Chaifetz Arena Reduces Accesibility at Compton & Laclede

As we make changes to our city I have the expectation that accessibility for the disabled (and able bodied) will improve. When public money is involved in the project and changes are made to public sidewalks this expectation only increases. But adjacent to the entrance of Saint Louis University’s new Chaifetz Arena accessibility has been significantly reduced following the construction. What was an accessible crossing at Laclede & Compton is no longer accessible (map). From the St Louis Post-Dispatch on Aug 4th:

Tipster Arthur Perry recently complained to On Your Side that there are no curb cuts on the northwestern and southwestern corners of Compton and Laclede avenues, near the main entrance to St. Louis University’s new Chaifetz Arena.

The sidewalk there was rebuilt when the arena was under construction. Apparently, no one thought to make it easy for disabled people to cross Compton.

Perry said the oversight seems especially glaring because the sidewalk on the east side of the intersection, adjacent to the Harris-Stowe State University campus, is accessible to the disabled.

Perry, a part-time pharmacist who lives in the Central West End, first noticed the problem in May, when he attended a colleague’s graduation at the arena. Perry said his wife was recovering from surgery, and she was having a tough time walking.

“I thought if I pulled up close enough to the arena, I’d find a safe place to drop her off,” said Perry, 70. “But there isn’t one.”

After Perry helped his wife climb the steep curb, he noticed a woman in a wheelchair who was stuck in the street. Perry said he helped the woman’s relatives pull her chair onto the sidewalk.

The sad reality is that there are probably hundreds of St. Louis street corners lacking curb cuts, and that there are thousands more inaccessible corners in suburban areas where even sidewalks are a rarity. But you’d think the intersection of Compton and Laclede would be different.

The new arena and a nearby bus stop ensure that the sidewalks there are going to get a lot of traffic, and plenty of those Billiken sports fans are bound to walk with a cane, use a wheelchair or push a stroller.

As a disability-rights activist, attorney David Newburger said he’s filed his share of complaints over pedestrian crossings. Now Newburger runs City Hall’s Office on the Disabled, the public watchdog office that, among other things, is supposed to make sure development in the city is accessible. He said curb cuts aren’t legally required near the arena because, technically speaking, there’s no officially designated, painted-on-the-pavement crosswalk at Compton and
Laclede.

Clayton Berry, a spokesman for St. Louis University, said there is an area on Compton that is designated for dropping off visitors. “We believe this drop-off area accommodates the needs of our disabled patrons,” Berry said.

Because there is no ramp or curb cut in this drop-off area, university employees will be stationed there during events “so someone is there to personally assist individuals with drop-offs,” Berry said.

WTF? No painted crosswalk so its OK to ignore accessibility? Sorry but the majority of our intersections lack a formally painted crosswalk, that doesn’t relieve the need for accessibility. From the Missouri Statutes:

(8) “Crosswalk”, (a) That part of a roadway at an intersection included within the connections of the lateral lines of the sidewalks on opposite sides of the highway measured from the curbs, or in the absence of curbs from the edges of the traversable roadway;

(b) Any portion of a roadway at an intersection or elsewhere distinctly indicated for pedestrian crossing by lines or other markings on the surface

A crosswalk need not have painted markings to be a crosswalk, an intersection suffices. Laclede & Compton has been an intersection for over a century. Prior to the construction of the arena the intersection was accessible. Now, after construction it is no longer accessible. Someone screwed up! Time to get Biondi out there with a jack hammer to bust out some concrete and correct this mistake.

As for the drop-off area is is nothing more than a no-parking zone on Compton. A proper drop-off/loading zone would have a ramp area permitting a wheelchair easy access. Getting out of a car and into a wheelchair up on the sidewalk can be a real challenge. It is typical to exit a vehicle to get into a chair on the pavement at the same level as the vehicle. But that isn’t an option at Chaifetz.

We must remember to that people use this intersection daily, so its not just for events at the 10,600 seat venue. People going to Harris-Stowe, Sigma and Wachovia may use this intersection to cross Compton. It ludicrous to think nobody would cross at this point because there is no painted crosswalk lines. Its even more ludicrous to expect those that need curb ramps to go all the way up to Olive or down to Market. Again, somebody screwed up and it needs t be corrected. Maybe the Architect’s Errors & Omissions Insurance needs to cover the cost? Certainly the city shouldn’t.

Click here to view all 42 pictures in my Chaifetz Arena set on Flickr.

Visiting the Parents & Grandparents

While back in Oklahoma last weekend I stopped to visit my parents and grandparents. All are deceased so I’m talking about visiting their graves. The first to go was my paternal Grandfather. He died in 1966, the year before I was born. Born in 1886, he was 80 years old.

The next to go was my maternal Grandmother, Sara (Thiessen) Klaassen. She passed in 1982, also at the age of 80. I was just 15 at the time, it was my first funeral. I remember the long drive to the cemetery — just under 20 miles. My Grandparents lived for decades in Clinton OK but the cemetery for their Mennonite church was a few miles outside the small town of Corn OK where my mom was born & raised. One of my most vivid memories was the abandoned old church next to the cemetery. The church had moved to a new building in 1974.

My maternal Grandfather lived another 15 years, long enough to visit me a couple of times in St Louis. Born in the country in 1899 he was amazed at all our old buildings — many older than him. I wasn’t able to attend his services but I now know that same church was there next to the cemetery.

By 2006 the church, abandoned for 32 years, was in sad shape. Out in rural areas you don’t hire demolition crews to take down a wooden structure, you have a big fire.

I expected to see the church still there last Sunday, I was saddened to learn of its fate. The building was built in 1901 — just after my Grandparents were born and six years before Oklahoma would become a state.

