The once-stately residence at 3630 Page Boulevard was used as an assisted living facility for years. Now the 1888 structure is being razed.
2009 photo of ‘Page Manor’ from GEO St. LouisEarlier this week from the #94 MetroBus
The sad part is this property is in the 19th ward, so Cultural Resources wasn’t even given a chance to review the request for the demolition permit. Most of the city is in a “preservation review” area where trained staff look at requests for demolition, referring some to the Preservation Board for a decision on the fate.
Note: city records list the property address as 3630 Page Blvd, but Page Manor used the address 3636 Page Blvd.
School district boundaries are arbitrary, but many act like they’re etched in stone. Thankfully slightly more than half the readers who voted in the unscientific poll last week are ok with forcing districts to take students from unaccredited districts:
Q: Should schools be forced to take students from unaccredited districts?
Yes, education is that important 38 [54.29%]
No, it isn’t fair to taxpayers and students 32 [45.71%]
This is the opposite of the results from the original poll on the St. Louis Business Journal where only 37% voted yes.
That said, the process this year was anything but ideal. Hopefully state & local leaders can find ways to ensure every child gets a good public education.
I’ve now attended three meetings of the St. Louis Parking Commission (July, September, October). Here are the minutes from the prior meetings that were distributed:
These minutes are not available online so I scanned and uploaded them. Hopefully they will, in the interest of transparency, upload these in the future.
A sign facing Euclid near Lindell highlighting the fact these meters accept credit card payments.
The “Liberty Meter” parking meter test being conducted in the Central West End has been mentioned each time. In October specific reports were handed out showing payments by coin vs credit card. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t add up. The August total for credit card payments was copied into September, and other totals & percentages are incorrect. Still, from the data presented we can see the use of credits cards during this trial are higher than the previous trial a few years ago on South Grand. We can also see credit card use has been increasing each month. It’s hard to know for sure given the spreadsheet errors.
Since I sold my car 18 months ago I haven’t had a chance to use these new meters, but I still think I’d prefer payment machines to individual meters. Anyone have any thoughts?
At the October meeting they went into closed session to discuss a recently issued Request for Proposal for an Integrated Parking Management System:
The City of St. Louis Treasurer’s Office is soliciting proposals from qualified companies to furnish and potentially install an easy-to-use on-street parking system that allows payment flexibility and convenience for users while allowing real-time monitoring, reduced cost of operating, increased flexibility in changing rates and increased compliance.
It was also announced that four “Town Hall” events are scheduled for the coming weeks:
The City of St. Louis Treasurer’s Office will host four town halls dedicated to the current and future state of parking in St. Louis. The Treasurer’s Office issued an RFP for parking meter management and processing on October 4 in efforts to modernize operations.
“We promised the citizens of St. Louis that all existing contracts would be reviewed and examined for their operational and financial efficiency. This is another step we’re taking to propel the office from the 19th Century to the 21st Century,” said Treasurer Tishaura Jones.
The town halls will provide more information on the RFP selection process and opportunities for citizens to provide feedback on the direction of parking in St. Louis. The RFP selection will consist of two phases. During the first phase a review committee will rank and score the proposals based upon the evaluation criteria. The Treasurer’s Office will select a limited number of vendors to proceed to the second phase which requires vendors to perform a six (6) month on-street field test evaluation of their equipment before a final selection is made. The field test will include installing parking equipment on both sides of one or more contiguous city blocks. Based upon the results of the trial and citizen feedback, the Treasurer’s Office may decide to proceed with an offer to one or more companies to furnish and potentially install units on a long-term basis throughout the City.
The town halls will take at the following locations:
Schlafly Branch Library, 225 N Euclid Ave.
Wednesday, October 23, 6:00pm-7:00pm
Central Library, 1301 Olive St.
Tuesday, October 29, 6:00pm-7:00pm
Carondelet Park Recreation Complex, 930 Holly Hills Ave.
Wednesday, November 6, 6:00pm-7:00pm
O’Fallon Park Recreation Complex, 4343 W Florissant Ave.
Tuesday, November 12, 6:00pm-7:00pm
Unfortunately, all are scheduled for 6pm on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Due to work schedules, not everyone will be able to attend. With four events it would’ve been nice to see four days of the week covered rather than just two, as well as other times besides 6pm-7pm.
