Travel Log: Topeka Kansas

I had flown into Kansas City on Tuesday May 8th, meeting my friend Rich, an architect, from Seattle. Starting the next morning we began traveling to the towns on his list of sites to visit (roof inspections for a national property management company). Prior posts will give you detailed accounts of other towns visited on this trip.

We arrived in Topeka Kansas just after midnight on Friday evening, getting the last room at a Motel 6 on the sprawling west edge of town. I was so tired by that point I don’t think I even complained about carrying my suitcase up to the third floor room (and my close friends will tell you I would normally have complained about a 3-story building lacking an elevator).

Above is a morning photo from the 3rd floor walkway of the Motel 6, looking across the street. The building nearest the street contains a Starbucks Coffee with a drive-thru window (just to the left of the view). As you can see, the grass is bright green and well cut. Look, they even have a sidewalk running along the street. Of course, like most suburban areas, the sidewalk is simply for show — it really doesn’t function for anyone. The sidewalks, you see, simply create parallel borders for the main arterial road. The sidewalks cannot be bothered to actually connect a business to another business so that someone might actually use them. This is a common problem, not unique to Topeka. The above picture could be almost anywhere USA.

The fact remains that just a few hudred feet away was a place that we could not easily walk to given the design of the sidewalk system. You’d think, in the richest country in the world, we could figure out how to build more hospitable environments. Actually we have, the interior of a Hummer seems quite comfortable if you can afford to buy one and the gas to drive it. However, I need to walk more and I enjoy walking (when it isn’t too hot or humid, at least). Why must we accept places which are so inconvenient to pedestrians and cyclists yet overly convenient to motorists? Can we not learn how to strike a balance? Ok, enough on that rant, back to Topeka.

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Development Neanderthals Need to Know the Real Meaning of ‘CAVE’

If you read the propaganda in today’s St. Louis Business Journal on development you might think the term CAVE is “Citizens Against Virtually Everything.” Instead, it is actually Citizens Against Vulgar Environments. And vulgar is what we often get from the developers complaining in the journal.

In the face of hundreds of millions of dollars of redevelopment activity in the St. Louis area in recent years, a vehemence against commercial development has risen to new levels.

Just in the last month,

Paul McKee Jr. has been accused of planning to “bulldoze the ghetto,” and Chris Goodson’s site for a new development on downtown’s edge was picketed on the same day plans were unveiled. Gundaker Commercial Group’s Mike Hejna denounced the new force in development: “CAVE” men, or “Citizens Against Virtually Everything.”

Hejna made the comments to a group of real estate brokers Feb. 6 after detailing the several-years-long process of getting his and Duke Realty’s $750 million Premier 370 business park approved in St. Peters.

Read the above again, it is all about the money. Dollar signs are all they see. If millions of dollars are being “invested” it must therefore be good. The developers like McKee and Hejna can’t have a discussion about pedestrian-friendly design, planning for various modes of transportation, and sustainable development. Lisa Brown continues:

Anti-development sentiment has risen to a level beyond civil discourse, to a point where developers have received threats at their homes. And this opposition is harder to overcome with the Internet as a tool — it’s hard to fight an opponent you can’t see or identify.

“Because of the blogosphere, it exaggerates things,” said Stephen Acree, president of the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance (RHCDA). “The folks that are most vocal on the blogs are not necessarily part of the neighborhood organizations that are working in the community to build it.”

Many of the blogs, such as mine, are well identified. In fact, we are often more identifiable than the Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) these developers employ to keep their identities hidden from public scrutiny. We wouldn’t want our prominent citizens being connected to a string of properties being left open to vandals, arsonists, homeless and the elements.

And Mr. Acree, you are correct. Many of the bloggers such as myself are not part of the neighborhood organizations. Why? As an example, when I tried to get my neighborhood organization to help save a historic building they refused to act because their funding is tied to the alderman that was in favor of demolition. This is St. Louis you know and politicos can be be spiteful if crossed. Acting outside the organization you can, in my view, have a bigger inpact. By the way, the building was saved (despite claims it could not) and is being converted to condos.