By chance my brother works with a guy from the area who knew my Grandfather and was there in June 2006 when they burned the old church. Turns out my brother and I have known his uncle since the late 1960s, a cabinet maker that worked on many of the same houses as our father.

Getting directions to the cemetery was interesting. It doesn’t have a street address, instead you use the longitude & latitude coordinates. Roads in dirt and gravel are on the section lines.

I have to wonder why the church was located a good four miles from the small town. Perhaps at the time it was thought the town might grow to be much larger? In a town almost exclusively of Russian/German Mennonites this was not the only Mennonite Church. The town of Corn today is small just as it was in 1931 when my mom was born there. The 2000 Census counted just 591 people. The main road through town has no stop sign, much less a traffic signal.

While I can’t imagine living in such a town today it is nice to visit a place with no Wal-Mart, no supermarket, no fast food drive-thru restaurants. My Grandparents on my mom’s & father’s sides were from the generation that raised much of their own food. They didn’t stock up in the frozen section of the store, they canned their food for consumption in the off season. Even in his 90s my maternal Grandfather was raising far more food than he could eat.

At the start of the 20th century in St Louis you also had immigrants raising their own food in backyard gardens. This tradition was not rural or urban, it was the lack of alternatives. Of course in the city you had local bakers and butchers on nearly every neighborhood corner. My Grandmothers didn’t have nearby bakeries so they knew how to bake bread and lots of it. On the weekend my Mom’s Mom would make Zwieback — a sweetened roll. I’ve made a couple of batches back in college that took too long and were not perfect like my Grandma’s were.

In our era of agribusiness we’ve lost so much — namely the ability to sustain ourselves individually and as a community. My grandparent’s generation lived longer lives than their kids largely, I think, because their diet wasn’t composed of overly processed and packaged food. Their diet was mostly organic produce & meats. They didn’t call it organic, it just was.

I love much of the advancements of the 20th century but I think it is important to step back and evaluate our lives today to see if everything is an improvement over past generations. Be it growing our own food, hanging clothes to dry in the sun or walking to our destination I think we can still learn a lot from earlier generations even though they may no longer be here to teach us.

Century Case Set for Trial Next Month

Even though the historic Century Building has been razed for a few years (replaced by yet another downtown parking garage), the legal issues continue. Downtown residents (and friends of mine) Marcia Behrendt & Roger Plackemeier had filed cases questioning the project’s procedures back around 2002. They had sought to save the Century from the wrecking ball. After the building was razed the entities responsible turned around and sued Behrendt & Plackemeier in April 2005 for “malicious prosecution”. Myself and others consider this to be nothing more than a SLAPP suit.

In December 2007 I updated you on the status of this case. At the time the plaintiff’s (The Missouri Development Finance Board, The Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority of the City of St Louis, NSG Developers LLC, and St Louis Custom House and Post Office Bldg and Associates) filed motions to add another count and to add Behrendt’s & Plackemeirer’s lawyer, Matt Ghio, as a third defendant. Ghio filed a motion for summary judgment to have the whole case thrown out. I was there in the court room as the lawyers presented their arguments before the judge.

According to Missouri’s Case.net judge McCullin denied these motions on March 26th. The case is now set for a 4-day jury trial starting on September 22nd before Judge Thomas C. Grady. I’ve got work and class at SLU but you can be sure I’ll find some time to stick my head in the courtroom that week

Update 8/16/08 @ 8:15pm:

After the above post I received the following from a reliable source:

Just to clarify, Judge Grady is the judge in Division 1. Div. 1 is where civil cases get assigned to a trial division, so the case will not be tried there.

The Century Bldg. case has been what’s called “peremptorily set,” which means Judge Grady will assign it to one of our trial divisions in a couple of weeks.

Check Casenet again in a couple of weeks to see what division it’s going to (or shoot me an email to remind me and I’ll look it up)

Valets Continue Abusing Public Parking

I haven’t written about valets in a while but a new comment came in recently on a post from January 2007. Here is an excerpt

Obviously those of you posting in attack of the valet’s have never been on the other side of things, never actually had to work for your living through college or whatever it may be. If you have ever worked as a valet, especially at Lucas Park Grille, that the amount of space that they have to work with is hardly enough for safely operating a valet service on a busy night.

Regarding parking in “non designated valet spots”, valets have just as much of a right to park their cars on the street as you do. Not to mention, especially on a weeknight when you are low manned, or even the only one working, response time is key. Therefore the most effecient solution is to park on close street parking… running to the lot 20 or 30 times when it is over a block away, gets quite old, especially when people don’t realize that the valets don’t see any of the money from the parking charge and don’t tip us. Did I mention that we work almost exclusively for tips?

Where to begin? For me I worked at a Toys R Us to get through college. Five Christmas seasons at a toy store is no picnic, that Cabbage Patch craze was maddening. We all do crappy low wage jobs to get through college — at least those of us that are lucky enough to get to go to college.

But here a valet is saying it is unsafe to operate valet service unless they have all the spaces for their own use, as was the case a couple of years ago. But basically the valet doesn’t want to do their job and go to the private lot numerous times per evening. Well, too bad.

But really the valets want to create an artificial shortage of parking so patrons are forced to use their service. If someone can just park on the street within the block of their destination why fork over $3 plus a tip? So the valets want to take away that option — it forces people to use the valet and it saves them a trip to their private lot by parking your car in a public space on the street.

7/25/08 -Valets for the club Lure at Washington & Tucker cone off public parking spaces on both sides of the street.

On Monday this week I noticed around 8pm that the Lucas Park Grille valets had coned off two free public spaces across the street from the restaurant. I’m not sure what is worse, that the city lets these guys abuse the public right away or that folks hand over money to these guys for them to just park the car in a coned off space within sight of the destination.

I can see valet use when an actual shortage of parking exists but when they create the shortage just to make a buck we have a problem.