Halliday St. Illegal Parking Pad Fiasco Continues

Third time is a charm, so goes the old saying. Well, for the third time now the unapproved parking 4-car parking lot at a condo project in Tower Grove East is back on the agenda for the Board of Adjustment. Eventually the neighbors will capitulate on the issue and the developer and alderman will have their way. But as I’ve said before, this really is a bigger issue than simply this single block of Halliday.

Ald. Conway, the son of a former one-term Mayor (wiki), is trying to convince the public this is a rare situation and should be allowed to remain. After all, he had to help shut down the drugs and prostitution that once existed in the building. Yes folks, whatever you do, make sure that drugs and prostitution do not come into your neighborhood for the obvious reasons but also because they will forever be used to justify bad design decisions in the future. The choices otherwise, so I am told, are either a big ass parking pad for condo dwellers’ cars or section 8 housing. In St. Louis politics, a middle ground does not seem to exist.

But could this situation occur again? Well yes, and very nearby also in the 8th ward.

This wonderful 1925 apartment building located at Magnolia & Thurman contains, per city records, 38 apartments. To the back is the Bi-State bus loop property. This building has only the land it sits on.

The front interior court is a wonderful space.

Above: Stepping back a bit we see the interior court and the small front lawn between the building and sidewalk.

Looking west we see how the line of buildings is maintained down the Magnolia with Tower Grove Park on the left.

All I know about this project is that it is to be condos. I don’t have a clue who the developer is, how many units they plan or how parking will be accommodated. I do know it is also in the 8th ward where Ald. Conway might rationalize that paving this front yard might be a good solution. Again, I don’t know the specific plans for this project — I am simply using it to illustrate that we have numerous buildings that do not have extra land for off-street car storage.

We must decide, as a city and not block by block, if we are going to renovate dense urban buildings such as these despite lack of parking. To me this location is an ideal place to live — the park is stunning, bus routes are convenient, Shaw is a great neighborhood, the Botanical Gardens are close, shopping on Grand and Morganford is an easy bike ride away. On-street parking is adequate.

Getting back to Halliday. The immediate neighbors have made it clear — the front yard parking lot needs to go. The Tower Grove East neighborhood has made it clear — the front yard parking lot needs to go. Other city residents, such as myself and many of you have made it clear — the front yard parking lot needs to go. The solution, worked out over a month ago, would provide angled on-street parking — a good solution for a quiet tree-lined residential street.

Of course, the Alderman is trying to make that complicated. Rather than set up a permit-only parking area for the new condo residents he has actually proposed deeding a portion of the public street to the condo owners for their parking! Uh, hello, the public street is just that — public! I don’t give a sh*t if the condo owners will sue the developer for promising parking — he should not have made promises he could not keep. We simply can’t have developers running around promising parking they don’t have or tax abatement that was never approved and then change the rules after the fact to keep them from having made false statements (the tax abatement is just an example from other projects, that is not an issue in this case).

While I feel for the owners of the newly developed condos, I hope you have good documentation on the parking promise as well as a good lawyer. To potential buyers out there — this is a good example of why you need a REALTOR® when purchasing property — we help look out for issues such as this and ask for proof of future promises (such as evidence that tax abatement has been applied for and is in process). OK, the real estate sales pitch is over.

One of the big obstacles in development projects is getting financing without dedicated off-street parking. I’ve had numerous developers tell me it is an absolute must. The developers often are open to having less than one space per unit, knowing they’ll have sales/leases to people that take transit, walk, bike or simply don’t mind leaving their car on the street but it is the banking industry in St. Louis that requires a high level of parking. And here we enter the vicious circle: we are not going to have a public that uses the car less and other modes more until we live in more dense areas where it is forced by circumstances (lack of parking) or cost. On the other hand, we are not going to get this more dense development until we have a public that increasingly uses other modes besides the car. Bankers need to see more people with fewer cars to give them the confidence to lend on a project with few to zero parking spaces and people need to have good housing choices near convenient and frequent transit to comfortably live without a car. The solution is we’ve got to meet in the middle — people need to accept they may have to park their car on the street and bankers will need to be open to looking at walk-ability and access to transit when evaluating proposed projects. We simply cannot let a lack of off-street parking halt all the good renovation work happening throughout the city.

