Should St. Louis Become a ‘Suburb’ in the Region?

You may have heard about the city’s infamous “Team Four” plan from the mid 1970′s. If not, read Antonio French’s report here. This comprehensive plan was in response to a series of research reports from the Rand Corporation on behalf of the National Science Foundation. I am in the process of reviewing these for a school project but I wanted to share part of it with you now.

From Rand Report #R-1353 St. Louis: A City and its Suburbs published August 1973:

The analysis suggests that, among the alternatives open to the city, promoting a new role for St. Louis as one of many large suburban centers of economic and residential life holds more promise than reviving the traditional central city functions.

This is not necessarily suggesting the city taken on a highly suburban form (streets & buildings) but the role of a supporting player in the region but not the core. The center, presumably, would fall to Clayton and the central corridor. In reality, our region and today’s society functions without a single core. Today many people have suburb to suburb commutes.

So what do you think of this idea of giving up on focusing on St. Louis as the core of the region and instead make it simply one of many economic and residential areas? What is the difference?

The first difference, in my mind, is transit. All the planning being done around future transit is focused on trying to reclaim St. Louis as the core from which everything else radiates. For example, the new North & South mass transit studies for the region are trying to connect via the city’s CBD to the county. It would seem to me that getting folks from the county into mass transit can be accomplished much easier by connecting to the end of the new line at Shrewsbury for south county and off the original line for those in north county. There are also several options for connecting the employment hub of Westport into the system.

People are often critical of my belief that neighborhood scale transit in the form of streetcars or guided trams (similar to a modern streetcar but with rubber tires and a single track to guide it) can help increase development and create dense and thus walkable neighborhoods. Perhaps they are right. But my belief in this idea is nothing compared to the utopian notion that by bringing light rail to a former major core we can somehow undo 50 years of change and sprawling development patterns in our region. I’m not convinced.

Would it be so bad for the city to concede that our downtown will never once again be the hub for commerce that it once was? That doesn’t mean it can’t be a great place. In fact, I’d argue that without the pressure to regain its role as the region’s major employment center and commerce hub that downtown and the city might actually be free to focus on creating great places where people want to live and work. This means enjoying out quick light rail connection to the east side, Clayton and the airport but focusing the balance of our transit attention on the neighborhood scale — not how to get more suburbanites into downtown for their day jobs. If anything is a ‘build it and they will come’ scenario it is the thinking light rail to downtown will return jobs downtown.

When the Rand reports were written in 1973 they looked at the population drops in the city, down to 600,000 in the most recent census. Today we are just under 350,000. All of our attention is focused on reclaiming the former glory of the region’s center but how has that worked for us over the last few decades? Sure, we’ve got more residents and investment in downtown but is that really shifting things? The U.S. population is trending back toward cities which may account for much of downtown’s rejuvenation of late. But what is the likelihood of reshaping our sprawling region back to a core with radial suburbs? Very slim in my eyes. I’d like to see us shift to making downtown not the core of the region but one of a number of business centers in the region — the most dynamic of them all. The city should focus on increasing population not by a thousand here and 500 there, but by tens of thousands.

With office parks spread out all over the region, a convention center in St. Charles and performance venues everywhere I just don’t know that we can successfully reverse the damage that has been done. Other regions, such as Chicago, never lost their place as the core. However, many industrial cities, like Detroit, did lose their place in the core. Does anyone know of an example where a former core city regained its place as the center of commerce in a region?

So what do you think? Should we “stay the course” with attempting to maintain St. Louis as the core or accept that in the auto-centric times a region may no longer have a true core and simply work to make St. Louis a pedestrian-friendly urban “suburb” within the region?

City of Clayton Threatens to Tow 49cc Scooter/Moped

The note wasn’t very friendly. Here I was attending a luncheon (Society of Professional Journalists) and my wee little moped parked at the tail end of a parking space seems to have offended the City of Clayton’s sense of order. You will recall a month ago I had a similar issue in Clayton while attending a different luncheon, see post. In that case, I was parked on a really wide sidewalk, out of the pedestrian path, and the parking enforcement person came up as I was leaving. At that time I was told I must park in a full metered space.

