Hodak’s Seeking to Close Part of Cushing Street

The Benton Park Neighborhood is being asked to support a plan by Hodak’s restaurant (map) to close part of Cushing St. so that the popular eatery can expand its increasing number of parking spaces.

Hodak’s is seeking to close Cushing St. from McNair Ave. to a small street known as Devolsey St. Hodak’s is already surrounded by way too much parking, especially since they (illegally) razed buildings to the east a few years ago for more parking. Yet, that is not good enough. They want more spaces and more control.

As it is Hodak’s parking remains vacant during most hours of the day with a large spike at dinner time. Do we really want to see streets closed and possibly more buildings razed simply for a dinner crowd? Not me.

Granted, Custing St. is not much of a street. Really, it is more of a glorified alley but it does serve a number of adjacent property owners along McNair & Victor as well as some real alleys connecting to the street. It is wide enough to provide access for emergency vehicles for various properties on both sides.

At this time I do not know what position, if any, that Alderwoman Phyllis Young has taken. If you have an opinion please be sure to share it with her and in the comments below.

The Benton Park Neighborhood Association meeting is tonight at The Epiphany United Church of Christ located at 2911 Mc Nair. The first hour, 6:30pm – 7:30pm, is a pot luck dinner and problem property meeting with the main meeting starting at 7:30pm.

[UPDATE 5/3 @ 9:20am – The closure of Cushing would only be “partial”, not going all the way to McNair. It still prevents through traffic.]

– Steve

Planning Commission to Take Up Forest Park to BJC Issue

The first thing I want let everyone know is the Planning Commission meeting will not be held in it’s usual location at 1015 Locust. This month, in anticipation of a large audience, it will be held in room 208 of City Hall.

Why the large audience?

Because the areas largest employer wants to use that fact to bully the city into giving up a good-sized chunk of park land.

I’ve heard all the arguments in favor of this deal:

Ok, why don’t we address each of the points.

True, most people have not associated this bit of land with Forest Park except those persons old enough to recall the old routing of Kingshighway. But, for most of us this has always been isolated. Except that, I’m not sure how you can consider a 9 acre park isolated. Nine acres is nothing to sneeze at. Plus, BJC is seeking another 3 acres South of Clayton Road for a total of 12 acres. To put that into perspective, that is about the same size as Hyde Park on the Northside. Or it is just under half the size of Lafayette Park. I think people would notice if we took away 12 acres from Lafayette Park.

But Forest Park, everyone says, is so massive and 12 acres is nothing relative to that. Yes, relative to Forest Park this 12 acres is meaningless. But, when you walk through the area, even though built on top of a parking garage, you see green grass, beautiful trees, tennis courts (although not well maintained by BJC as their current lease requires), racquet ball courts and a nice playground. I’ve seen them all used on multiple visits.

The access to this particular 12 acres is nice, a short walk or bike ride from adjacent neighborhoods. Yes, ducking under Kingshighway will get you into Forest Park but it doesn’t get you right to a playground, or a tennis court. For someone on foot taking their kids to the swing the distance becomes just too far. This park land is used due to its proximity to users and friendly size. If the park is not used to its full potential it is because BJC has failed to uphold its end of the 1973 deal by not maintaining the park and tennis courts as required. But don’t give me the line that nobody uses the park because it is not supported by facts.

The city does need revenue. During the whole Forest Park makeover for the last decade I’m not sure what the plan was for on-going maintenance? Maybe this was the plan all along? Get everyone to fall in love with all the new landscaping, water features and infrastructure that was built so they’d have to go along with the BJC deal. Others have made good points such as having the land appraised to see what the true market value is or making BJC pay for all of Forest Park’s maintenance, not just half.

It seems the city should be in a good position to negotiate. We’ve got land that BJC wants. Are they going to move if we don’t give in to their ransom demand? Doubtful. I think they need to be forced to tell us their plans for the future. What do they want to build here? I’d like to see a diagram of land use for BJC property to see how much is used for actual patients. I bet that would be quite small relative to the amount of land used to store cars in parking garages. Ever notice how all their garages, with several under construction now, are all above grade? An urban hospital complex in Chicago, Boston or even somewhere like Milwaukee could never afford to be so wasteful with land.

