East-West Gateway Underestimates City Population by Nearly 25,000!!!

The City of St. Louis and the U.S. Census Bureau agree on the population of St. Louis at 350,705 as of July 2004. But something is very wrong. Not that they agree, but that the East-West Gateway Council of Governments has failed to recognized these figures in their estimates affecting transportation spending.

Last year the mayor’s office successfully challenged the census bureau’s figures to show the 2003 population at just over 348,000. So why is it that when East-West Gateway accepted their new transportation study earlier this year they based it on the outdated estimates shown at left? With new housing downtown and throughout the city their numbers are a good 25,000 less than those used by the city and the census bureau.

From MayorSlay.com

Housing production in the City is still accelerating. In the first nine months of this year, the production of new housing units has already doubled last year’s output.

Downtown is coming alive — and staying awake later. Neighborhoods like the CWE and Lafayette Square have become the best places to live in the entire region. Other neighborhoods that have not seen new investment in a very long time are being rebuilt and repopulated.

With new residents are coming new retail – and new employers. It is impossible to overcome 50 years of decline in a short period of time. But, we have come a long way already.

People are noticing.

We are in the early stages of the long reversal of the last half century. I think the next 15-20 years we will see St. Louis regain population. We’ll never again reach the 850,000+ of the mid 50’s, nor should we. The city was over crowed then and we’ve taken so much land since then for highways and big box retail that we simply don’t have the land for that many people. I’d be happy with a city population of 500,000.

But look again at the chart. The major multi-jurisdictional planning agency for the region says our population is less than it actually is and is on the decline for the next five years. They estimate we’ll have a slow climb back up to a number less than what we currently have. This is the very model that says we need to have a new $1 billion dollar bridge over the Mississippi River.

The mayor’s office is quick to challenge the census bureau on population figures but they don’t seem so inclined to do so when it is the agency that hands out federal money. I also think if the real figures were used in the model and they showed the population increasing in the city East-West Gateway would have a harder time trying to justify the new bridge — which the mayor’s office supports. I think those population figures are being allowed to kept low until funding for the bridge is secured and suddenly we’ll see a correction.

The bigger question is not who has what number now but what number should we be striving for and by when?

– Steve

Mississippi Bluffs Project To Destroy More Than the Doering Mansion

Before I attended last Monday’s Preservation Board meeting my main problem with this develop was that it called for razing the derelict, but salvageable, Doering Mansion. During the meeting I got a closer look at the details of the final project and I didn’t like what I saw.

From the marketing literature:

“Compromising fifty-six townhouses on eight acres, Mississippi Bluffs is offered by Mississippi Bluffs, L.L.C. On the east lies the Mississippi River; to the west, a beautifully landscaped park. The townhouses have been thoughtfully designed, using the colors of nature with respect to this unique site. Two tiers of homes allow for the greatest embrace of the spectacular view, one built on the natural bluff, the other on a massive bluff extension.”

This glosses over a couple of problems, the “beautifully landscaped park” and the “massive bluff extension.” The open green we are used to seeing along the site will basically be reduced in half as the 32 “Hilltop” units will be much closer to Broadway. The new “bluff”, better known as a pile of fill dirt, will raise the grade substantially. This will necessitate the removal of many existing trees.

At left is the proposed site plan with the river along the top and Broadway along the bottom. The gray roofs shown in the middle are the “Hilltop” units built on top of artificial fill. A drive runs along the West side of these buildings to serve all 32 garages. Guest parking is provided along this drive.

Alderman Villa testified at the meeting that other developers such as Balke-Brown had proposed “affordable” apartments for the site while retaining the Doering Mansion. But Villa didn’t want apartments. A few neighbors & some folks buying into the project spoke that having townhouses was better than more apartments. Some noted problems down the street with current section 8 housing. They all spoke as though the only alternatives to the current proposal was going to be apartments. Hardly true but effective.

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Doering Mansion Should Not Be Razed for Mississippi Bluffs Condos

The Doering Mansion has clearly seen better days. Like thousands of nice but ordinary buildings all over the city this one has been allowed to slowly decay over a period of decades. Sadly, the ordinary building has no champion. We have the Landmarks Association which speaks up when… well… a landmark building is threatened. But we are a city of ordinary buildings. It is the streetscape of ordinary accented by the occasional landmark structure that gives our city its character and appeal. Raze enough of the normal, everyday buildings and the attraction of the city is lost.

My interest in saving the Doering Mansion is not that as a single structure it is historic, although by many standards it is. No, my belief is that we have lost all the ordinary run of the mill buildings we can afford to lose. In some areas, such as parts of North St. Louis and mid-town, we’ve razed too many buildings to have much appeal at all. Yet, we continue to raze buildings that are individually insignificant in the name of that old standby reason, progress. St. Louis has a preservation review ordinance for a reason, to examine the value of buildings before granting a demolition permit. Later today we’ll know the fate of the Doering Mansion.