So yesterday I am heading to Clayton for this event and I just can’t bring myself to take up an entire full space. Plenty of spaces were available and I could certainly afford the pocket change to feed the meter. The issue is two-fold: use of space and personal safety. In short, a “vehicle” that is only a few feet long and weighs less than 200lbs only needs so much room. It certainly does not need the amount of space a 3-ton SUV requires. And it is that 3-ton SUV that has men concerned — will it see my scooter before rushing into a parking space?

Looking around the area I found this sweet little left over spot along a parking zone on Forsyth. This last parking space is considerably longer than those immediately in front of it. In this little left over section I was out of the way of all pedestrians, including those at the adjacent bus stop, and cars had plenty of room to come and go from the main space. My only alternative would have been to ask the restaurant management if I could have parked somewhere on their private property but looking at the situation that would have likely involved compromising one of their pedestrian entrances. So, I went with the little bit of left over street.

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St. Louis Grocery Market: Density Trumps Income

Over on Steve Wilke-Shapiro’s 15thWardSTL blog he is offering the following:

…a $10 Trader Joe’s gift certificate to the first person who can demonstrate that there is more money within three miles of the Brentwood Promenade than there is within three miles of Southtown Center.

This is in a post of his in response to a debate over demographics — the false notion that retailers locate in suburban areas due to higher purchasing power. Steve’s $10 is safe because, as he was betting, density trumps income. I was unable to find good public data within a 3 mile radius of Brentwood Promenada. Excellent data, however, is available for every address in the City of St. Louis. Click here to view the city’s excellent GIS (graphical information system) database where you can search by address and review census data.

I knew I probably could not prove Wilke-Shapiro wrong and collect the $10 gift certificate but I thought I could at least help out and prove him right. But, I was lacking good data from St. Louis County on a radius basis. I wanted to compare from the same source.

I found the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute website. Here they have a database which looks at purchasing power and other data from the 2000 US Census.

Their stated purpose is to “assess the advantages of urban density for underserved city neighborhoods.” So I looked at 63116, where Southtown Centre is located as well as 63144 where the Brentwood Promenade situated in St. Louis County. Upon seeing the results I thought I’d look at a few more just for comparison sake. Density wins over higher incomes each and every time. The more people per square mile, regardless of income, the more raw purchasing power per square mile. Wilke-Shapiro was correct and the naysayers that blame demographics for the lack of big chain stores in the city are incorrect. To be fair, it may well be the racial makeup of our demographic or the average incomes that keep retailers out.

This density issue is, I believe, why in low-density sprawling suburbs developers talk of creating regional shopping centers. They certainly need more purchasing power than a 3-mile or 5-mile radius would support in the ‘burbs. They must draw in shoppers from greater and greater distances to support say a mega grocery store. Despite lower incomes within the City of St. Louis the sheer number of people gives us substantial purchasing power within a given geographical area — a square mile.

The ETI site looks at a total of 16 categories of consumer expenditure. I looked at two of these: “Food at Home” and “Food away from Home” and included the total from all categories. Others were items such as “Furniture”, “Apparel and related services”, and “Computer hardware and software.” The numbers are annual expenditures within a square mile from that population. It does not, however, indicate where they spent the money. This is strictly a combination of how much they have to spend.

Go down the chart and the higher the density the higher amount of money spent on food at home (aka groceries). In fact, if you compare each of the 16 categories from 63116 in South City to 63144 in Brentwood you’ll see the city zip code trumps Brentwood on each and every one. We pack in a lot per square mile. In North St. Louis from 63113 (The Ville/MLK area) their total purchasing power is just shy of Brentwood’s on a total basis.