Most likely the city will give in and a series of pre-planned concessions will suddenly appear to make it look as though the city played hard ball. A building or buildings will rise faster than we all expected and in 20-30 years they will be back at the table asking for more. They will ask to close Clayton Road, cutting off easy access to Forest Park. Then they will ask to line the other side of Kingshighway with buildings, arguing nobody really uses the land adjacent to the busy road.

The Planning Commission meeting is Wednesday May 3, 2006 in a special location — room 208 of City Hall.

UPDATE 5/2/06 @ 2:45pm – The Planning Commission meeting starts at 5:30pm on 5/3/06. Also, check out CWE Greenspace for a neighborhood perspective.

– Steve

Mayor Slay’s Comments on KDHX’s The Wire

Last week Mayor Francis Slay was a guest on KDHX program, The Wire with Thomas Crone and Amanda Doyle. If you missed the program you can listen to the podcast from the above link.

Slay defended the decision to raze the Century building for a parking garage. He actually cited that an engineer told him the building wouldn’t do well in an earthquake. This is the same argument that Slay PR consultant Richard Callow gets angry about at Preservation Board meetings.

When talking about opposition to development projects Slay said the “easier approach is to be against something.” Well, maybe it is easier to twist the system to favor contributors than it is to put all the deals out in the open for scrutiny? But maybe he is right, the Mayor and the Board of Aldermen have certainly been against changing our zoning codes to favor urban forms.

The Mayor’s take on recalls was equally interesting. He characterized recalls as being abused by those that lose a race. Well, the last aldermanic recall was of Tom Bauer in the 24th Ward. He had two challengers in the last primary in March 2003 and a challenger in the April 2003 general election. None of those challengers ran against him in the recent recall. The recall was over development issues. Attempts to characterize recalls as being only from bitter losers is unfair. Sometimes citizens just get fed up with the development decisions their alderman makes and, due to aldermanic courtesy, that is really the only viable option we have to take back control. As long as untrained aldermen continue to exercise sole decision making over development within their ward boundaries we will see more and more controversy and possibly more recalls.

Antonio French of PubDef and yours truly will be guests on KDHX’s Collateral Damage tonight at 7pm. Following us on The Wire will be President of the Board of Aldermen, Jim Shrewsbury. Tune in to KDHX, 88.1.

– Steve

Pyramid’s Claims to be “Leader in Urban Redevelopment”

John Steffen’s Pyramid Companies is trying to remake its tarnished public image. Their website is newly updated with a vision statement:

The Pyramid Companies were founded in 1992 to realize owner John Steffen’s vision to rebuild urban areas with high quality historic renovations and the construction of new homes. Today, Pyramid is the acknowledged leader of urban redevelopment in the City of St. Louis with over $500 million in projects completed or in various stages of development.

“Acknowledged leader?” Under who’s terms? Perhaps if you look solely at the total cost of the projects they are the biggest, most likely with the most tax-payer contributions. Biggest does not mean the best. What about criteria that includes urban form factor? How about neighborhoods that have long-term prospects of remaining sustainable in 50 years?

With most of Pyramid’s bigger projects located downtown in existing structures it has been nearly impossible for them to screw up the urban form. But their new construction, throughout the city, has been highly questionable.

The mission statement talks about “John Steffen’s vision to rebuild urban areas.” I think his vision is a bit cloudy. One look at Pyramid’s new Sullivan Place project, at right, and it is easy to doubt any vision other than a money making suburban one. Steffen certainly can’t think Sullivan Place represents a wonderful urban vision!

Over the years they’ve built numerous projects of questionable urbanity. Early projects included very suburban looking houses along Delmar with front-facing garages. Moving on they started and then abandoned Keystone Place. What was built there had attached garages and long driveways, a small step up from front garages. Sure, a detached garage option was listed in sales literature but customers were never shown a display from which to chose.