Fears over eminent domain and the proliferation of blogs on the Internet have created a difficult environment for developers, said Marian Nunn, chief operating officer of St. Louis-based THF Realty, one of the largest private commercial developers in the country.

“There seems to be heightened alertness on the part of the public when you need to tear anything down, even if it has to be torn down,” Nunn said. “The Internet has really created a whole new venue for people who are misinformed to communicate on a large scale. It’s very mean spirited, and they don’t have to do it face to face or face rebuttal.”

You want a face to face rebuttal? Name the time and place and I will be there. Shall we have that face to face meeting in the massive wasteland THF calls Maplewood Commons? Or we could debate the value of the development THF placed in the flood zone in the Chesterfield Valley? Talk about “mean spirited” — these developments are absolutely horrid in every possible category. Would I have stopped those projects dead in their tracks if I could have? Yes!

[Update 2/16/2007 @ 11:35am — I just left a voice message for Ms. Nunn inviting her and her developer friends to a face to face discussion on development practices. If she accepts, I will arrange for a meeting room at St. Louis University where the public can be invited.]

Trust me Ms. Nunn, I am not at all “misinformed” on development. It is the likes of you and others that are clearly misinformed about good design, sustainable development and anything remotely resembling a true walkable community. The interesting thing is most of you are all members of organizations such as the ULI (Urban Land Institute). You must get the monthly manazine and simply toss it in your lobby. I’ve got a suggestion — open it up and actually read the articles. Attend the workshops, not just sponsor them. Once you’ve managed that perhaps actually buying some of the books published by them and the APA (American Planning Assocaition). Same goes for Ms. Brown and the others at the Business Journal — who knows you might actually learn why that big ugly parking garage next to your office is not a good thing for the long term future of St. Louis.

Of course, these developers are not in it for the long haul. Sure, they may retain all their “projects” but that is all they are to them. They boil it down to so many leasable square feet and how much it cost to build. When it gets old they either sell it or return to the local government and hold out their hand for more tax money to retrofit the now-obsolete project.

Myself and others are not anti-commercial development as this article attempts to paint us. I happen to be very pro-development, but not any development just for the sake of development. Unlike these wealthy developers who are complaining about being challenged on their projects, some of us actually know the difference between good and bad design. We know what makes an area sustainable in the long term which is a different goal than short term profits. But the whole issue of good vs. bad development is not agreed upon by everyone so it is time to have that civilized discussion about what constitutes good design for our community.

This is where the developers and people like Mayor Slay’s staff (Barb Giesman & Jeff Rainford) go running. For decades development has happened in a vacuum, with little oversight into the process. Today, in 2007, the situation is different. People, believe it or not, actually care about their physical environment. Yes, we live in a city or suburb for a reason. I did not move to a city consisting of gridded urban streets to have it change into low density sprawl like Ballwin. If I would have wanted that I would have moved there. So we are standing up for what we want, the choice is yours. Either sit down at the table now and lets work through some good zoning for the city (tossing aside our 60-year old auto-centric codes) or be prepared to see an escalation in the level of opposition at every turn.

Jeff Rainford, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff:

We simply have to stand up to the very small number of people who are fighting progress for their own financial or political gain.

Boy, that is rich! Who is seeking financial or political gain here? The funny thing is any population gains the city might be seeing are from people who want to actually live in a city, not the city re-made into some bad suburb. Once again, politicians define “progress” as so many millions of dollars being spent. A wonderful dense urban neighborhood could be built at Pruitt-Igoe but if a medical waste facility were to cost another $10 million they’d probably consider that more progress and go that direction. We need people at the top that actually have a clue. After all, good urban design is not rocket science, even a caveman could do it.

We, the Citizens Against Vulgar Environments (CAVE), need to stand up against a very small number of small-minded people who are, through their prehistoric development practices and political positions, holding back the true potential of the City of St. Louis and the St. Louis Region.