We have considerable purchasing power throughout the city north and south yet we (myself included) tend to give it away to the county. We have the greatest asset of cities: density. We must collectively learn to capitalize on our density as a draw for more people, more purchasing power, and more retail options. We need our purchasing power to stay in the city — to earn tax revenue and to multiple as it makes through out community rather than being gone as soon as we spend it St. Louis County. This is how we will improve our schools and provide better services to the citizens.

The counter argument, if you do the math, is in the suburban areas they are spending more per person per mile. That is, they are buying more expensive items that are likely higher margin for the retailers. So, if you believe this argument then kindly ask Steve Wilke-Shapiro to send me the $10 gift certificate to Trader Joe’s.

Trying To Get to South County Via MetroBus; My Scooter Awaits

I figure I preach enough about walking and using mass transit I should make such a person attempt myself. You see, my beloved scooter got a flat tire from a nail on Monday evening as I was heading to dinner downtown. I ended up pushing it the last 6 blocks to meet my friend, late. I left it in another friend’s parking garage downtown until the dealer could come and pick it up. I’d been meaning to take it in for routine service anyway so the timing was actually OK. Now it is ready this fine Saturday morning and I need to pick it up and ride back home. It is located at Mungenast Motorsports behind Dave Mungenast’s St. Louis Honda on South Lindbergh.

This obviously excludes me driving my car down there as I’d have to go back somehow later and get my car. My first thought was to get a friend to drop me off but then I wondered if I could just take the bus to get there. Why inconvenience a friend and use more gas when the bus is likely going that way anyway. Plus, I can’t let Joe Frank be the only blogging about taking the bus.

So I pull up Metro’s recent “TripFinder” website where you can put in your starting point and destination and it gives you options for bus and light rail — a Mapquest for mass transit. But I was getting these weird results all wanting to take me downtown and then up North with results in excess of two hours. I discovered that although I entered the destination address of 5939 South Lindbergh Blvd the software dropped the “South” part and wanted to take me to Florissant in North County. Zip codes are not allowed or at least I haven’t found any combination of commas or whatever that permits them. Some mapping software will ask do you mean “South” or “North” 5939 Lindbergh just to make sure. This, however, gave me no such option. From past observation I knew I had two bus routes near my house that both ended up at South County Mall which is not far from my destination but probably further than I’d be willing to walk both due to distance and environment (suburban hell). I pulled up Metro’s system map and confirmed that #40 and #93 both make it to the mall.

The TripFinder offers another way to find the address, I can use a map or find a street and look for stops on that street. So, I pull up Lindbergh and they have a very long list of stops on Lindbergh — 5 pages of stops. Makes sense, the street is very long cutting across a wide swath of the region. And Lindbergh is listed as “Lindbergh”, “Lindbergh US-61″, “Lindbergh Blvd” and so on with the cross streets coming after that. I looked up the area on Google and saw that Mueller Rd was probably a likely stop. I picked page 3 of the list and found the Mueller stop relatively easy. Plug it in and I’ve got my logical route to South County Mall via the #93 with a transfer to the #49 along Lindbergh. Total travel time, just a few over an hour. Total time figuring this out, about 10-15 minutes. For a frame of reference, Google says the drive is 8.2 miles and should take 13 minutes.

So I am debating. The fare is $2.25 (bus w/transfer) which is not a big deal but I had to check my wallet to make sure I had some singles as they don’t make change. Looking at the schedule I see that half the hour travel time is spent waiting at the JC Penny at South County Mall, not exactly my idea of a good way to spend a nice Saturday. I do have class reading to do but I’d have to carry a backpack and my motorcycle helmet on the bus and while I am waiting. The bus leaving near my house on the #93 is on an hourly headway so I have to work on that schedule as well.

I just called my friend, he is picking me up in an hour.

On a somewhat related note: Dave Mungenast Sr. recently pass away from cancer. I had the fortune to meet and talk with him earlier this year while visiting his Classic Motorcycle Museum on Gravois in South City. I, of course, bent his ear about opening a new shop in the city for his Honda scooter sales. I had hoped to talk to him more in the future as he had great knowledge about what the city was like in the 1950s. The motorcycle museum location on Gravois was one of his early auto dealerships before he and nearly every other business fled to the once greener pastures of the suburbs. My condolences go out to the Mungenast family for their loss.