Next up was King Louis Square, an apartment complex trying hard to be urban but falling short on several levels such as building form and the actual architecture with its PVC molding carelessly applied to the facade. Just up the street they built Old Frenchtown, another uninspired apartment complex. Now we have La Saison, a new single family home project between King Louis Square & Old Frenchtown. In La Saison many of the homes are set far apart and nearly all are set way back from the street as if they were in suburbia. Poor detailing on the houses does not bode well for their long-term value. Pyramid had a great opportunity to create a wonderful mixed-used neighborhood where these recent projects stand yet their suburban “vision” resulted in the housing types all being segregated from each other. This land, cleared once in the 1950’s for public housing, was cleared again in the 1990’s. We should have demanded better. Although, we should have gotten better from a major developer and the city.

A true urban vision would have resulted in a greater variety of housing types, all mixed. We would have seen rental buildings next to single family homes next to attached townhouses. Granny flats over some garages could have helped create affordable rental units convenient to transportation and jobs. Commercial activity on Park in Lafayette Square should have been continued East toward Tucker. Apartments/condos over storefronts would have helped create streets people might actually walk down. As it is, this redeveloped area is clean but lifeless. Is this Steffen’s vision?

Back to propping up Pyramid’s image.

A recent St. Louis Business Journal article on Pyramid was little more than a press release. Everyone got into the act:

“We have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that John will be able to complete St. Louis Centre and the other projects he has embarked on, based on the fact that over the past five years, everything that he has said he would do in the downtown area, he has done and done on schedule,” Geisman said.

The key phrase is “in the downtown area.” Other quotes in the same article used the same ‘downtown’ qualifier. Pyramid’s downtown track record might be good but outside downtown the track record is poor, and getting worse.

– Steve

Ald. Florida Introduces BB39 to Amend Redevelopment Plan

Ald. Florida today introduced Board Bill #39 to amend the Gravois/Meramec/Grand redevelopment plan to allow drive-thru establishments for a single parcel — the one owned currently by Pyramid and proposed for the new McDonald’s.

Funny, Ald. Florida is the same person that said the redevelopment plan only applies if a developer is seeking tax incentives. By her own argument, the no drive-thru clause cannot be enforced on property owners if they are not seeking tax breaks. By her logic then we must believe it is the intention of hers to seek tax breaks such as a TIF or property tax abatement since she is attempting to amend the redevelopment ordinance.

It should also be noted, the LCRA board’s idea of public notice is an agenda in the lobby of 1015 Locust. No agenda online. No use of the City Journal, a publication created solely for the purpose of meeting public notice requirements. The LCRA is the board that voted on April 4th to allow the change.

The bill has had its first reading and has been assigned to the Housing, Urban Design and Zoning committee (HUDZ). The aldermen on the committee will, no doubt, rubber stamp this legislation without batting an eye if the public remains silent. I urge everyone reading this post to contact every single member of the HUDZ committee.

Here is the list:

Fred Wessels, Jr. Chair, 13th Ward
Craig Schmid, Vice-Chair, 20th Ward
Freeman Bosley, Sr., 3rd Ward
Jeffrey Boyd, 22nd Ward
Gregory Carter, 27th Ward
Stephen Conway, 8th Ward
Dionne Flowers, 2nd Ward
April Ford-Griffin, 5th Ward
Kathleen Hanrahan, 23rd Ward
Bernice Jones King, 21st Ward
Lyda Krewson, 28th Ward
Michael McMillan, 19th Ward and candidate for License Collector
Kenneth Ortman, 9th Ward (Ald. Ortman “prefers not to be contacted via email.” Hmm. So call him at 314-622-3287
Lewis Reed, 6th Ward
Matt Villa, 11th Ward
Phillis Young, 7th Ward

The main points:

Look for a committee meeting next week with a hearing around the same time. No date has been set but this committee often meets at 10am on Wednesdays.

– Steve