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Peak Tax Will Hit Before Peak Oil

Regular reader “Brian” posted the following comment to a recent post:

Before peak oil, however, there will be the phenomenon of “peak tax.” Oil demand will certainly outpace oil supply, but even sooner, fuel taxes will not be able to keep up with road building demand.

Folks love new and maintained highways, but they don’t want higher taxes to pay for them. Even if gas prices stay around $2 per gallon in the near future, fuel tax receipts can’t keep up with the American appetite for more lane miles per person.

I hadn’t really given much thought to the issue of transportation funding being tied to fuel taxes but he makes a very good point. Each year we keep building more new roads and bridges, meanwhile our aging roads and bridges need maintenance. Labor and material costs continue to rise. Yet funding for all this is dependent upon using more gasoline.

As we encourage more people to walk, bike, scoot, take the bus or light rail, carpool or to drive more efficient vehicles the less money we are going to have for road building projects. Unless, of course, people start driving more miles. But the pattern is clear, fuel taxes are not keeping pace with road maintenance/building expenses. Something must change.

Either the fuel tax rate must go up or expenses must go down, or some combination of both. Raising the tax rate seems difficult politically. So does lowering costs.

Like today, the City of St. Louis will remain the most compact jurisdiction in the region in the year 2030. St. Louis County trails with the remaining counties at low densities. At one time these low density counties had the bulk of their population concentrated in cities such as East St. Louis IL, Belleville IL or Hillsboro MO. Along with the rest of the country these counties have spent the last 50+ years spreading themselves out in sprawling cul-de-sac subdivisions and strip centers anchored by big box developments.

But let’s look at density from another perspective. I created the chart shown to the left from population and miles of roadway figures supplied by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments.

More density means you have more people to pay for the infrastructure that is in place, roads in this case. As fuel use flattens out or decreases we’ll need to find other ways to tax ourselves to pay for our roads and bridges. The more people sharing the costs the better. The City of St. Louis, St. Louis County and parts of St. Clair County (East St. Louis) can increase population without the need to create new miles of roads. The other areas are adding population but also adding more and more miles of roads.

This process of continuing to build more and more roads and expensive bridges at such low densities is not sustainable forever. The burden of maintaining this sprawl will be disastrous to our region. We should be investing today in repopulating the City of St. Louis, St. Louis County’s inner-ring suburbs and the close-in municipalities in metro East Illinois. Before everyone jumps to the comment section to tell me people want suburbia and an SUV, I just don’t believe it.

Yes, on the surface that is certainly true. But the American public has been brainwashed over the last 50 years to the point most of our population lives in suburbia and they don’t know anything else. The success of New Urbanist developments, like New Town at St. Charles, across the country as well as renewed interest in cities says to me people are seeking alternatives. The process of vacating cities for sprawl was gradual and took a couple of generations.

Government policy around housing, lending, and roads had much to do with the rise of suburbia. The question is will we as a region be wise enough to see the writing on the wall and change our policies around housing, lending and roads to return to a more sustainable development model? I certainly hope so.

– Steve

City To Blight An Entire Block Downtown

When you first read the headline you probably assumed the City of St. Louis, right? Wrong. The city faced with blight in their downtown is the City of Clayton. Don’t let the expensive restaurants and valet parking fool you, Clayton is full of blight. So much so they are ready to give tax breaks to a company already located in Clayton.

From a KSDK story:

I had dinner last night a few blocks away from the blight. I didn’t see any boarded up windows or anything but with all that blight I was careful as I walked from my car to the restaurant. If something happened because of the blight would the valet across the street parking someone’s Range Rover be able to help? Doubtful. As I left the restaurant I drove past the blighted block, doors locked of course. What amazed me were some of the businesses located among the blight — a couple of high-end restaurants, some fast food places in urban storefronts, a fancy jeweler, a title company, and two real estate brokerages. Clayton’s blighted area contains an interesting mix of building types and materials. Maybe that is why it is considered blight — because it is not one big long boring block like so many of the others in downtown Clayton. Could it be blighted due to the fact MetroLink mass transit will come to Clayton in about a year. Perhaps the critics of mass transit are just getting ahead of the curve and blighting areas before mass transit arrives rather than waiting and blaming it on the type of ‘element’ that doesn’t have their own Lexus?

The City of Clayton should not blight this block for a number of reasons. First, this is a big block with multiple buildings that adds interest to an otherwise sterile area. Second, just because the area doesn’t have a brand new building on it doesn’t make it blighted!!! I really wanted to use an expletive in that last sentence — took all my strength not too.

Those of us in the City of St. Louis should look for the positive side to all this. Clayton’s old buildings can’t even come close to competing with the old buildings we have left. Also, we are on the upswing with a number of new condo projects not receiving tax abatement. Looks like the tables have just been turned.

– Steve