Clayton: No Scooters on the Sidewalk

Today I was having lunch at the posh Dominic’s Trattoria at the corner of Bonhomme and Brentwood. Upon arrival in my scooter, a bit on the wet side, I parked as I often do within the public right-of-way. Remember, the ROW is everything from one private property to another — sidewalk and street. In this case I was parked out of the line of the pathway of the main sidewalk.

Ideally, I’d not park in such a random place but in this part of the country parking for anything other than a car is hard to find. Don’t scroll down and tell me not to park on the sidewalk just yet — at least hear me out.

I was in Clayton attending this month’s luncheon for the Society of Professional Journalists, the group that I was on panel for last month. The topic this month was Freedom of Information requests! Upon leaving the restaurant I walked across the street to snap a few pictures and noticed a parking enforcement cart pull up behind cars parked on the street near my scooter. The enforcement officer was either there for my scooter or the cars — it quickly became apparent he was there because of my scooter.

As I approached I asked if there was problem. He said he was about to give me a ticket and that I could not part on the sidewalk. I said I was completely out of the path of the sidewalk. I asked where I should park. “In a metered space,” he replied. My scooter, technically a moped due to engine size, is tiny and would surely get run over in such a small space.

Aside from getting hit, it simply doesn’t make any sense to take up a 20ft long parking space for my scooter. How can that possibly be good public policy? I asked where, if I had bicycled instead, I could have parked my bike. His response? At a bike rack. Duh, right? Well, I looked up and down the street and no bike rack was in sight. In fact, I can’t think of a single bike rack in central Clayton. If one exists anywhere, it is well hidden.

Attempts to break our reliance on the single user car are often met with more obstacles rather than solutions. Clayton, like the City of St. Louis, needs to come to grips with bicycles, electric bicycles, mopeds and registered scooters. They will continue to increase in numbers so it would be wise for them to be pro-active.

The fun part of this story was the timing. As I am discussing this issue with the parking enforcement officer out comes one of the panelists from this month, KSKD reporter Mike Owens. Mike asked, “Are you getting a ticket?” When I turned back to the enforcement officer and asked if he knew Mike Owens, his look was priceless. It only took a minute for him to be in his cart and be on his way. Priceless.

Electric-assist bicycles have been around for many years but these are increasing in the marketplace. Really small mopeds, some with pedals and some without, are also becoming a good urban option. And finally, we are seeing electric scooters and hybrid scooters within the realm of affordable. With all these variations on small two-wheel motorized transportation where is the line drawn? If it has any motor at all it cannot be secured on a sidewalk? Would Clayton expect me to park an electric-assist bicycle in a full metered parking space simply because it has a motor and battery?

I have an idea but it will take an old scooter that can potentially be sacrificed. I’d take the scooter to Clayton and park in a metered space at noon, pay the meter and then hide in an adjacent location and film people’s reactions. I think you’ll see more than one person get upset of a small vehicle taking up such a large space. Look out Clayton, you may soon be on camera.

Ok, now you are free to tell me not to park my scooter on the sidewalk.

Gateway Cup Day 4: The Delmar Loop

Another great day for bicycling in the St. Louis area. Today’s race in University City with a loop that included part of Delmar was exciting. In the pro men’s category a few riders broke away from the peleton and led to an exciting finish.

This video is from the final mens race of the event as well as the recognizing the top 3 riders for the Gateway Cup (all four days of racing):

So another year’s racing is done. But, come next Spring look for more racing in the St. Louis region. For information on the local bicycle racing scene go to stlbiking.com.

