I Scootered To A Working Farm Yesterday

Few people on small 49cc scooters make it out to rural farm country. While I did visit a farm yesterday, it wasn’t a long trip through the ring of sprawl to reach my destination . My Environmental Planning class at Saint Louis University visited the New Roots Urban Farm on St. Louis’ near north side.

New Roots is located on Hogan Street adjacent to the vacant but stunning St. Liborius church.

You can almost just pass right by — the quarter acre urban farm is very unassuming with the exception of the lively sign.

Rows of basil yet to be picked. Mmmmmm, pesto! Newer homes, set a suburban distance back from the street, complete the block and much of the street to the east.

Above, wire fencing guards the hen house.

Today was a day for members to pick up their weekly veggies. Above, a father and daughter make their way to the pickup area.

Co-founder/Farm & Program Manager Trish Grim was our instructor and guide. In the span of four years this cooperative group has gone from four vacant city lots to a working farm that feeds themselves and 25 shareholders per season. Their annual budget is now up to $50,000. Yes, a mere $50K annually. They have roughly 4 people that work full time as well as numerous volunteers and interns. Clearly they are not in this for the money.

Payments from members of the CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) make up roughly 25% of the budget, the balance coming from various grants. These members get “10-15 pounds of produce” each week during the growing season. There is a waiting list to be a member. New Roots has teamed with the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group on the North City Farmers’ Market which opened this season on 14th Street across from Crown Candy Kitchen. Saturday is the final day for that market this season — they are ending with a big “Hoe Down” with BBQ, games and music (9am-1pm).

New Roots also teamed up with St. Patrick’s Center and Gateway Greening on the City Seeds project at 22st & Pine. Where you say? The leftover/wasted land at the old 22nd Street interchange. Here the homeless are hired at minimum wage to work 3 days per week on this 2-1/2 acre farm. New Roots provides the expert knowledge on the project and another grant funds the wages for the workers. A couple of years ago I argued with developer Kevin McGowen about this project — I wanted the land to be reused in the future when the excess roadway was removed. I am correct in that in the future it will be hard to take back the land for development but I think Kevin was right — this is really a good project. Produce grown on this urban farm is sold at the North City market and the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market.

One of their goals is to be sustainable — environmentally and fiscally. So far, they are quite environmentally sustainable given their practices which includes transporting goods to the North Side Market via bicycle carts. Fiscally, however, they are not so sustainable yet. Trish referenced groups in other parts of the country —- one getting as much as 70% of their funding from sales of product.

Lest you think this is all some hippie festival, I happen to know at least one self proclaimed Republican that is a member.  In fact, the supporters tend to be more affluent types which allows New Roots to sell their produce at very fair prices to lower income folks at the local market (all are welcomed regardless of income).  To me there is something really neat about seeing our food being grown on a real working farm so close to downtown.

Be sure to check out their website at www.newrootsurbanfarm.org and especially their unique newsletter.

Despite Changes, Intersection Next to St. Louis University Still Dangerous

Last month I posted about the intersection of Vandeventer & West Pine where, at the request of Saint Louis University and Grand Center, the pedestrian signals had been turned off and the Vandeventer traffic given a flashing yellow. This left pedestrians coming to/from SLU from the neighborhood or parking lots to the West of Vandeventer were left on their own to find a break in traffic to make their way to the pedestrianized former West Pine on SLU’s campus. To be fair, I don’t think they sought out eliminating the pedestrian signals but that was a consequence of the action to give motorists on Vandeventer the flashing yellow.

Last week the lights were suddenly back to a typical red, yellow, green cycle. Sorta. I’d noticed some odd things with the intersection in the last week and a couple of days ago, right before the Young Democrats meeting a block away, I shot a few video clips to show the problems.

Here is some of what I have observed and that you will see in the rather boring video (5 minutes of watching signals change!):

