUD to build new houses on them? Zoning. Our out-dated zoning codes don’t allow the builders to put up new houses in the manner consistent with the existing neighborhood! It is sad when your zoning won’t allow you to build consistent with original homes in a National Register Historic District.

Clifton Heights

The last agenda item I stayed for was a PUD proposal to divide a single parcel (0.31 acres) into six lots to permit attached townhouses with rear tuck-under garages. This is from the same guys that want to tear down a Lustron house in Dogtown. This proposal is at the NW corner of Columbia & Clifton – arguably one of the most interesting intersections in all of St. Louis in one of the most unique neighborhoods – Clifton Heights. If you don’t know this neighborhood and it’s namesake park you are missing a treasure – check it out soon.

The other corners of the intersection in question have a stunning row of townhouses which follow the curve of the street (NE), a beautiful & solid 15-unit apartment building (SE) and an awesome mixed-use building which also follows the curving street (SW). The corner in question has a wonderfully proportioned frame church that has been remuddled with bad siding and, to my recollection, has been vacant for a few years.

I’ve stated my displeasure with deputy mayor Barb Geisman before but I must give her credit – she really hounds developers on issues regarding putting up generic tract housing on unique lots. Unfortunately her passion for residential corners hasn’t appeared to translate into the bigger picture of urbanity but I don’t want to get too sidetracked.

This parcel, like the others at the intersection, is very unique in shape but the proposed building doesn’t reflect that. One of the big issues is the front set back – the adjacent homes to the West on Columbia have a front yard set back of around 30ft per the city staff while the proposed building would be around 10ft. This is somewhat consistent with the intersection – the apartment building on the SE corner is much closer to the street than the adjacent homes going East on Columbia so a precedent does exist. However, the proposed building lacks the ‘designed for the site’ appeal of the others on the intersection. The commission approved the proposal with the requirement the developer increase the setback by at least 5ft and redesign the end unit to better recognize the corner.

Since this is still a sketch plan it may get changed when it gets to the Board of Aldermen. We’ll see.

– Steve

Proposed River Bridge to finish decimating Near North Side

Road happy Missouri Department of Transportation (MODOT) and the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) have for ten years been designing a New River Bridge to cross the Mississippi at downtown. More correctly, the approach on the Missouri side will manage to destroy some great warehouses on North Broadway and sever any possible connection between Old North St. Louis and the downtown loft district. But why?

The Poplar Street Bridge, a focal point of interstate traffic movement through downtown St. Louis since the 1960’s, is severely over-burdened, and the forecast shows congestion on the entire core highway network will only get worse.

Of course, the forecasts predict traffic will get worse because state “transportation” (read: highway) agencies depend entirely upon traffic getting worse. How would it look if they predicted a drop in auto traffic? So, they continue promoting suburban sprawl by building highways through corn fields and then tell us we need to build yet more highways to handle the traffic. Self serving bastards.
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Best & Worst Events & Projects from 2004

Developing a list of the best & worst urban places &/or events of 2004 in our region seemed like a good idea a month ago when I started making the list. But, it has proven to be much more work than I thought. Here it is New Year’s Eve and I’m finishing up the list, searching for relevant links, and worrying about the order of the list. But, I think it is a pretty good list so check it out…

Worst of 2004

10 – New Plaza in Lafayette Square

Placing a plaza on random corners was a favorite of architects in decades past. We had kind of gotten away from it more recently but idea of creating ‘open space’ for the sake of space always seem popular. Seldom is the open space needed but the quest to create a feel-good place is often more important than something trivial like need. Read my review here

9 – Issuance of Zoning Variance on Virginia Mansion

In an act of political spinelessness, the St. Louis Board of Adjustment granted a variance to zoning to an organization to allow a 7-unit apartment building in an area zoned one and two family and on a site located between two modest single family residences. Now, I’m an advocate of maintaining/increasing our unit density in the city but I want to do so in a planned way – not by having well funded non-profit groups get political favors that a private developer would not. I’m one of eleven people that have sued the City of St. Louis over this variance – the case is still pending in circuit court. Click here for more info

8 – Proposed SLU Research Building

This 2004 proposal will break ground soon and will guarantee that Grand & Chouteau willl never be as urban as it could or should be. This is on my to-do list of topics to cover in detail so for the moment I’ll just leave you with a link to the official SLU Research Building website.
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