Celebrating Blog’s 19th Anniversary

 

  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 …

Thoughts on NGA West’s Upcoming $10 Million Dollar Landscaping Project

 

  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 …

Four Recent Books From Island Press

 

  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 …

New Siteman Cancer Center, Update on my Cancer

 

  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, …

Recent Articles:

Violators Will Be Towed

September 3, 2008 Downtown 16 Comments
 

Determined to keep the blocks of Washington Ave East of Tucker as an unfriendly 4-lane highway, the city is threatening towing for parking on the street:

Parking hours taped to meters in the 1000 block of Washington Ave.  These taped notes are missing the Monday-Friday limitation.
Parking hours taped to meters in the 1000 block of Washington Ave. These taped notes are missing the Monday-Friday limitation.

Ever since parking was allowed on the 1000 block and the Southern half of the 1100 bock the city has insisted, foolishly, on clearing the street for a morning and afternoon rush. At first it was only an hour but it didn’t take long for it to be two hours in the AM and two in the PM. So from 7am-9am and from 4pm-6pm nobody can park on the street between 10th and Tucker. The blocks East of Tucker are no parking 24/7.

For a couple of years now the city has been ticketing people parking in these spaces and presumably blocking the mad rush of people heading both East & West on Washington. People ignore the restriction and park there anyway. So recently the city taped notes on the meters to alert people not to park there during these maddening rush periods. The problem with the notes is that they are taped to the meters. Taped! We are a real city right? The notes also don’t mention the no parking times are only Monday-Friday.

Restaurants such as Kitchen K, Mosaic, Beso, The Dubliner, Mizu Sushi Bar (as well as other businesses) don’t need to have their customers chased away from 4pm-6pm. An early dinner al fresco at Kitchen K, Mosaic & Beso is ruined by having cars and buses flying by in the lane next to your table. A row of parked cars serves as a nice barrier between traffic and enjoying dinner.

Ticketing cars during this period was bad enough — now they are going to start towing? This is bad public policy! We need to extend on-street parking to the Eads Bridge to support retail along Washington Ave, not have it disappear for four hours each weekday.  Towing cars will really endure so many people to Washington Ave.

Great Pizza If You Can Get To It

September 2, 2008 Downtown 6 Comments
 

One of the most urban things is the ability to grab a slice of pizza while on the go. I’ve enjoyed slices in NYC, Philly, Boston, San Francisco and elsewhere, sometimes at 3am. A single slice can also solve a pizza craving without ordering a full pizza.

In St Louis the by-the-slice choices are limited. You’ve got Racanelli’s on Delmar & on Euclid. You’ve got Feraro’s Jersey Pizza in Soulard and recently Bridge & Tunnel Pizza downtown on Washington Ave. a storefront or two East of Tucker.

I need to preface this with the fact that I like B&T Pizza. But the design of their entry does not comply with the ADA — when I’m in my wheelchair I can’t open the door to get inside. The staff there is nice and they come open the door for me. B&T Pizza are tenants in the building — my beef is with the building owner, the architect and the city.

Entrance to B&T Pizza
Entrance to B&T Pizza

When designing doorways that open toward you there is supposed to be 18″ of clearance to the handle side. This allows a wheelchair user to pull up and grab the door handle and get the door open without having the door hit the chair. Without this room to swing the door open it is impossible for a chair user to open the door.

Button-activated motorized openers such as the one at a potentially difficult door at City Grocers eliminates this problem. But the entry to Bridge & Tunnel is not an old historic entryway. Prior to the recent renovation of the building the space was an auto drive to an interior courtyard. The entrance is entirely new, yet it doesn’t comply!

The ramp shown above was the subject of a post in December 2007.  By sticking out the way it does I believe it poses a trip hazard to someone just passing by on the sidewalk.

I like the place, it is good, inexpensive and quick. They’ve got calzones now too. But I don’t like that I can’t get in the door on my own.

Entrance to B&T lacks sufficient room to side of doorway.
Entrance to B&T lacks sufficient room to side of doorway.

The opposite door into the apartments is a mirror of the problem.

Door hits chair preventing entry
Door hits chair preventing entry

Again these doors & doorways are all new yet I can’t get through them because of their placement. Both need to be retrofitted with electric openers to bring these into compliance. The city has got to do a better job of catching what is simple access issues.

