PR: Mayor Slay, City Officials to Participate in St. Louis Serves Day Saturday, April 16th

The following text is from a press release:

Mayor Francis G. Slay and other City officials will join hundreds of St. Louisans to participate in St. Louis Serves Day on Saturday, April 16th. AmeriCorps St. Louis, in partnership with the Office of Mayor Francis Slay and the United Way of Greater St. Louis, will organize volunteers to complete “done-in-a-day” projects that range from school and neighborhood beautification projects to exercising adoptable animals. St. Louis Serves Day is part of the Gateway to Service Initiative, which promotes St. Louis as a “City that serves.”

“St. Louis Serves Day is a great way to get involved and give back to your community,” said Mayor Francis Slay. “I encourage all City residents to participate in this event. It doesn’t take a certain education level or specific skills to serve – anyone and everyone can get involved to improve their community.”

Volunteers may sign up for projects at: http://www.stl.unitedway.org/getinvolved/volunteercenter/volunteer/stlserves.aspx.

St. Louis Serves Day projects in the City include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Exercise adoptable animals at Stray Rescue of St. Louis (2320 Pine St.) – 8 a.m. to noon
• Incubator farm field work at International Institute to prepare an incubator farm (4030 Folsom Ave), which will offer agriculture-based career training programs for refugees – 9 a.m. to noon
• Spring cleaning with St. Vincent de Paul at St. Vincent’s Church Projects (1408 S. 10th St.) – 9 a.m. to noon
• Set up for the Earth Day Celebration in Forest Park’s Muny Grounds – 9 a.m. to noon
• Play with children at Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club (2901 N. Grand Blvd.) and help with registration and food service at an educational reunion event for current and past Haven of Grace clients – 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
• Assist Gateway Greening perform general spring cleaning in the Bell Garden (3871 Bell Ave) – 9 a.m. to noon

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The Backs Are Interesting Too

The back facade of our older building stock is often more interesting than the front facade of newer our buildings. The building detailing and functional fire escapes are beautiful to my eyes. New balconies on the back of Ely Walker

Hopefully the upper floors of the YMCA, vacant for a few years, will get renovated soon. Most recently those floors were senior apartments.  The YMCA space is a separate condo unit from the rest of the building, with separate ownership.  Work began on creating rental units in the Leather Trades building earlier this year.

I see the wonderful fronts of these buildings daily, but it the backs I really enjoying seeing.

– Steve Patterson

On-Street Parking on Clark Ave

On-street parking exists on Clark Ave. between Tucker (12th) and 14th Street but it is all off limits to the general public.

I’m not complaining, the spaces have been designated for police and others in the area, such as the medical examiner.  I’ll be interested to see what happens once the St. Louis Police move their  headquarters to a building on Olive (see post). Will most be made available to the general public? What will become of the old police headquarters?

– Steve Patterson

Readers: Clusters of Cities Need to Lead Effort to Consolidate

Readers last week indicated how consolidation of St. Louis County’s 91 municipalities should happen:

1. Clusters of cities need to lead the effort. 74 [44.85%]
2. County leaders need to lead the effort 48 [29.09%]
3. The state needs to force consolidation 32 [19.39%]
4. Other answer… 6 [3.64%]
5. We don’t, 91 municipalities in St. Louis County is fine 4 [2.42%]
6. Unsure/no opinion 1 [0.61%]

The top vote getter is the one that will never result in any meaningful consolidation – leaving it up to cities.  I personally think the state needs to step in to make this happen.

1. not going to happen. these clusters formed to separate themselves for a reason
2. Reduce it to what number? Or how many can be disolved?
3. Cities need to join together for better fiscal responsibility
4. Enforce a minimum population requirement on municipalities.
5. Why? Who cares?
6. Voters in the munis should decide

Voters? Again, that is the same as saying nothing should change.

The list above will not change substantially unless the county and/or state takes action.  A first step though, is for some to unincorporate. Saint George is the only one considering such action. Actually just dissolving each of the 91 would be the simplest.

– Steve Patterson

Parking Needed for Restoration and Occupancy of the Municipal Courts Building?

On April Fool’s Day Paul Hohmann had an excellent post suggesting the city was going to raze the vacant Municipal Courts Building and replace it with a parking garage.

The city isn’t going to raze the building but what are we going to do with the structure? There have been numerous ideas over the last decade but it seems the lack of a large source of dedicated parking is problematic.  Downtown has an excess of parking but the oversupply isn’t where it is needed.  I’ve got an idea.

I still miss the old city jail that occupied the NE corner of Clark Ave & 14th Street, why not build a mostly underground parking structure with street-level storefronts facing both 14th & Clark Ave? The parking could serve the need of tenant(s) in the Municipal Courts, City Hall, Scottrade Center, Busch Stadium and the Peabody Opera House (formerly Kiel).  Retail & restaurants could serve all the above as well as the Sheraton Hotel located one block south and the many daily transit riders at the Civic Center bus & light rail station, also a block south.

Activating the sidewalks along both 14th and Clark Ave would do wonders for improving the walkability of the area.  I’m thinking 3-4 floors of occupied floors about grade. If parking was above grade it should be fully enclosed.  Ideally the bulk of the parking would be below sidewalk level, not above.

The big picture would be to evaluate all 10 blocks of Clark Ave from Busch (8th) to Union Station (18th), finding opportunities to improve the many people who currently walk all or part of this stretch.  Way back in July 2006 I posted about building over the existing MetroLink lines between 15th-18th, also facing Clark Ave.

The Municipal Courts Building would be a premier location for one or more law firms.  Treasurer Larry Williams has the ability to fund the structure, leasing some space to future firns in the Municipal Courts.

– Steve Patterson