– Steve

2006 Gateway Cup Comes to Downtown Loft District

I wanted to write a lot about the annual Gateway Cup bike races but I simply don’t have the time to do so. Here is the Reader’s Digest condensed version:

• Awesome event! Cyclists come from all over the midwest to compete in these races.
• Friday night is the kickoff around Lafayette Square, a very urban experience.
• In the past few years the Saturday event has been at a park in Kirkwood but this year it will be the loft district west of Tucker (14th to 20th). This will be a great venue with many photo opportunities. In the morning is the Tour de Judy charity bike ride along the riverfront with the first race starting at 2:30pm and the last race starting at 7pm.
• Sunday is on the Hill, a much different setting architecturally but a wonderful time.
• Monday is on the Loop.
• I’m not fond of the major sponsor, THF Realty, but I go anyway to support the racers.
• Bring cash for food, beverages and t-shirts. Sunscreen is also a good idea for the day events.

If you attend these one or all of these races, please be especially careful in attempting to cross the course as the racers are going quite fast. Most of the courses are closed except at a few designated spots. When the field of riders makes it by look for any stragglers before crossing — we don’t want to see anyone seriously injured.

Attendance is quite high at these events and streets are closed to hold them so plan on doing some walking. The Union Station station for MetroLink is the ideal exit for those attending the Friday evening races in Lafayette Square or the downtown races on Saturday afternoon (the Civic Center station would also work for the downtown races). For Monday’s race in the Loop you can use the Delmar station or if coming from the Shrewsbury direction take either the U-City/Big Bend or Skinker stations and head up to Delmar. Many spectators also cycle to the events.

Enjoy the weekend of bike racing!

- Steve

Grand Opening, 8 More Miles of St. Louis’ MetroLink Light Rail System

Metro & elected officials kicked off a series of ribbon cuttings this morning at the Forest Park Station in the City of St. Louis. This station was part of the original 1993 alignment but it was completely rebuilt to serve as a transfer station where the line now splits off to the airport vs. Shrewsbury.

I managed to stay ahead of the train and make it to a number of station openings: Forsyth, Brentwood and Shrewsbury. Below are videos taken at these openings. Interviews with a number of officials look and sound great but unfortunately they are not sync’d with each other (I can’t complain as YouTube is free). Many thanks to Pete at ArchCafe for giving me guidance on converting the clips from the camera format to Apple’s Quicktime Format (mp4) so the sound is sync’d.

You can also look at my photos from the opening on Flickr.

As you will learn in the videos this corridor has been held for more than a decade, awaiting this use. Also, the ribbon cutting was not done by a big pair of scissors but at each station they had ribbon that broke away as the train pulled in.

Arriving at Forsyth Station in University City

This is the big circular hole in the ground and yes, this is University City — barely! A local band was playing before and after the train arrived, keeping the crowd entertained. A number of vendors set up on the sidewalk just outside the station. One managed to block the artsy bike rack.

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Metro’s CEO Discusses New MetroLink Light Rail Line

Today was the first chance for the public to ride the new 8-mile extension of St. Louis’ popular light rail system, MetroLink. I caught up with Metro CEO Larry Salci on the ride and asked him to share his thoughts on the extension.

His concluding words, “I think people will see it was well worth the wait.” More video from this inaugural ride to come soon!

[Note - the sound is not in sync with the video, something happened in the uploading process. Sorry, I'm not Antonio French...]

– Steve

First Look at Hanley Station

As the new MetroLink light rail line to Shrewsbury (aka Cross County extension) is set to open in less than a week I stopped by the new station near Hanley & Eager (map). Oh boy, what a mess that area is. Traffic is horrible and the adjacent developments are sorely lacking good pedestrian connections. But, this post is not about the immediate station but a new project just a hop, skip and 4/10ths of a mile walk to the South. From the project’s website:

Hanley Station is a mixed-use, urban community development located in the heart of Brentwood, Missouri. Hanley Station will feature 150 contemporary condominiums, a 123 room extended stay hotel, 3 free-standing restaurant venues and 11,000 square feet for lifestyle/boutique shopping. The development is anchored by two 5 story parking garages which provide direct, multi-level, covered access to all residents. Hanley Station subtlety offers its residents and patrons a true taste of “new urbanism”, yet maintains the thick tradition of one of St. Louis’ most sought after neighborhoods.