Mayor Slay’s Spin Machine Goes to Eleven

It seems St. Louis received a World Leadership Award yesterday. From MayorSlay.com:

Recently, I told you that the City of St. Louis had been nominated from among 400 cities by the World Leadership Forum as a finalist for a World Leadership Award.

According to the Forum, the nominations were made to “cities whose leaders have shown exceptional imagination, foresight or resilience in a number of key fields — especially cities that have reversed trends, shaken off traditional images, and acted as an example and inspiration to others.”

St. Louis was nominated in the category, Urban Renewal. The other category finalists were Calcutta, India; Manchester, England; and Kansas City.

The finalist presentations were in London yesterday. The awards were presented tonight.

We won. Congratulations, St. Louis.

Well, hold on there Richard Callow, Jeff Rainford, Mayor Francis Slay. Nominated? Well, that would mean that someone had to nominate St. Louis? But that isn’t what really happened. From a World Leadership Forum press release:

Early in 2006 the World Leadership Forum contacted leaders in 400 of the world’s largest cities, and asked them to submit synopses of their most successful projects. These projects covered a very wide range of activities spanning the environment, urban renewal, housing, health, town planning, architecture, civil engineering, education, development of the young, the economy and employment.

This was a competition that St. Louis entered, as did all the other cities in the competition. St. Louis was not “nominated in the category, Urban Renewal” — that was the category the city selected when submitting the entry. This basically PR BS.

Still, competitions are good so the idea of entering one that is world-wide is fine. Winning is even better. Why the spin of “nominated” I don’t quite get but I usually don’t understand why many things are done the way they are around City Hall and especially Room 200.

A couple of things trouble me about the “nominations” and the short list of finalists. First, unlike other competitions where they announce the total number of entries, these do not. We know that 29 cities were shortlisted as finalists in 11 categories. That is great if they received 300 entries but not so great if they only received 30. As an example, earlier this year the ULI (Urban Land Institute) held their annual design competition in St. Louis. We know that 81 teams submitted entries which was narrowed to 16 and then to the final four before a winning entry was named best. The total number of entries speaks to the credibility of the competition. Back to these awards, the ‘Urban Renewal’ category had four finalists with the other three being Kansas City (An Urban Renaissance), City of Manchester (Shaping the City) and City of Kolkata (Holistic Urban Renewal through Strategic Initiatives). Their rules say they will select 2-4 finalists so I have to wonder if that is determined by the number of entries —three entries=three finalists, four entries=four finalists?

The second thing that bothers me, this World Leadership Forum organization seems to exist only to give out awards — that is what they do. Their site lists a number of award programs. And once a finalist you must pay a “presentation fee” of £3,000 (roughly $5,900 US based on current exchange rates):

Cities reaching the shortlists (from two four in each category) will be required to pay a fee of £3,000 to cover the presentation and judging costs (venue hire, audiovisual equipment, crew, catering, judges travel expenses etc.), as well as the cost of a table at the award ceremony (the table seats up to ten guests and includes complimentary cocktails, dinner, wine programs etc.).

Cities which fail to pay the fee within 30 days of the invoice date will be disqualified from the awards.

Cities that do not reach the shortlists will not be charged any fees.

So St. Louis submits an entry called “Strategy for Renewal.” Entries are supposed to be “up to 5,000 words, in English, describing a project your city has recently undertaken which shows exceptional levels of leadership.” Have you seen this document? I know I have not! Where is the link to the document Mayor Slay? Please let us read about our own winning strategy and our “exceptional levels of leadership.”
The 29 finalists presented in London this week and the awards were presented yesterday following the last of the judging. So besides wondering what we submitted I am curious who we sent to London to make the presentation to the judges. Did we pay for a contingent to go there and fill that table for 10? Who went? Were additional materials presented to the judges? If so, what?