Gateway Cup 2008 Bicycle Racing – Day 2

August 31, 2008 Downtown 3 Comments
 

It’s just not Labor Day Weekend for me unless there is bike racing on the streets of St Louis. The Gateway Cup is an annual must-see for me. In years past I’ve made it to all four days of racing but I’m not as mobile as I once was. On Saturday I did travel the few blocks from my downtown loft to check out the final mens race of the day.

For the past few years the downtown course was a simple clockwise circle on Washington, 14th, Locust and 20th with the start/finish on Washington between 16th & 17th. This year the race shifted west and rather than a big circle it was a sort of figure 8. The start/finish was the Tap Room on Locust at 21st. The course ran clockwise on Locust, 20th, Washington, 18th, Locust, 20th, Olive, 23rd back to Locust. At times there would be riders making one turn onto 20th as other riders further back in the course making the opposite turn on 20th.

This year riders also had a new challenge. A week earlier the city put down lose gravel along Olive/Lindell. By the day of the race most was compacted into the asphalt road surface. A classmate of mine a SLU lives a block from me and rides his bike to class. When the gravel was first applied it required more work driving a car and safely riding a bike in it had to be a challenge. Nice of the city to wait until classes were back in session.

OK, back to racing. The top mens riders always have the last race of the day. Typically they ride for 75 minutes plus five laps. Saturday when they started the final race they recognized they were behind on their schedule and losing light quickly so they cut 15 minutes off the time — 60 minutes plus five laps. On the very last lap a car heading east on Washington didn’t see the orange metal barricade and crashed right into it. I had just crossed the intersection 5 minutes earlier. Thankfully nobody was injured.

So for all of you that were cutting your lawns or attending your grandson’s 2nd birthday I put together a 7:53 minute video of the final race on Saturday.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-15S3jgEZek[/youtube]

The Gateway Cup starts on Friday evening of Labor Day weekend in Lafayette Square. Saturday is downtown while Sunday is on The Hill. The racing continues in the Loop on Monday. See www.GatewayCup.com for more details.

Have a great Labor Day everyone!

Slay Says Centene “taking advantage of the state incentives”

August 29, 2008 Downtown 18 Comments
 

Last month Mayor Slay got a bit ticked at a board meeting of the East-West Gateway Council of Governments.  These meetings are recorded and below is Slay’s comments as they were transcribed and sent to me.  This was following a staff report on the use of tax incentives:

“We have a situation that I hope you look at. There is a Modesa that is being used, I think the way the statute is written I’m not suggesting anyone did anything wrong. It’s available and people are going to take advantage of whatever is available. But we have a situation now that there is a long time law firm that’s been in downtown St. Louis and they have announced they are moving to Clayton* The reason they have given me is because that they threw so much money at this law firm that they had no other choice other than to leave the city even though they like being downtown and it was actually pretty controversial within the firm itself.

“They are moving to Clayton because they threw so much money at them, and I’m not saying it was Clayton who did it, but through the state, Centene who went to the state and got some incentives to build spec office space. They want to build their own headquarters plus they want to build their own spec office space, they want to try to fill that space and to create jobs is what they told Missouri Development Finance Corps. What they didn’t tell the Missouri Development Finance Corps is what they were going to do to create some of those jobs was to bring some jobs out of St. Louis city into St. Louis County, into Clayton, one of the wealthiest municipalities in the state if not the wealthiest, certainly from a school district standpoint, out of one of the most depressed and distressed school districts anywhere in the state.

I hope you take a good look at that one. I do think there should be some kind of changes at the state level to prohibit that from happening in the future. It is not good policy to shuffle jobs around like that, particularly from a distressed area into an area that cannot be considered distressed. That is going to have a tremendous impact on downtown by itself. There is another effort being undertaken by Brown Shoe to attract Thompson and Coburn into Clayton, using the same types of incentives. Thompson Coburn is the largest law firm in the region*we’re talking with the two firms somewhere between 800 to 1,000. Not only is it the reality of losing those jobs out of downtown, and we all agree it’s important to have a strong downtown, not only important to have a strong downtown, but it is the psychological impact on our ability to maintain a strong downtown. If people see major law firms that have been downtown forever, leaving for the suburbs. That does not bode well for the confidence level people have.

