Legal Wrangling Over Century Building and Parking Garage that Mocks the Century Continues

Readers of the St. Louis Business Journal were treated last week to another of their one-sided near press release type articles, this time an update on the latest in the lawsuits between interested parties of the 9th Street Garage (that over lit monstrosity facing the Old Post Office) and two citizens that happen to be friends of mine, Marcia Behrendt & Roger Plackemeier. The latest? Well, the developers (and city and state agencies) are filing a motion to have attorney Matt Ghio named as a defendant as well.

I should back up a bit here and explain how we got to where we are today. In short, Behrendt & Plackemeier both sued a long list of people over the plan to raze the Century Building for the construction of a parking garage. Various lawsuits focused on process, such as approvals, as well as the official downtown plan which indicated no parking garage should face the Old Post Office. Behrendt & Plackemeier were seeking to save the Century Building which was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Once the building demolition was underway, as these citizens could not post bond sufficient to get a restraining order, their suits became moot. However, the developers and others came back and sued them with malicious prosecution. This is basically a legal way of suing if someone sues you with no basis — if they sued you simply to be disruptive. However, in the case of Behrendt & Plackemeier I know that they were seeking to save a historic structure from meeting an untimely mess and to protect their personal property interests. Proving Behrendt and Plackemeier had no foundation for their lawsuits it a tough legal challenge. This brings us current.

Now, the Business Journal is talking about a motion filed by the developers seeking to name Behrendt & Plackemeier’s attorney Matt Ghio as a defendant. They seek to add two counts of “abuse of process” to the claim of malicious prosecution. Although the developers just filed their motion and the judge has not ruled, later in the article writer Christopher Tritto calls them a “trio of defendants.” Uh, maybe it is best to wait for the judge to determine that?

Today the garage is finished and damn if it ain’t boring as, well, a parking garage. Recently I was at a function on the top of the Metropolitan Building and the most visible building downtown was this parking structure. The lighting level are so bright we don’t even need street lights. At least it doesn’t have mag wheels attached to it like the one over on 7th. The Old Post Office Square area is also boring, very little to do. The most visibly active of the tenants in the building is the Pasta House Pronto which seldom has any customers on the times I’ve been there. The razing of the Century and construction of yet another downtown parking garage is Slay’s equal to Schoemehl’s Gateway One decision — controversial at the time and in hindsight a very poor decision.

I personally applaud Behrendt & Plackemeier for their continued fight in this battle. Of course, when you are being sued for a million dollars you kinda have to keep fighting.

Mississippi Bridge Opens to Traffic

No, not a new bridge across the Mississippi River, but the revised bridge along Mississippi Ave over I-44 (see map). It appears that this bridge got a new deck as well as tall decorative fencing along each pedestrian walkway, it reopened yesterday. All over town we’ve got bridges closed for repair/replacement (or just closed due to condition), so it is pleasing to me to have this one open again. This bridge was part of my normal route to get to Gravois, even more so now that I have moved downtown.

Other bridges closed are the Jefferson viaduct and the Tucker bridge over the old rail lines into downtown. To the east of there, the Cass bridge over I-70 is closed. Lot’s of infrastructure to maintain. But hey, the bridge near Lafayette Square now has pretty fencing and lighting.

To be more serious though, the newly renovated bridge does have better pedestrian access. From the sidewalk level a row of concrete separates the pedestrian from passing cars. The tall fence along the outside takes away that uneasy feeling that I know I get when walking across bridges with lower railings.

Neighbor Leaves Lights On All Night, All Nine Floors Lit Up 24/7

A neighbor of mine leaves their lights on all night long, on all nine floors. The neighbor I am speaking of is CPI Corp, the Sears Portrait Studio folks.

At right is the view of the CPI corporate headquarters as seen from my balcony. In the far left is the back of the other building as part of the Printer’s Lofts. For a couple of years now I had wondered why people in the other building with their units facing North had such severe window treatments — privacy I presumed — as they would not have a direct sun issue like those facing South.

The answer, as I am finding out, is light pollution. For the most part it would not be so bad except that on their 4th floor (I’m on the 4th as well) you can see to the left that CPI does not have any window treatments on that large window. Other blinds on that floor are turned just so that light from the bright overhead lights beam directly at our lofts.

I’ve sent a very polite email to the CPI feedback email address, asking them to turn off their lights at the end of the day or at least close the blinds on all the floors. We’ll see what response I get.

Other light streaming in my 4th floor windows are from a condo-owned security light between our buildings and a public street light on Locust, both rather annoying but minor relative to the angle and intensity of the light from CPI.