The Kansas City Star reports they sent three people: Mayor, City Manager and President of their Chamber of Commerce. The Publisher of Kansas City business magazine Ingram’s had this to say last month:

As I write this, city leaders are preparing to present our story as a World Leadership Award Winner. Kansas City is one of only four cites on the globe selected as a finalist in the category of urban renewal. We at Ingram’s are proud to strategically position the City for this award by crafting The Urban Renewal Business Report—a Decade of Redevelopment in Downtown Kansas City. This publication will be presented to the judges and the attendees of the World Leadership Awards in London next month. Forgive me if I shed my Midwestern modesty and say that I think Kansas City has a damn good shot of beating Calcutta, Manchester and St. Louis for the title.

Locally KSDK is reporting the big news of the win:

Wednesday night, Mayor Francis Slay accepted the Urban Renewal Award at the annual World Leadership Awards in London.

Slay says it’s recognition for the city that it’s moving in the right direction.

“The more that we get affirmation from organizations not only nationally, but in this case internationally, of the successes we’ve been able to achieve, it really creates much more momentum here locally, more people become believers and as more people become believers the momentum continues to grow,” Mayor Francis Slay said.

I’ll be impressed after I read our entry into the competition as well as know the total number entries. And for those of you too young to get the headline, click here.

[Update 12/7/06 @ 7:20pm — I checked the Mayor’s site and a few hours after the item quoted above was from the Mayor’s Desk they posted a much more reasonable sounding item in the Latest News section (link). At no point in this piece is the word “nomination” used:

In the presentation, Slay talked about how the City of St. Louis had created a “culture of change” that has empowered people to improve the City’s quality of life. “It isn’t just bricks and mortar,” Slay said. “We are certainly revitalizing Downtown and our neighborhoods. But, we are also addressing health care, education, affordable housing, and homelessness.”

More than 400 cities around the world were asked to submit synopses of their most successful projects in a wide range of activities.

The other finalists in the Urban Renewal category were Kansas City; Manchester, England; and Calcutta, India. Last year’s winner was Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

This is a word for word match to the press release on the city’s site. The only difference being the city’s press release site doesn’t include the picture of Planning & Urban Design Director in his kilt next to Mayor Slay. OK, so they toned down the “nomination” lines, I still want to see this award-winning urban renewal strategy.]

[Update 12/8/06 @ 7am — I received an email back from Malcolm Turner of the The World Leadership Forum saying this about the number of entries and showing the projects:

I’m afraid it’s not our policy to publish details, or numbers of entries which failed to make the shortlists.

I’m also sorry to say that we don’t currently have the necessary copyright permission which would enable us to publish the winning entries on our website.

Sorry folks but this organization and their awards cannot possibly be taken seriously if we are not permitted to know how many of these 400 cities responded to the invite. Real competitions have no problems letting you know how many submittals they received and thus how many did not make the final cut. Our winning entry may well be outstanding but the award is bogus in my opinion.]

Kevin McGowan Calls Me From the Dog House

This morning I received a phone call from developer Kevin McGowan of McGowan|Walsh. He was calling, as you might guess, in response to the flack over a pet ban in the loft building in which he and other members of his family live (see prior post). For the last week he has been in a PR doghouse.

I’ve known Kevin for some time now and we worked together last year on a team looking at the Gateway Mall. It was nice to have the opportunity to talk with him again. He appreciated my prior post on this take as I presented a “rational” perspective as did some of the comments from others.

Kevin wanted to set the record straight:

M|W projects have condo rules similar to most condos downtown or otherwise that allow for pets but place limits no pounds and number of pets. Once the owners take control of the association they are free to change the rules as prescribed in the binding agreement.

His building contains 13 residential units with only four of those being owned by a member of the McGowan family.

The vote to change the rules in the building was “nearly a year ago” and existing pets were grandfathered in. Kevin says he was not present for the vote.

Kevin said he is not an officer in the association now nor was he at the time of the vote.