• Pressing the pedestrian crossing button from the SW corner does not activate the pedestrian signal. The light is green for roughly 5 seconds — not enough time to safely cross the busy street.
• Pedestrians I observed do not seem willing to wait for the signals to change.
• From the NW corner the pedestrian signal button does activate the “walk” signal. This gives all motorists a red light and gives the walk signal across both streets.
• The walk signal is only on for 5 seconds before switching to “don’t walk.” The total time is 15 seconds. The signal for West Pine switches to green while the pedestrian signal is still flashing “don’t walk.”
• Only the crossing along the north side is accessible for users of wheelchairs & mobility scooters. While the SW corner has a curb ramp the crosswalk on the east side at SLU leads to a solid curb rather than a ramp.
• At 3:45 in the video you’ll see a man on the SLU side of Vandeventer press the pedestrian button. He seems impatient and appears to hold the button. I pan to the south to see that part of the intersection and the man crosses during a break in traffic — tired of waiting for the signal to change. It does appear that the button on that corner does activate the pedestrian signal.
• I did not test the button at the SE corner to see if it would activate the signal. Again, from the SW corner it does not work.
• Toward the very end (roughly 5:15) you’ll see how the pedestrian signal crossing West Pine stays on “walk” until the moment when the light changes — potentially catching a pedestrian in the intersection when the motorists are given the green. The pedestrian you see walking southbound on Vandeventer is Tim Schoemehl, son of former Mayor & director of Grand Center, Vince Schoemehl.

Here is the video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8UNBnYBJxQ[/youtube]

Hopefully the city and SLU are planning signal improvements for the intersection, as you can see it is certainly needed.

St. Louis to Participate in National Park(ing) Day on Friday September 21, 2007

The City of Saint Louis is joining numerous other cities this year in promoting the National Land Trust’s “National Park(ing) Day 2007.” I received the following statement from St. Louis’ Director of Planning & Urban Design, Rollin Stanley:

National parking day is being celebrated in cities around the world including 23 in the U.S. Groups are invited to “adopt” a parking space on Chestnut Street just north of City Hall, between Tucker and 15th Street (to 17th if needed), or contact your local business association to participate along a commercial street. This event “greens” street parking spaces. Your group can simply lay tarp, sod, provide some potted trees and a park bench, or be more creative.

A sod lounger perhaps. A small water element. Be creative. Bring your “green” materials onto Chestnut Street and select a parking space. Feed the meter just as you would if you were parking your car. Then prepare your space for the day or part of the day. When you are finished, pack up your materials and leave the space as you found it.

If you have questions, please contact Rollin Stanley at the City of St. Louis Planning & Urban Design Agency at 259-3426.

Mr. Stanley indicates they’ve had a good response including, “some artists; a college group; local architects.” Stanley asks that efforts not start until after 8:30am as building inspectors are parked there before then. Unfortunately Mr. Stanley will not be present on Friday as he will be speaking at an event in New Orleans.

OK, I’ve done my civic duty to help spread the word about this potentially good event. However, the intent behind the effort is to create park space where it is needed. So St. Louis’ choice of Chestnut — bordered on both sides by park space — seems foolish at best. Furthermore, most of Chestnut at this area is angled parking which may look a bit odd and potentially hidden between two larger vehicles. You’d think they would have picked something more logical — a street surrounded by buildings on both sides — like Washington Ave for example.

For more information check out a video from the 2006 event in San Francisco as well as http://www.parkingday.org. I’d like to see more of these “parks” spring up throughout the city although it may be a challenge to get something organized this late. Maybe something along Euclid? South Grand? St. Louis Avenue next to Crown Candy? Cherokee? Washington Avenue in front of Copia?

Maybe next year. Artists and gardeners, mark your calendars for September 2008.

UPDATE 9/19/2007 @ 2:35pm:

I just checked the website of the Downtown St. Louis Partnership and I found no mention of this event at all.  Their calendar of events lists a music event on Thursday at Union Station as well as the Taste of St. Louis this weekend but nothing about this or the meeting on MetroLink Thursday afternoon.   The City’s own Calendar of Events fails to mention this as well, although it does include the meetings on MetroLink and the Taste of St. Louis as well as the concert at Union Station. The city’s press release website also doesn’t show any announcement of this event — I went back as far as May 1st looking for a call for participants or an announcement of the event but found nothing.  Ditto for Mayor Slay’s campaign site — the place where much information that should be announced through the city’s own press release system ends up.

Final Public Open Houses for MetroLink North & South Routes

Earlier today was the first of three open houses regarding routes for the future expansion of our MetroLink light rail system. That meeting was held at the Fifth Missionary Baptist Church on Natural Bridge. Additional open houses will be held on Wednesday & Thursday. From the notice:

We need your opinion! Come to one of the final public open houses in September on expanding MetroLink in the City of St. Louis. You will be able to review the evaluation results of the different routes being considered and tell us what you think.
The same information will be presented at each meeting.

