Nineteen year ago I started this blog as a distraction from my father’s heart attack and slow recovery. It was late 2004 and social media & video streaming apps didn’t exist yet — or at least not widely available to the general public. Blogs were the newest means of …
The new NGA West campus , Jefferson & Cass, has been under construction for a few years now. Next NGA West is a large-scale construction project that will build a new facility for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in St. Louis, Missouri.This $1.7B project is managed by the U.S. Army …
Book publisher Island Press always impresses me with thoughtful new books written by people working to solve current problems — the subjects are important ones for urbanists and policy makers to be familiar and actively discussing. These four books are presented in the order I received them. ‘Justice and …
This post is about two indirectly related topics: the new Siteman Cancer Center building under construction on the Washington University School of Medicine/BJC campus and an update on my stage 4 kidney cancer. Let’s deal with the latter first. You may have noticed I’ve not posted in three months, …
The Crown Food Mart at 1515 N. 13th opened in 2009, with street trees planted on all sides. Few have survived.
Nearly every tree around the property looks like this, completely dead.
Some will say the city is a harsh environment for street trees, the road salt and chemicals used to clear snow & ice from streets is too much for new trees to handle. Perhaps, but when half the root ball is above the level of the adjacent sidewalk the tree is going to dry out and die. If it happens to survive it will eventually bust the sidewalk as shallow roots seek water.
These trees never had a chance for survival.
How should it be planted? Deeper!
A properly planted tree will have the root ball up to 4″ below the level of the sidewalk. Source: Arlington VA, click to view larger version.
I don’t know if a contractor for the new building or the city planted these trees, whomever it was did a poor job.
Every once in a while I run across a blatant ADA violation, usually when I’m trying to go somewhere in my daily life. This one I discovered purely by accident, while looking for a neighboring property on Google Street View.
From October 2008:
Owners of the vacant St. Louis Hills Office Center at 6500 Chippewa Street last week received preliminary approval from the St. Louis Board of Adjustment to do interior and exterior renovations on the five-story brick building.
In meeting with neighbors, they also have resolved some, but not all of the concerns of surrounding residents about traffic, parking and other issues.
The board required that cars going from the center’s parking lot into an adjacent alley turn right toward Chippewa. There also must be a privacy fence. (Suburban Journal)
The wing had already been torn off by that point. Let me show you the problem…
The St. Louis Hills Medical Center facade facing Chippewa St.
The original 1950s entrance wasn’t accessible to all.
A few years ago a deteriorated wing was removed and new entry created.
The new entry is accessible if you arrive by car and park in the parking lot.
A route was provided for pedestrians to enter the building, but it contains a flight of stairs. No ramp was provided as required by the ADA.
View of entry from base of stairs
View of pedestrian route from entry
View from entry across parking lot to automobile drive off Bancroft Ave.
In case you missed it, the problem is the provided pedestrian route isn’t accessible to everyone. If a pedestrian entrance is provided, everyone must be able to use it.
Presumably a licensed architect was involved in this project, their errors & omissions insurance may be paying for a ramp.
I’ve been writing about valet parking since July 2005. Years ago valets would take every on-street parking space on the block in front of the restaurant that hired them. leaving no spaces for the public to use. They’d place valet signs in bike lanes.
Finally the city to placed signs on the meter of the spaces that were permitted for valet service, including days of the week and hours of operation. The valets continued to take more spaces than given, again inconveniencing the general public. For example, until recently, we had three different valet stands in the two city blocks of Washington Ave between 10th and Tucker (12th), two were directly across the street from each other!
The city has permitted valet on Thursday-Saturday evenings after 6pm. Lately the city did something it should’ve done 8 years ago — created a central valet zone to cover these two blocks. So now on Tucker from St. Charles St to Washington Ave you have a bus stop and a valet zone. This area didn’t have any on-street parking before, it was just excessively wide.
Half the block from St. Charles St to Washington Ave is now designated for valet parking 3 nights per week after 6pm. Copia, Prime 1000 & Mosaic customers now valet here.
Valet problems are solved, right? Wrong! The valet companies still feel they have the right to take public parking whenever and where ever they like.
Valets covered two meters in front of Prime 1000 on Monday May 13th, I took this photo at 3:50pm.
Empty spaces mean the city isn’t getting revenue to pay off bonds to cover parking garage debt. Since it was before 5pm I was able to email the above pic to the appropriate people so they could come out and tell them they couldn’t do this.
I personally don’t care if valeting happens 7 days a week, as long as it is in the central spot on Tucker so the public spaces remain available for the public to use.
Cupples 2 (left, renovated) and Cupples 7 (right, slated for demolition by the city)
No surprise in the poll last week, readers are opposed to the city razing the Cupples 7 warehouse building, here are the results from the poll last week:
Q: The city plans to raze Cupples 7; support or oppose?
Strongly oppose 65 [44.52%]
Oppose 31 [21.23%]
Support 24 [16.44%]
Unsure/No Answer 10 [6.85%]
Strongly support 9 [6.16%]
Neutral 7 [4.79%]
Nearly half “strongly opposed” to razing the building. If they’re like me, they’d risk collapse while holding out for a developer with deep pockets.
When we simplify the results the contrast becomes even stronger: two-thirds are opposed.
2/3rds of readers were opposed to demolition
Yesterday I met with Treasurer Tishaura Jones and Cupples 7 was one of the topics we discussed. Per the previous treasurer, that office must buy the bank note on the property if the city demolishes the building. Jones told me they don’t have any definitive plans for the site once it is cleared. I suggested a transparent process to get the community involved in brainstorming ideas.
I want to see a building, not parking or green space.