Imagine residents in your ward coming together to suggest ideas on how to ward spend capital improvement funds. Dream on, right? People are apathetic and don’t participate, according to the usual narrative. Well, residents of the 6th ward don’t have to imagine, they just need to show up with ideas — and they have been. On Wednesday I got to witness the 2nd participatory budgeting assembly in the 6th ward, a very reaffirming experience at a time when democracy is breaking down nationally. Watch this brief video for an overview and go to pbstl.com.
Briefly Zac (left) and Michelle (center) introduced the process to the 15 participantsEveryone broke into two groups, with trained volunteers getting participants to open up and share what they’d like to see the money be used forExtensive outreach through various methods, including door knocking, resulting in a diverse group of participantsAt the end each participant got three dots to vote on their favorite ideasAt the end everyone came together as a representative from each group explained their topics.
If you’re a resident of the 6th ward and want to participate, you’ve got a few more opportunities this week:
Have an idea but can’t attend? No problem, email your idea.
Once all the ideas are collected, volunteer budget delegates will work with city departments to turn them into projects, with real budgets. Then, in April 2014, 6th ward residents will get a chance to vote to see what gets funded. Will they pick one $100,000 or five $20,000 projects?
No matter what gets funded, citizens are participating in their community.
Last month I went down street after street, passing vacant lots where homes once stood, all owned by the City of St. Louis. It was depressing to think a once lively neighborhood has been erased, except for roads & sidewalks. You’re probably thinking I was somewhere in north St. Louis, but I was actually in St. Louis County. At one point I even crossed over I-270! Yes, because of the Lambert runway expansion the City of St. Louis owns hundreds of acres in the City of Bridgeton: the former Carrollton subdivision.
A gate blocks access to Celburne Ln from Woodford Way Dr on the west side of I-270. Click image for map.Some homes were razed for the runway itself, most were cleared for noise mitigation.The fence and a former Dupage Dr at the end of the rarely used billion dollar runwaySt. Louis County parcel map over aerial of newest runway
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Woodford Way Drive crossing over I-270 connects the east & west sections of the former Carrollton subdivisionVacant street & sidewalk on the east side of I-270, Grundy Dr looking north from Woodford Way
St. Louis is responsible for maintaing the properties, cutting acres of grass basically. Not only does St. Louis have too much property in St. Louis, they also have too much in Bridgeton!
The land can’t be used for residential purposes, but office/retail/industrial is apparently fine. The problem is St. Louis must repay the FAA if it sells the property, making it very costly to develop based on the amount the FAA paid.
And that runway? From a 2007 MIT-student analysis:
The need for runway 11-29 was actually delay-driven, not demand-driven. Although the levels of demand from the forecast never materialized, the new runway did provide the capability to perform dual independent IFR approaches at Lambert. Again, although the delay cost savings are less than initially projected, there are nonetheless savings that can be directly attributed to the new runway. Thus despite the over-optimistic demand forecast, the construction new runway does seem to have been justified.
With regard to flexible planning, the Lambert officials were indeed responsive to the lower actual passenger traffic than was originally projected. The terminal expansion plans were abandoned after the traffic collapse. Although it is still possible to implement the terminal expansion plans in the future, it would have been wasteful to do so once demand levels dropped. Thus, the part of the Lambert expansion project that was demand-driven was indeed responsive to the drop in demand.
The new runway was probably cheaper to build when it was than it would have been in the future. It is likely that property acquisition costs as well as construction costs would have increased, and so delaying the runway construction would probably have cost more than proceeding as scheduled. Once traffic returns to St. Louis, runway 11-29 will be an invaluable asset. In fact, it may even provide the competitive advantage needed to draw traffic to Lambert. Thus, it seems that despite the strong-armed actions and swift construction in the face of the dramatic downturn in passenger traffic, the new runway at Lambert- St. Louis International Airport was in fact beneficial.
The runway is built and not going anywhere. Now we just need to figure out what to do to remove hundreds of acres from St. Louis ownership, so that it can again produce tax revenue for St. Louis County & the City of Bridgeton.
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Built St. Louis
historic architecture of St. Louis, Missouri – mourning the losses, celebrating the survivors.
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a guide to geospatial data about the City of St. Louis