The Halliday St. parking lot is back on the Board of Adjustment agenda for Wednesday August 29, 2007 at 1pm. Room 208 of City Hall. For those keeping count at home, this is the third time on their agenda.

Prior posts:

• June 4, 2007
• June 27, 2007
• July 10, 2007

Valet Companies Continue to Disregard City Rules

In the blocks of Washington Ave east of Tucker we cannot have on-street parking for local businesses from 4pm to 6pm as this is our evening rush period. We don’t really have a rush of traffic for two hours so much as we have a half hour when everyone leaves their parking garages at the same time and the signal timing on the lights doesn’t help with traffic flow. So keeping two lanes open seems to be the solution at this time. Well, except for Copia.

Yesterday afternoon, at 5:40pm, the valets had taken the right rush hour lane for their own personal use. They are granted a very generous valet zone which begins at 6pm but that is simply not good enough for them.  Despite being repeatedly told that cones and signs are now allowed in the public right of way, they continue to use these items which can be a danger to cyclists.

Again we are talking 5:40pm on a Monday evening.  We don’t exactly see a long line of cars to be valet parked this early and on a Monday. 

A few weeks earlier they were marking off additional parking meters as no parking valet area — beyond the assigned valet zone.  When I was taking pictures they approached me with permits from both the city streets department and the city Treasurer’s office (that handles meters) and said it was allowed.  It seems the Treasurer’s office is willing to issue permits that grant a business the right to take the meter despite what the Street Department says about a valet permit and only so much space.  It would appear that our political fragmentation in our region has little to do with the city not being part of the county but even within the city limits having too many entities all saying they have jurisdiction.  So who is it really that has the power to authorize valets to operate in the city? 

Meter parking is free downtown after 7pm weekdays and on weekends.  Are we now going to have valets getting permits from the Treasurer to take those free spaces in addition to what the Street Dept has already granted? 

MoDOT’s Pete Rahn on a ‘Pefect Storm’ in Transportation Funding

In the July 2007 issue of the Missouri Municipal Review the director of the Missouri Department of Transportation, Pete Rahn, has a one page commentary entitled “Perfect Storm Brewing in Transportation”, (view PDF). Rahn argues that over the next 20 years and based on the current funding formula, they’ll have a funding gap of roughly $18 billion “without future inflation factored into the calculation.” MoDot is estimating a need for $37 billion and that we’ll have “only 19 billion.” Only?

Rahn is correct when he talks about gasoline taxes being on a per gallon basis thus not “being set up to keep pace with rising costs.” True enough, material and labor costs can rise but more funding is dependent upon increased sales of gasoline which likely means either less fuel efficient vehicles or increased miles driven — both arguably bad for our society.

The disturbing part is that Rahn believes we should just continue to fund project after project, with no end in sight. He talks about their efforts to manage projects well to save money but that we have “looming financial woes” because of things like “stagnant funding” and “lagging federal funding.” Uh, no, we have financial woes because we’ve made foolish decisions over the last 50 years to build a road network that only encourages more driving and more road network. We’ve built a system that now outstrips our ability to even fund the safe maintenance of what we have in place today and yet every more miles of road and bridges are planned.

Our roads are no longer for our convenience. They are now controlling and abusing us but we are the victims in the relationship. That which we thought would be good for us turned out to be far more demanding and costly than we ever imagined when we first entered the relationship. Anytime we threaten to leave the abuser hits us with a big traffic jam or a tragic bridge collapse. Year after year we spend more and more money hoping to improve our relationship but it only gets worse. As a national I think we all have Stockholm Syndrome relative to highways and bridges.
But Rahn, an apologist for the abuser, is encouraging voters to support more funding for the road building:

It’s up to our General Assembly to decide how to fund transportation. It’s up to MoDOT to show we’re good stewards of Missourians’ money. It’s up to the voters to decide if they want to invest in their children and grandchildren’s future through the foundation of our modern economy…transportation.