I love rail transit, but a problem with our MetroLink light rail system is getting from the stations to your destination. Last week I attended a meeting hosted by Trailnet at Shrewsbury City Hall, a mile from the station. I could’ve caught a bus that would’ve dropped me off at Murdoch & Shrewsbury Ave but I still would’ve had 4/10ths of a mile to reach city hall. It was decent out and my power chair had a full charge so I decided to “walk” the mile.
But first a little background information.
The Shrewsbury MetroLink station opened with the blue line extension on August 26, 2006. Click image to view video of the arrival of the first train pictured above.
The Shrewsbury MetroLink station is located in the City of St. Louis, but the Shrewsbury city limits is the western edge of the commuter parking lot. The station has been open neatly 7 years now so there’s been time to better connect the surrounding neighborhoods to transit.
Okay, let’s head to Shrewsbury City Hall located one mile away at 5200 Shrewsbury Ave.
My planned route Lansdowne, Murdoch Cut-Off, Murdoch, Shrewsbury Ave, click map to view in Google Maps
From the station platform I could see the direction I needed to go to reach the Shrewsbury City Hall.
Looks like many walk up/down this hill
Others walk here, but I’d better find a sidewalk I can use.
Now I’m headed down toward Lansdowne Ave, sandwiched between the retaining wall on the left and the auto driveway on the right. Not a friendly environment!
At Lansdowne Ave I see pedestrians crossing the street without a crosswalk. I couldn’t cross here even if I wanted to because of the numerous curbs.
More pedestrians risking getting hit by cars
I stick to the north side of Lansdowne Ave and head west under the railroad tracks, the Shrewsbury city limit.
I want to cross Lansdowne Ave here but there is no curb cut or crosswalk to allow me to do so.
I’m able to use this crosswalk to reach the other side of Murdoch Cut-Off
But there’s no sidewalk on this side of Murdoch Cut-Off
So I returned to the intersection to cross Murdoch Cut-Off to reach the point I originally wanted to reach but couldn’t
After passing the gas station I discover there’s no sidewalk on this side of Murdoch Cut-Off either. It looks like many pedestrians walk in the narrow dirt path, I had to use the narrow shoulder. This point is about 400 feet from where I left the station property.
Looking back from where I’d just traveled you can see a bus stop encouraging pedestrian use of this area.
As Murdoch Cut-Off approaches Murdoch a sidewalk does exist.
But the sidewalk doesn’t continue, it turns and heads back east. This is about 1/8th of a mile from the station.
I head south on St. Vincent Ave, this view is looking back north from Notttingham. Only the west side of St. Vincent Ave has a narrow sidewalk.
The streets intersecting with St. Vincent don’t have sidewalks for the first block to Danbury Ave., I cautiously proceed in the street.
Once past Danbury Ave sidewalks are available
That doesn’t mean the sidewalks weren’t blocked at times. This owner had more room on their driveway before their garage door, more than enough to keep the sidewalk clear.
After I reached Shrewsbury Ave I went north to Murdoch to see where sou;d’ve been dropped off had I taken a bus. This point is about a third of a mile from the corner of the transit station property.
Looking east on Murdoch, the direction I originally thought I’d take. No sidewalk, only shoulder.
The north side of Murdoch has a sidewalk next to the apartment buildings only.
This is the bus stop heading back toward the MetroLink station, I caught a bus here a couples of hours later to return downtown.
Heading back south toward city hall I passed charming houses and the route was paved and easy to navigate. The distance was over a half mile but it was fine, the worst part of the journey was closest to the transit station.
Getting closer to city hall and the adjacent Wehner Park
Newer houses mix well with older houses.
Almost there!
The sidewalk just ends, dumping me into the street. No crosswalk or visible sidewalk into the Shrewsbury City Center complex grounds, just a sidewalk going east & west.
No way in on the east side of the auto drive.
No pedestrian route on the west side either, so I had no choice but to use the auto driveway
A pedestrian route along the east side of the auto driveway would be a direct path to the main entrance of the Shrewsbury City Center complex. Voters approved a bond in 1991 to pay for the renovations to city hall, the work was completed in 1993 — both after The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Leaving at night via the auto driveway. I’d imagine many neighbors drive here from just blocks away because that’s the message the design suggests.
My only other time here was Saturday June 17,2006 for a charrette on connecting St. Louis & Shrewsbury to the open MetroLink line, attended by residents, businesses and elected officials. I drove on that visit.
Given the substantial capital investment made in the MetroLink expansion and the commitment of sales taxes to help fund Metro I find it unacceptable that nothing has been done in nearly 7 years. Well, the sidewalk along one side of St. Vincent looks like it was done in that time frame, but nothing else looks different. Employees & customers should be able to walk from the MetroLink station to the businesses along Murdoch & Murdock Cut-Off. Shrewsbury residents living within a 1/4 mile of the station should have a easy walk, but they don’t.
I suggest the following action steps:
Metro, St. Louis, Shrewsbury, Trailnet, etc. begin to examine ways to improve the pedestrian experience to/from the Shrewsbury MetroLink/MetroBus station.
Shrewsbury begin to evaluate multiple routes from the station to destinations with Shrewsbury, starting with a walking audit. I’d be happy to participate. Dan Burden from the Walkable & Livable Communities Institute would be an outstanding facilitator.
Shrewsbury work to add an ADA-compliant accessible route to the main accessible entrance of the Shrewsbury City Center complex.
I’m emailing various officials at Shrewsbury & St. Louis this morning to try to raise awareness and get some action.
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The Livability Index scores neighborhoods and communities across the U.S. for the services and amenities that impact your life the most
Built St. Louis
historic architecture of St. Louis, Missouri – mourning the losses, celebrating the survivors.
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a guide to geospatial data about the City of St. Louis
