Title Loan Outfit Proposed for Former McDonald’s Location

One of the hot topics from 2006 was the proposal to relocate a McDonald’s location (w/double drive-thru) to back up to the Gravois Park neighborhood along South Grand. After a long battle, that plan was scraped. The owner shuttered the old McDonald’s at Grand & Chippewa.

The property sold last year and now a title loan company (or similar?) is proposed for the existing building and drive-thru. I’m told the same company is also interested in opening in the former Wendy’s at South Kingshighway and Tholozan. Neighbors of both properties are mobilizing to oppose what they see as loan sharks that prey on the poorest in our society.

Tomorrow morning at 8:30am, in room 208 of City Hall, a hearing will be held on conditional occupancy of the former McDonald’s location (along with other agenda items). Ald Florida (D-15th) is said to neither support nor oppose the application.

Gateway Mall: Nothin’ New to See

On December 12th I told you an announcement was coming in January for the Gateway Mall (see post). Well, Monday was the day with a press conference on the 12th Floor of the lovely Civic Courts building — between 11th and Tucker smack dab in the middle of the Gateway Mall. The big announcement? Nothing!
Despite claims of new items by Rollin Stanley, the city’s Director of Planning who is taking a new job in the DC region next month, we already knew about the 2-block sculpture garden. That would be the one announced before the city asked the public for feedback on the master plan for the too long space (see post from June 11, 2007). We also knew that The Lawrence Group was looking at doing a couple of blocks around their project, The Park Pacific.

Did the Lawrence Group get funding worked out to do those two blocks? Nope. Maybe someone else stepped up to do another area? Nope. Perhaps something new to announce around the sculpture garden? Nope. Well, Mayor Slay indicated a couple of pieces have been purchased by the Gateway Foundation but that doesn’t justify a news conference.

But I was there and took photos and video so I put together a 10-minute video which includes various speakers as well as a collection of images taken from the 12th floor promenade at Civil Courts:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSZoUEL_aCM[/youtube]

CD’s were handed out with the Master Plan on them in a single PDF file. Interestingly the cover and the file on the CD both indicate October 2007. Again, nothing new, although I don’t recall them having the full document available before. Still, I think they’ve had it for months and held onto it until now to drag this into 2008 and timed it just before Stanley’s departure. The city has the PDF available at http://stlouis.missouri.org/citygov/planning/gatewaymall/STLouisGatewayMallMasterPlan.pdf.

The conceptual plan still has lots of bells and whistles — lots of little activity centers strung together by a sidewalk that is supposed to draw us along the path for blocks and blocks.  These unfunded spaces will be so compelling that we will get international attention — people will come from all over the world just to see them.  Well, maybe a few blocks will get that sort of attention.  They are also supposed to draw loft residents, like myself, over to the mall.  Unfortunately, that is time where we are not over on Washington, Locust or in other places downtown spending money in shops and restaurants.

Stanley brought out the late 60s argument that we have too many streets — talking about how little space is green relative to street pavement.  Their solution is not to narrow Chestnut, as should be done, but close it entirely.  The plan also calls for the removal of short term on-street parking along the North side of Market.  Taking the place of on-street parking will be a bike lane — a two direction bike lane.  A curb will separate cars on Market from an 8ft wide bike lane.  Still, a bike lane is not something you can do two blocks at a time so I have to wonder what will become of that space along the sculpture park in the meantime?  Will they remove the parking now and do a temporary bike lane without the protection of the curb?  The big issue is creating traffic signals in such a way that permit cyclist movement that is not in conflict with turning vehicles. In such a relatively short distance, I think the 2-way bike lane will prove to be another failed experiment.

The press conference offered me a chance to get my camera to the top of the building to take advantage of some great views.  But next time guys, actually have something new to share.

New Officers Elected in Marine Villa Neighborhood

It didn’t go as smoothly as I predicted. Last night Craig Schmid, Alderman for the 20th ward and long time President of the neighborhood group, brought in many new members in the hopes of retaining office. Letting the newcomers, one a 30-year resident, think they would be unopposed Schmid took nominations from the floor (allowed per the bylaws). Schmid had one of the older women nominate several people for various positions, including Schmid for President.

The large crowd of people assembled to elect officers of the organization but Schmid had placed a police sergeant on the agenda to talk about trash and issues of illegal dumping. So after it took a while to get everyone signed in, dues paid and to listen to the to the officer talking trash it was already 7:30pm — an hour past the starting time of 6:30pm.

In the video you will see the new candidate for Sergeant at Arms, John Oberkramer, get upset at Schmid’s unwillingness to let the candidates even speak to the assembled group of neighbors. When asked if people would get to speak, Schmid responded with, “No, we’d be here all night.” Despite stacking the room with ‘supporters’, Craig Schmid and the others who has been doing their best to retain control, failed to do so.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=zb3b0R3mDOc[/youtube]

The new officers have a lot of work to do during their two year terms. First up is revisions to the bylaws to clean up unanswered questions and close some big gaps. For example, setting out that the first order of business on the election meeting (once every two years) that the first agenda item is the election and that those nominated will actually get a chance to address their neighbors and explain why they are running to be an officer. Look for some great things out of Marine Villa over the next couple of years.