Oh please, what doesn’t get argued in this city and state without pulling in the children and grandchildren. We need to hunt more deer for the future of our grandchildren, we need to pack concealed weapons for the future of our grandchildren, we need to ban abortions so that we have more grandchildren. We need to keep gays from having long-term marriages because they can’t produce any grandchildren. It is more like we need to build more roads for ourselves today but it will be up to our grandchildren to figure out how to pay to maintain them!

Sure Pete, let’s invest in transportation! Let’s invest in localized transit (aka streetcar/quality local bus service) in urban core areas. Let’s invest in making it easier and safer for Missouri citizens to bicycle. Let’s invest in high-speed rail to connect our cities and towns so that people can forgo the single occupancy vehicle. Let’s invest in commuter rail lines to get suburbanites into employment centers. Let’s invest in rail lines for shipping goods so we can remove these semis from our existing roads. But let’s not just keep building mile after mile of expensive roads and bridges and then saddling future generations with the bond payments.

St. Louis’ Marine Villa Neighborhood Latest Battleground for Ald Schmid

Ald. Schmid, D-20th, survived a brutal spring election whereby many voiced opposition to his leadership in the ward. At the end of the day, more supporters showed up at the polls than opponents. Just when you thought things might calm down for another four year stint, residents of one neighborhood in Schmid’s ward are critical of Schmid’s role as president of the “Improvement Association.”

A recent post on Steve Wilke-Shapiro’s excellent 15thwardSTL site about a sunshine law bill sponsored by Ald Schmid quickly turned to the issue of the Marine Villa neighborhood. The first comment called into question the alderman for the area acting as president of the neighborhood as well as his reluctance to turn over a copy of bylaws to members once requested. This drew a response from a former resident, Joe Frank:

I was secretary of Marine Villa Improvement Association during part of 2001-02 when we were trying to reactivate the organization after a long period of dormancy. Just to get things going, we decided to use the original 1969 bylaws, so that we could have something semi-legal to go by. Those included silly statements like “no members of a Communist or activist group” may join.

The following from “MV Resident” seems to sum up an opposing perspective:

Marine Villa has seen a resurgence of new residents who want to be equally involved in their neighborhood as Craig. Unfortunately Craig does not give them this opportunity. Residents of Marine Villa have repeatedly tried to become more involved in the MVIA by becoming elected officials, chairing committees etc. As president, Craig would not allow this. When MVIA members asked for the bylaws, Craig refused to provide them. It wasn’t until a large group of Marine Villa residents sent him a letter voicing their displeasure that Craig disclosed the bylaws, agreed to elections, allowed the formation of committees and a formal agenda for the meeting. All of this lasted only one meeting. Last meeting Craig did not have an agenda, copies of the bylaws or committee sign up sheets.

And these hard to find bylaws dating to 1969? Yes, I have them for you to read in full (click here for 2-page bylaws in PDF format). So any of you socialist party or activist group members please note that if you are “recruiting members or causing a confrontation at a meeting” you will be “asked to leave quietly.” Interestingly, as a non-partisan organization I wonder if Ald. Schmid used his “title” as President of the organization during the recent campaign? If so, this would appear to violate Article III, section D.

The by-laws call for elections of officers every two years although some say elections haven’t happened in a while. The President is responsible for creating a nominating committee.

Marine Villa is #18 on the city’s list of 79 neighborhoods (see alphabetical list). The website linked to from that list is one of the old fashioned ones dating back to the late 90s (ancient in web terms). Right away you can see the next general meeting is April 23, 2007 while the next board meeting is “to be announced.” Scroll down just a tad and you’ll see about a fire hydrant painting event from 2002, bulk trash pickup news from 2006 and 2007 and then another 2004 event.