“Urban community?” Parking garages serve as anchors? A “true taste” of New Urbanism? Hmmm, I wish they had elaborated on the “thick tradition” of the neighborhood! Sadly I don’t think the marketing person that wrote this piece has any clue what defines an urban area, what it takes to comprise a community and what new urbanism is really about.

That all being said, the project is not bad for what it really is — some high-end condos (based on cost per square foot) with some adjacent restaurant and retail space. Unlike other projects in the area, the developers are willing to mix some uses and pack quite a bit into the relatively smallish site. They’ve also warmed my heart by extending a public street from the Hanley Industrial Park through their site out to Hanley.

The Site:

Looking at the image to the right, North is to the top. The diagonal white line represents the new MetroLink rail line that is set to open this coming weekend. The actual station is just beyond the top of the image. And that distance, a mere 4/10ths of a mile per the sales staff, is the problem with this development. Actually, the development isn’t really at fault — the site is where it is relative to the new station through no fault of the developer. The problem is that people here will be adjacent to a wonderful mass transit system that can quickly get them to Clayton, the Loop, the Airport (Lambert or Midway in Illinois), downtown and beyond yet the ability to walk there is severely limited.

The developer is doing the right thing by making the site more dense and thus quasi-urban. They could very well have said the area as hopelessly devoted to the car and built another strip center. I’m thankful they did not as this is truly the first sign of hope in the Hanley/Eager area.

Over the next 10-20 years look for this entire area around this station to be completely transformed to the point you’d have a hard time knowing the area if you had been away. In 20 years this Hanley Station project, a pioneer in the area today, will look a bit lacking in how it relates to the street and public sidewalk compared to the newer projects that will get built.

In the meantime walking to Dierbergs, Trader Joes, Target, Best Buy or the MetroLink station are all a chore. The distance is very little but the environment does its best to say, “get in your car and drive.” Later this week I’m going to do a station by station review.

The Project:

Again, I think they’ve done a great job getting quite a bit onto the site. The two parking garages, each with room for 500 cars, are reasonably well hidden from the public streets. The 150 condos each have a balcony which will add interest to the area as people decorate these with furnishings and plants. People on their balconies will further animate the area.

Problems evident in this drawing are numerous. First, it is all very beige. However, one of the three restaurant spaces will be a colorful Houlihan’s which is relocating to this site from the nearby Galleria mall. The development has sidewalks but they appear like most suburban sidewalks do, as obligatory afterthoughts. They are indicating some relationship between the restaurant entrances and the main sidewalk along Hanley but we’ll see how that plays out in reality vs. colored pencil. The sidewalks themselves are an extension of the curb — pushed up against the street. Lack of on-street parking, both on Hanley and apparently the new Strassner, and a lack of street trees make the sidewalks the least hospitable they could possibly be. This is just one step above not having sidewalks at all.

Currently the two parking garages and the new street Strassner are under construction. While I could make some comment about the garages being built first this actually makes sense from a construction phasing perspective — on such a tight site with the garages in back they really must be built first. These will provide parking for all the trades on the remaining project.

The developer, MLP Investments, was also responsible for the mixed-use Kirkwood Station project that replaced the old Target in downtown Kirkwood. I reviewed Kirkwood Station as one of my very first blog posts back on October 31, 2004. Click here to view that post.

With construction just getting started I hope they will pay more attention to the layout of the sidewalks and consider the placement of street trees, guest bike racks, pedestrian crossings and such. MLP wants to do things right and relative to say THF Realty that did the grotesque Wal-Mart/Sam’s/Lowe’s across Hanley I’d say they are on the right track. I’m happy when I see developers heading toward a more urban model even when not required by code to do so. When they are done I’ll take another look and see how it went.

For information on the project see www.hanleystation.com.

– Steve