Downtown Now! Absorbed By The Partnership?

From MayorSlay.com:

In certain quadrants of the blogosphere, this will be Big News: Downtown Now! has updated its website.

You have to give the mayor’s PR team recognition, they do have a sense of humor. They are referring to my posts about the organization such as this one from October 15, 2005,
Downtown Now! Looking a Bit Dated:

Prominent on their main page is a logo for Celebrate 2004 along with the text “What’s Happening in 2004?” Uh, last time I check it is October of 2005 and rapidly approaching 2006. Clicking on the link just gives me an access denied message. That isn’t going to do a good job revitalizing downtown.

So I eagerly clicked the link to see this new website from Downtown Now! I find a sub-page of the Downtown Partnership’s new site that I posted about on March 27, 2006.

And what is the content of the new Downtown Now! page? A really cool picture of Washington Avenue, a simple paragraph explaining who they are, and:

We now refer you to the Downtown St. Louis Partnership website (www.downtownstl.org) where you can learn more about the exciting happenings in the new downtown St. Louis! We thank you for all of your interest and support!

Just shut it down altogether. Keep the domain name around and direct it to the Partnership’s main page, nobody will know the difference. Since it was all the same people involved people often got the two confused.

The Downtown Now! organization was set up to be temporary so this is a natural closing process. But much work remains to be done. Washington Avenue is doing well but is being damaged by aggressive valet companies as they illegally “reserve” spaces all up and down the street. Gaslight Square was a happening place at one time and it imploded due to its own popularity. The Partnership and the Department of Streets seems unwilling to rectify the valet problems.

The balance of downtown and indeed the entire city is in need of serious planning work. Our zoning dates to 1947 when planners & architects hated cities and wanted everything to be suburbanized into separate use pods. Our zoning does things like encouraging more parking spaces rather than fewer and does not require buildings to abut the sidewalk. Our entire zoning code needs to be scrapped and replaced. Where is the leadership for this mountainous task?

It is nice the Mayor’s campaign staff has the leisure to give out nods to bloggers like myself but this city has some serious planning groundwork to be done and I just don’t see anyone making it happen.

– Steve

Appeal on Variance for Drive-Thru… Tabled.

After sitting through a four hour long meeting we are not any closer to an answer on residents’ appeal of the variance for a McDonald’s Drive-Thru.

The Board of Adjustment, based on their questions, was not impressed with the Florida/Pyramid/McDonald’s proposal. It seems this group is also caving from pressure for more urban design in the area.

Between testimony Jennifer Florida approached me indicating they were willing to build the building up to the street rather than set back as designed. While it helps it does not mitigate all the other valid concerns about noise, trash and traffic.

The Board of Adjustment will likely reopen the hearing after Pyramid/McDonald’s has submitted a new site plan showing the layout with a building up to the street. I think Florida indicated they’d build to the street in the hopes the Board of Adjustment would deny the appeal. This would leave room for them to say the plans that were approved were not up to the street.

If the city is going to continue to ignore sound planning by allowing a drive-thru at this location I’d rather it be built up to the street. But I want this to be perfectly clear, I believe the various fast food establishments in the area are undermining the true potential of the area. If the McDonald’s closed in October as Florida suggests would happen, I think that in the long term we’d be better off.

– Steve

Audio From First Drive-Thru Hearing Online

To help establish a record of the testimony from the first hearing on the McDonald’s Drive-Thru conditional use hearing I have posted a series of 15 MP3 files. These files are the complete recording from the hearing in the order in which it was held on February 16, 2006.

You can hear for yourself how Jennifer Florida describes the quite suburban McDonald’s as “urban-style” and how franchise owner James Proctor indicates the new location will be open from 5:30am to 11:00pm.

Due to the size of the files I have placed these on a separate server. Click here to visit the site and take a listen.

– Steve

NoDrive-Thru.com Launched Over McDonald’s On Grand

I’ve written so much about the poorly designed anti-urban McDonald’s proposed for South Grand that it is all running together. If you are just finding this information it may be a bit overwhelming. To help facilitate finding the articles I created a “McDonald’s on Grand” category some time ago. Articles are posted with the latest at the top so if you need to catch up start at the bottom.

To make it even easier to communicate the message I’ve registered NoDrive-Thru.com (as well as without the hyphen, nodrivethru.com). Both domains will lead people to this site and my category on McDonald’s.

As this controversy continues NoDrive-Thru.com will branch out from here and become a full-fledged website as we continue to spread the message of aldermanic abuse, anti-urban planning, deep pocketed developers, and a questionable fast food establishment. In the meantime be sure to tell people to visit nodrive-thru.com for all the latest.

– Steve

Selling Shirts to Pay Legal Fund?

Ideas are pouring in to Urban Review from citizens upset about Ald. Florida’s tactics to please her campaign contributors over the wishes of constituents. If only I was talented in Illustrator & Photoshop.

This one came in tonight in response to my last post on McDonald’s.

I was thinking we get these printed up and sell them to raise money to pay an attorney to challenge the city’s drive-thru variance and spot zoning attempt.

– Steve