How Prepared is St. Louis for an Emergency?

For a class project at SLU I was going through the list of city departments/agencies and noticed one that I had never really looked at before, the St. Louis City Emergency Management Agency. After 9/11 and Katrina we’ve all seen how municipal response teams can be overwhelmed. We as tax paying citizens have expectations about services we expect from our local government but all too often we wait until a situation arises before concerns are addressed.

Having now viewed the website for the city’s Emergency Management Agency (http://www.stlouiscityema.com) I can say I’m not feeling as safe as I did beforehand. The agency’s mission is:

To coordinate, cooperate, and communicate with all agencies that have a responsibility in the area of Emergency Management and Homeland Security for the City of St. Louis. This includes but is not limited to the Mitigation, Prevention, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery from any manmade / national disaster that takes place in the City of St. Louis.
To work as a region to protect the citizens of St. Louis and the surrounding communities from all hazards.

From the outward appearances of the agency, they couldn’t do much for themselves let along protect “protect the citizens of St. Louis and the surrounding communities from all hazards.” What is my basis for such a harsh statement?
For starters, the website would have been considered amateurish a decade ago. For example, the page for upcoming events:

Each page is a different color and clearly the designer had a CD (or maybe a 5-1/4″ floppy disk) of clipart. More substantially, the information is half a decade out of date!

Perhaps you want to volunteer to help out?

Well, that page is under construction at this time. Note how the background image covers the navigation buttons at the top of the page.

On another page at least they give us links to other sites where perhaps we can find some good information:

You can’t tell from the above screen shot but the lights on the ambulances blink on the actual page. Not at all comforting.

The site has been updated enough to send folks elsewhere for training this year:

Maybe this is the norm? What about St. Louis County, I thought.

For St. Louis County they have the Office of Emergency Management through the St. Louis County Police. From their site I was able to download a PDF of their 100+ page Basic Emergency Operations Plan, see the list of members on their Local Emergency Planning Committee and so on. I know that:

The unit operates from the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), a uniquely designed self-contained underground structure. In the event of disaster, the facility is able to function independent of all common utilities. The OEM is tasked with preparing members of local government, law enforcement, and the public and private sectors, with how to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.

The city’s Emergency folks operate out of the lower level of the Solders Memorial. Is it, like the county’s, able to function separately from normal utilities? While I’ve not read the full county plan it does appear they have a clear plan for communications — whom to call and when and so on.

The person responsible at City Hall, up the chain, is the recently named new Director of Public Safety, Charles Bryson. Of course, this lack of information predates his time on the job — going back to Sam Simon who was in the position from 2002 to 2007. He recently left the job to take a new position at SLU, the Director of Emergency Preparedness. From SLU’s announcement:

Simon has directed city emergency responses, including Hurricane Katrina relief operations at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and helped develop emergency preparedness planning for the recent World Series.

Simon came to SLU with extensive credentials in the area of emergency preparedness. He was the metropolitan area’s coordinator for Homeland Security and currently is completing the Homeland Security Executive Leadership Program at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, Calif. He also has served as an adjunct professor in SLU’s School of Public Health.

Of course, FEMA never actually used the relief operations at the airport so we don’t really know how well that was planned. Still, Simon appears to have the right credentials. So maybe the city is better prepared than the website lets on?

Those of us that live/work downtown are probably a little better off than the rest of the city — we have the Downtown St. Louis Emergency Preparedness Operation (or DSTEP). This information is only a couple of years out of date (references to SBC, now AT&T, for example). The “testimonials” section includes a quote from Fire Chief Sherman George — more recently out of date. Many of the website sections such as Evacuations Plans, Emergency Supplies, Credentialing, News & Media and Downtown Residents all simply state “coming soon.” The copyright on the pages is 2005. Interesting, they talk about two initiatives for the operation — the first:

1) The creation of a website that provides pertinent information about emergency preparedness. It offers a wealth of specific information to downtown St. Louis, provides contact information and offers more information about DSTEP as well. Please visit the website at (www.DSTEP.org).

Well, they’ve failed to accomplish their first item! With so many of our “leader” and “good corporate citizens” involved how can they simply drop the ball and not finish what they started?

Emergencies are, by their nature, never planned. They strike when you least expect them to and we have an expectation that our governments are prepared to coordinate efforts when the worst does happen. From what I have seen thus far I have little confidence the City of St. Louis is prepared to handle a large emergency. Let’s all hope it is not tested, but if it is, that I am very wrong.

St. Louis Board of Aldermen Recognizes Rollin Stanley

Today the St. Louis Board of Aldermen passed Resolution #323 thanking Rollin Stanley for his five years of service to the city.  Many aldermen expressed thanks for his help in planning assistance in their wards. Stanley indicated he left with a heavy heart, indicating he is more proud of his work in St. Louis over the last five years than his prior 21 years in Toronto.  Stanley is leaving his post as the Director of the Planning & Urban Design Agency to take a similar position with Montgomery County, Maryland (see prior post).