Southside
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
5:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Meramec Elementary School • Gymnasium
2745 Meramec Street • St. Louis, MO 63118
Presentations at 5:30 & 6:30 p.m.

Downtown
Thursday, September 20, 2007
3:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Regional Collaboration Center • 12th Floor
One Metropolitan Square • St. Louis, MO 63102
Presentation at 4:00 & 5:00 p.m.

This is the final round of public meetings on the current study. Keep in mind, there is no funding source to actually build anything. For more information see www.northsouthstudy.org

A ‘Rural Renewal’ Program Would Provide Habitat for Deer and other Wildlife

The tony collection of McMansion subdivisions known as Town & Country, MO is back on the issue of Deer overpopulation. It seems their 1-3 acre lots amongst the natural woods are overrun with deer. The reality is that our natural environment is overrun with low-density and often tacky housing that requires an SUV to go anywhere. From a KSDK report:

“Deer like the suburbs that we build,” said Erin Shank, a Missouri Department of Conservation urban wildlife biologist. “They like that broken forest interspersed with meadow-like lawns. That’s really ideal for them, so their populations have really grown over the last several decades.”

Wow, it seems they have managed to design an environment ideally suited to the main deer population but only a small segment of the human population. A number of years ago Town & Country engaged in a horrible plan to relocate the deer but many perished due to shock (see Grim Harvest). Some municipalities allow hunting using bows to avoid shooting some VP from shooting a lawyer friend in the face. Town & Country, however, does not yet permit hunting. Some are advocating traps where they are instantly killed via a bolt to the brain. Ick. Others say the deer are fine and simply plant other vegetation that deer don’t like, a logical solution in my view.

But I have some other ideas as well. We could start by banning vegetation all together. These people with their 4-bedroom/4-car garage houses on an acre of land like the illusion of country living but we know they really are not. So I say we prohibit them from growing any sort of plants outdoors — at least the ones known to attract deer. Hey, if they don’t like it they can always move much easier than the deer. I don’t think this is going far enough though. Those brick front houses look bad enough as it is but without vegetation it would be a horrible sight. The kids there already suffer from not being able to walk or bike anywhere so they really shouldn’t have to live without hostas and ferns.

I say we hire PGAV or Development Strategies to do a blighting study on the area. We argue that all of Town & Country and everything else in St. Louis County outside of the I-270 highway loop is Ecologically Obsolete. With places like Creve Coeur, Chesterfield and Dardenne Prairie all working on town centers to create walkable destinations we can justify that others are old fashioned and obsolete forms of development. New Urbanism represented by New Town at Charles or even old urbanism represented by original city development as well as the older ring of suburban development such as downtown Ferguson, Maplewood, Webster Groves and such is more ecologically sustainable.

So much like the maps of the 40s & 50s that justified razing entire sections of the city because a percentage of the structures lacked indoor plumbing, we can create maps of the region where the obsolete development pattern is too low to sustain a walk-to town center & transit. Everything below a certain threshold would be targeted. I call it Rural Renewal. St. Louis County would identify areas for land clearance, returning the land to nature with wildlife and vegetation taking over former manicured lawns. The deer population would once again be controlled with bobcats and other natural predators. Of course we’d need to use eminent domain to take all the homes, strip shopping centers and fast food joints. We’d need to clear thousands of acres at a time.

This could all be justified, of course, based economic development for the region. By returning an area to nature we’d force residents into existing areas, assuming we also limited fringe development. People living in an $800K house in Town and Country could do wonders with a $500 house owned by the LRA! Think of the economic benefits of such a renewal plan — one that could easily past muster after the Kelo decision on eminent domain. We’d see a surge in new construction within the I-270 highway loop giving new vitality to both the city and older areas of St. Louis County. Low density areas in the county, but within the I-270 loop, would be targeted for redevelopment to accommodate those displaced for the new rural areas. Rail transit (commuter, light rail) and quality localized service via bus and/or streetcar would be far more feasible than currently. We’d naturally eliminate some of the 91 municipalities in St. Louis County as well as excessive school districts, fire districts and so on. These new large ‘rural renewal’ areas would become wonderful natural areas again — attracting tourists to our area. This could become a model program for other regions to follow.

It would, of course, be difficult on those being displaced but they really shouldn’t stand in the way of progress and that which is beneficial to the larger region. The environment and the economy both outweigh their private land interests. We’ve been through large scale land clearance projects before and the suburbanites always seemed supportive of such efforts.