UPS Tries Out Small Electric Trucks for Localized Delivery

Even when delivering packages, bigger is not always better. ZAP, the quirky maker of electric vehicles, has announced that an office of United Parcel Service in California will be using their vehicles for localized delivery. From their press release:

The UPS branch in Petaluma, California has leased an initial fleet of 42 ZAP Xebra® electric city cars and trucks for their small parcel deliveries. This is the first time that UPS has used electric city-speed vehicles for this purpose.

Small parcel deliveries are becoming more challenging for the trademark big, brown UPS delivery vans, which is why UPS is using the electric city cars and trucks to handle small parcel deliveries. The ZAP vehicles lessen fuel consumption and reduce automotive emissions produced by current delivery vehicles. Drivers will be monitoring their electrical usage to carefully analyze cost-savings and emissions reductions.

I should note here that I am a shareholder in ZAP. Not much, just a few hundred dollars worth.These vehicles travel at city speeds up to 40mph. Not much but if you’ve driven in California traffic you’ll know that 40mph is often hard to attain. Certainly trying to squeeze one of these little Xebra trucks into a small space for a delivery is much easier than the big brown box of a truck UPS normally drives. Of course, there are more conventional alternatives — a minivan or small SUV could also do the trick, although without the fanfare, the fuel savings or the reduced emissions.

Other choices exist on the open market. Chrysler has the GEM electric NEV (Neighborhood Electric Vehicle) on the market. You’ve probably seen a few of the all passenger versions running around downtown or on the SLU campus. These are great little electric vehicles that are street legal but are limited to 25mph to avoid additional requirements.

I’m also a fan of the Bajaj 3-wheel gasoline vehicle, available in passenger, pickup or delivery van versions (shown left). This Indian company make the classic 3-wheel passenger taxi we think of when we see images of India. Like the ZAP Xebra, these 3-wheel vehicles are regulated as motorcycles. The Bajaj is available locally at the Extreme Toy Store in Rock Hill.

With Limited World Resources, Now is the Time to Limit Population Growth

The planet is at a breaking point, us humans have been raping the planet for all its worth for decades now and mother earth is doing all she can to continue to provide for us. We’ve been abusing and polluting her for some time, pushing the limits everywhere we can. This includes industrialization, clear cutting rain forests for meat production to auto emitting toxic gases. But we’ve also been populating the planet like never before.

The 20th Century saw the biggest increase in world population, going from 1.6 billion people to over 6 billion in the course of one hundred years. It was our industrialization of farming techniques and improved medicines that has contributed to this increase in population. But are we, collectively as a planet, better off with all these increased mouths to feed? By the middle of this century the world is expected to have 9 billion inhabitants.

Earlier today, in my Environmental Planning course, I suggested we limit the number of future users in addition to looking at methods of conservation. The topic doesn’t really matter — could be energy we consume, water we drink, shelter for us to sleep in — can we handle this many more people in the world?

Frankly, I don’t think so. We are already fighting over resources now so I can only imagine in a few decades with another couple of billion people around fighting over the same amount of water, food and a place to sleep. Add in cars and other luxuries we’ve grown to think of as minimal necessities in the U.S. and it will get really ugly.

The solution? In class I jokingly asked if we can neuter people? Trust me, I’m not advocating castration — just wondering aloud about how we as a global society addresses the issue of world population. Personally, I’m gay so I know that I am not out there adding to the world’s population.

So how can we control the world’s population without invading bedrooms to check to see whom is sleeping with whom? In the U.S., one way to address the population increase is to phase out the tax deduction for kids. What kind of tax policy rewards people for having children? It is not rocket science to bring a child into the world and certainly not deduction worthy. I think we need to tax people that procreate or at least reward those of us that don’t. Too radical? Well, probably so. But what are the alternatives?

Technological advancements got us to where we are now — 6 billion strong. Increasing technology to be able to feed 9 billion, if possible, will only encourage the world to continue increase in population. Sadly I think it will take some radical shift in the world to alter this course.

This, I believe, is coming in some combination of peak oil, limited fresh water supplies and the big daddy of them all — global climate change. I believe the drought in the Southeast U.S. is part of the bigger shift in the world climate. What will happen to the 5 million in the Atlanta region that are running out of fresh water in the next few months? I say anybody from Georgia that moves into the City of St. Louis should get our best-tasting water free for a year.  That should be our new marketing slogan — “St. Louis — We Have Water.”  Well, assuming the global climate and states upriver don’t limit the amount of water flowing down the Mississippi River.

The big thing will be the rise in sea level to the point where literally hundreds of millions of people are flooded.  Not to be overly grim here, but I see millions not surviving.  I’m sure some geeks are watching the melting of the ice caps and we’ll know in advance if one is about to drop off into the ocean but how quickly can you evacuate hundreds of millions of people from coastlines all over the world?  It is not going to be pretty but I do think it will be a necessity to rebalance the planet.   It will take such a catastrophe to get the world to see we cannot continue down this same path.