It’s happening because of one reason and one reason only * they having so much money thrown at them.

What I’m being told is that they are being offered $95 per square foot for tenant improvements — $95 per square foot. That is unconscionable. I’ve never heard anything close to that being given anywhere. They are offering $95 a square foot. They could not do that without the state incentives. Centene is not just giving it to them, they are in some way taking advantage of the state incentives to be able to offer this to the law firms to bring them out of the city to Clayton.

He’s right. Using tax incentives to move jobs across municipal & county lines is not what the programs meant by creating new jobs.  Using tax dollars to move jobs out of a disadvantaged area into an affluent area  is certainly wrong.

Centene is not the first nor the last to twist tax incentives to their favor.  Remember West County Mall’s TIF – Des Peres blighted the old mall saying it was obsolete so they owners could get tax incentives to raze and rebuild.  So now Centene is creating new jobs by stealing jobs from the city.  It is a system run a muck.    Incentives should be reserved for those circumstances where the market needs a little help.

Fox2 covered the Mayor’s view on Centene on August 21st (see their story).  Do we just end all the incentives to prevent the haves from using what was intended for the have nots?  Better yet we get our state legislators to tighten up the criteria.

I like this Mayor Slay. Angry.  Passionate.  Vocal.  We need more of this mayor and less of the one that is more diplomatic.

ADA Notice to Those Who Build in our Region

August 28, 2008 Downtown 14 Comments
 

Construction of new buildings and the renovation of existing structures continue in the region — a very good thing given current concerns over the economy. Unfortunately, many of these are failing to provide a pedestrian access route from the public sidewalk as is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

8/1/08 - Demolition crews raze the old Lindell McDonalds
8/1/08 - Demolition crews raze the old Lindell McDonalds so a new one can be built.

While I don’t expect every building owner to upgrade existing sites to include an access route I do expect new and substantially rehabbed facilities to comply. Sadly building codes don’t always require the same things as the ADA so while a project might fully comply with the building code that doesn’t exempt it from needing to comply with the ADA.

I’ve written before about finished projects not complying with the access route requirement — Lowe’s at Loughborough Commons and several Starbuck’s locations, for example. I’ve also written about locations that do comply — such as the new Arby’s on Lindell across the street from the new McDonald’s under construction. It frustrates me that municipal and county officials fail to include a pedestrian access requirement in their codes and thus don’t enforce it. In the city and other areas where you have pedestrians local officials should have the local power to require that places connect to the existing sidewalk network

So it occurred to me that nothing prevents me from notifying companies of their need to comply as I see projects being built. I’m thinking I draft a standard letter that I can send out via certified mail giving them notice of the need to provide an access route. Of course I cannot assume they are not going to comply.

Here is a first draft:

Dear sir/madam,

I see that you are constructing a new [insert name] in the City of [city name]. Please be advised that while your plans fully comply with the locally adopted building code they may not be fully compliant with a provision in the 1990 American’s Americans With Disabilities Act that requires a pedestrian access route from a public sidewalk to the accessible entrance.

The relevant section to which I am referring is 4.3 of the ADA Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities (ADAAG) which can be found online at access-board.gov:

“(1) At least one accessible route within the boundary of the site shall be provided from public transportation stops, accessible parking, and accessible passenger loading zones, and public streets or sidewalks to the accessible building entrance they serve. The accessible route shall, to the maximum extent feasible, coincide with the route for the general public.

(2) At least one accessible route shall connect accessible buildings, facilities, elements, and spaces that are on the same site.

Hopefully your Architect/Engineer has already included such an access route in your site plan. If not you should contact them at once to verify they are willing to assume the liability for non-compliance.

The ADA is Federal Civil Rights legislation. Failure to comply can result in an investigation from the U.S. Department of Justice and/or private legal action.

An access route not only helps the disabled but anyone that may be arriving at this location on foot. I understand this may differ from how you’ve done things in the past. However, the ADA has been the law for nearly two decades now.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Steven L. Patterson

UrbanReviewSTL.com

Again the above is just a first draft. Hopefully I can get a few places that didn’t have an access route planned to alter their plans to include one prior to the completion of the project. If not, the letter will help in any future litigation.

I’m determined to make our region more walkable. Even if that means we drive our cars to the strip mall but choose to walk to the out parcel once we are there.

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