The issue of late has been that a couple of owners wish to sell and claim the no-pet policy is hurting their ability to sell their lofts. Kevin said the requests to change the policy have been too numerous.

Finally, he says, he was so “exacerbated” by the repeated requests he recently sent off the email trying to put an end to the issue. Again, he is not an officer in the association but just one of the 13 owners.

He and his wife Erin, before having children, had a dog for a good five years. I didn’t ask what they are going to do when their kids want a pet dog.

But I couldn’t have him on the phone and not challenge him. I said it seems like much of the debate is over dogs in common areas as well as dogs barking which can be heard in adjacent units. He agreed. So I asked about having a single cat. I offered that a vote to consider keeping a ban on dogs but allow a single cat might appease the owners trying to sell units. He didn’t seem to have considered that option but was not optimistic they’d consider such a compromise. The other thing, we didn’t discuss, is why not have another vote on the issue of pets in the building? If the majority still feel it is a sound policy it will remain. Obviously an association shouldn’t consider and vote on the same subject every month but at some point if an owner asks to reconsider a policy it should be voted on.

The other thing we discussed was a dog park. It is common knowledge that Kevin was working on trying to get a dog park in Lucas Park for a while. Turns out the city has a policy that prohibits more than 30% of any designated park being separated and used for a dog park. Also, Larry Rice objected to park space being taken away from the homeless. But, he says, he is still working on a dog park because it is good for business. To that end he is looking to set up a non-profit to lease vacant land from the city to use as a dog park where owners could pay a small fee to help cover maintenance. The idea being that non-park land could be used 100% for a dog park. He is firmly convinced a dog park is good in helping attract new residents.

Kevin mentioned one person that, if we had a dog park, would buy a loft downtown: Mayor Francis Slay. He said, “Francis is a big dog lover.” The issue is many dog owners, the Mayor included apparently, want a place where they can take the dog off the lease and let the dog be a….well, a dog. Kevin says Mayor Slay and his wife would move downtown if we had a dog park. You heard it here first, not in Deb Peterson’s column.

A couple of other topics came up in our 45-minute conversation. As I had previously posted, McGowan|Walsh is offering free scooters with the purchase of a loft in the Motor Lofts and Packard Lofts. Kevin says they are now extending this to all McGowan|Walsh projects so it includes the GEW building on Washington at Jefferson and the Ballpark Lofts in Cupples Station adjacent to Busch Stadium. Their first order of nearly 200 scooters are expected to arrive in December and they just placed a second order of almost 300 more scooters. Wow, that is a lot of scooters! Kevin says he really enjoys his scooter. Blue Boat Designs on Washington Avenue was given a scooter from M|W and one of the staff, Jon Carlson, told me the other day he is having a blast riding it to work from home near Tower Grove Park. Kevin was excited about the idea of seeing all these scooters running around downtown.

I just couldn’t let him go without once again bringing up the issue of excessive valet parking downtown. Kevin is an owner in the building where one of the biggest offenders, Lucas Park Grille, is located. His brothers, but not him, are partners in that restaurant. Kevin generally agreed that the valets may be taking too much space and as more and more storefronts become occupied by retailers needing convenient parking for their customers this issue is not going away on its own. He suggested I talk with Ald Lewis Reed on this subject. Good idea as Reed is up for re-election in March so perhaps the matter of valet parking along Washington Avenue can become a campaign issue for him or a challenger.

– Steve

Rumor: St. Aloysius Demolition to Start This Week

Sadly, it sounds like demolition of the lovely St. Aloysius Gonzaga will begin later this week. I don’t have any details but I’ve heard rumors that someone was in talks to buy the property as-is from the current developer but a deal never materialized. I have been unable to confirm this information.

This unique setting is to be replaced by 25 ordinary homes as part of a development called Magnolia Square.

Just how spectacular will the view from Magnolia be next week? From all over the neighborhood one can see great views of the steeple. I have a feeling that many of the people that didn’t think this would be a big loss will wake up one day and realize they’ve lost a great view.

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