A history page talks about the origins of the name of the neighborhood:

The name and boundaries of this tiny enclave came into existence in 1968. It is theorized that the name was chosen as tribute to the large number of rivermen that once had their own community in this area. The old Marine Hospital, one of several hospitals authorized by an act of Congress in 1837 for the treatment of sick and disabled rivermen, was located at Marine and Winnebago Street, a site currently occupied by the National Record of Archives.

So the neighborhood is named for a hospital that no longer exists. Hmmm…

I really don’t care for these “improvement associations” either. These bylaws focus on “strict application of zoning” which is a bad idea really given how suburban focused our zoning really is. Come on, the guys that wrote our zoning wanted to replace Soulard with a suburban cul-de-sac subdivision!

Also keep in mind that when many of these were formed in the late 1960s we had over 600,000 in population (619,269 as of 1970 census) vs only 353,837 as of July 1, 2006 (see prior post on census figures). Times have changed over the decades as zoning, demographic shifts, attitudes and policies have caused our population to plummet nearly 60% since 1970. To some, this reduction in density is good. While having too many people stuffed into a housing unit (aka overcrowding) is bad, having more housing units is a good thing (minimum density to support retail, transit, etc…).

Gentrification is often thought of in terms of white folks pushing out minority groups or similarly those of middle to upper incomes pushing out lower economic segments. I believe in Marine Villa and in other parts of the city we are seeing a new, and much needed, form of gentrification — pushing out of the ‘I hate cities’ people that have been ruining our city for decades — the types that want all neighborhoods to have only single-family owner occupied housing units, to have fewer total units (aka reduce density), to enact policies which discourage small business districts over sprawling auto-focused strip & big box centers. People can tell you they live in the city, love the city and on and on but actions speak louder than words. For example, the fountain where Chippewa, Broadway and Jefferson meet was not designed to be a community gathering spot. In fact, it was designed to discourage gathering of any kind. This “improvement” is a hostile element in the city.

Another website exists for the improvement association at http://www.marinevilla.org. While attractive I think this site is just getting started. I’m not certain if Schmid is behind this or those who seek different leadership, or quite possibly someone in the middle. Regardless, I think good marketing is critical to attracting new residents, businesses and fresh capital.

Marine Villa is oddly defined with edges of interesting stuff along both Jefferson and Cherokee. Some interesting stuff is taking shape along old buildings on Broadway at Chippewa. Great potential exists in the building stock, the interesting topography, and the street pattern. One of my favorite views of the city is to look south-ish down Marine Ave from Chippewa (map link). From here you get a great view of the Mississippi and on a clear day, the JB Bridge. I was on a bike ride with a friend the first time I saw this view — it took my breath away as it was totally unexpected. For those of you that think St. Louis is flat, bike around this neighborhood for a while.

I will continue to watch the goings on in the neighborhood although I doubt I can attend any of their meetings. The main issue for me is they fall on the same night as the city’s Preservation Board so that usually trumps other things on my schedule.

Lack of Maintenance Cannot Spoil Beauty of Fairgrounds Park

When I arrived at Fairgrounds Park on Saturday for the Jeff Smith 3 on 3 basketball tournament the large crowd was having a great time enjoying the mostly pleasant weather and all the activities. I briefly watched some of the guys on the courts and chatted with the host Sen. Jeff Smith as well as Mayor Francis Slay (sans body guard!) and License Collector Michael McMillan. Despite all the tournament activity, I was drawn into Fairgrounds Park.

So, I went for a walk…

I had driven my car and ridden my scooter beside and through Fairgrounds Park numerous times but I had never just taken a casual stroll. Wow, what a gorgeous park! I’m really a sucker for bodies of water — especially those with cattails. Note the long-dead tree to the right.

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