Catching Up, A Potpourri of Topics

You go away for nine days and you miss stuff.  Plus I had some major technical issues for a week. Adjusting to the time changes from the West coast and central time zones has not been easy.

The following is a potpourri of topics:

Ballpark Village softball field and parking lot:

OK, I was back for this exciting news.  Where we thought we were going to have a mixed use village we will instead have a softball field and a surface parking lot.  I understand the economic conditions today but this dragging started years ago.  Current conditions are simply a cover.  It has been said this solution is temporary for the July All-Star game.  My guess is it will still be there a decade from now.

Treasurer’s Office and the Post Office:

Parking revenue contractor ACS forgot to pay the Post Office $53 for a P. O. Box so hundreds of payments got sent to a dead letter office.  Thus, payments people had mailed in were not received.  Not good.

Graffiti downtown:

The vacant building across the street from my loft got tagged with graffiti on three floors.

This was a project started by the now defunct Pyramid Construction.

Madoff:

Organizer of the biggest scam on Wall Street is finally in jail.  Yesterday his accountant was arrested on charges of fraud for rubber stamped audits.  Many more folks had to have been part of the ponzi scheme.

Natasha Richardson:

Actress Natasha Richardson died as a result of a head injury from a ski accident.  Richardson had bleeding between her brain and skull.  13 months ago I had a stint to drain bloody fluid from my brain after my stroke.  We can’t walk around wearing helmets  but after deaths like this we may want to consider it.  Certainly when bicycling, riding a scooter or other such activity please be sure to wear a helmet.  Story on CNN.

Economy:

Newspapers ceasing print.  More layoffs.  Bankruptcies abound.  AIG pays bonuses.  Earmarks are demonized while bigger budget items go undebated.

Software & Hardware:

On my second day of my vacation my blog encountered major issues.  The problem was hard to pinpoint.  All is well now.  In a weird way I’m sorta glad I couldn’t post new posts.  It gave me more freedom to enjoy my vacation.  At least until the last day.  I took over 1,100 photos and I backed them all up to Flickr as soon as I pulled them off my camera.  Good thing too because the hard drive on my Mac notebook (12″ G4) gave out.  I have some good video clips I hope to recover.

Lucas Park in 2009

Last Fall many of us downtown began working on cleaning up Lucas Park. Through the winter the work continued in the form of planning improvements to be accomplished this year.

The city has already removed four unhealthy trees from the park.  Replacements are planned.  Sixth ward Alderman Kacie Starr Triplett has submitted a request for the upcoming budget for improvements.  But much work will still be done through sweat equity.

To facilitate getting the word out about meetings and work days I’ve created Lucas Park Announcements, a Google Groups announcement list. Anyone can join the list but only a few can send out notices so the number of emails will be minimal.  If you’d like to stay informed about upcoming work days, meetings or other events related to Lucas Park visit groups.google.com/group/lucasparkannounce.  There you can sign up to receive emails or subscribe to the group’s RSS feed.

As I’m still having some server issues when commenting the comments are closed on this post until the issues are fully resolved.

Spring Break By Multiple Modes

Last night I returned from a 9-day Spring Break to the Pacific northwest. Specifically, Seattle & Portland.

At home I can drive thanks to a couple of minor modifications (steering wheel knob & turn signal lever) that permit me to drive with only my right hand.  Last August I drove to Oklahoma to visit family for a brief weekend visit.

But in flying to Seattle I knew driving would not be an option for me.  While many trips during my visit did involve private vehicles, I still managed a few other modes.  I took a bus to downtown Seattle, rode Seattle’s new streetcar loop in the South Lake Union area, rode two ferries, and rode Portland’s streetcar loop. I typically take transit or walk when traveling. Before my stroke I’d walk considerable distances in strange cities as well.

I saw a lot in both cities and future posts will share my observations and photos.  Stay tuned.

Site Back From Spring Break

I just returned from Spring Break.  UrbanReviewSTL is back too, sorta.  I’ve tested your end of the site but we are still working on some issues on the back end.

I’m grateful to Lara Kramer for her help this week.

UPDATE: I’m still getting errors trying to post comments.  So I’ve turned off comments on this post.  Thank you for your continued patience.

Urban Walgreens of Seattle

Walgreens stores in the St. Louis area are no different than ones in Dallas or Tulsa. Big & boring. Their designs are the same pretty much everywhere. Except in cities where the typical auto-centric doesn’t cut it.

In October 2005 I did two posts about interesting Walgreens stores in suburban Seattle. One in the South suburbs was very standard except for the coffee shop that was built out at the street corner of the property (view post) . That Walgreens I first spotted on a 2002 visit. In 2005 I spotted another I liked built up to the public sidewalk (view post).

Jump forward 3-1/2 years to yesterday and I’ve found two more interesting atypical Walgreens stores. First up is the Walgreens going into a vacant 1950 modern bank building. When I was here in ’05 we walked around this tasteful modern building, appreciating its massing and detailing. The branch, originally a SeaFirst and later a Bank of America, closed in 2006.

The area around this mid-century modern gem is rapidly developing. The developer of adjacent apartments had bought the building a secured a local historic designation for the structure. It is nice to see Walgreens reuse an existing structure. See story from the Seattle Weekly.

In the Capital Hill neighborhood another Walgreens is already open at the corner of Broadway and Pine (map). This time the Walgreens is in the base of a new multi-story building. No huge parking lot, no drive-thru.

This new building is across the street from a community college.

I’ve been visiting Seattle now for 15 years. I’ve seen many areas urbanize in that time. It just doesn’t happen . Seattle has deliberately changed zoning on certain corridors to allow and encourage dense mixed use properties such as the above. Developers can begin to see how building more building on a small site can give them a greater overall return. The first step is on the city to change the zoning for an entire street rather than waiting for a developer to possibly ask for a zoning change to do something more urban. As a city we must be proactive to get more urban development.