Former Public Defender Gets Year Probation and $2,000 Fine

Friday afternoon I did something I never thought I’d be doing, I sat in a federal courtroom watching a friend stand before a judge and receive a sentence as a felon.  You recall the case from May when two public defenders and one prosecutor suddenly resigned.  C, a public defender working under E.A., married E’s non-citizen boyfriend P.A. so he could remain in the U.S. as his student visa was about to expire.  C’s boyfriend T was a witness to the Las Vegas wedding.

The family and friends that packed the 14th floor courtroom at the Eagleton federal courthouse in downtown St. Louis were relieved when Judge Perry sentenced E.A. to probation.  Sentencing guidelines gave her the choice to sentence him between zero and six months in prison.  The judge was lenient, calling it “a sad case.”

Sad indeed.  E.A. loved his job as a public defender.  He could have made far more money as a private attorney but he enjoyed giving a voice to those unable to afford legal representation.  E’s law license is suspended and may well be revoked.  As a convicted felon, he will no longer be able to vote.  The saddest of all is the fact that two people whom I know love each other are now thousands of miles apart.

Following the sentencing I was able to meet E’s parents and his large family.  They and other friends gathered at his home for a celebration.  While I had met P’s mom before while she was visiting from Peru, I had never met E’s family.   Pretty typical family and everyone realized that although this was a happy moment it was still sad — P was part of their family too.

A straight person can sponsor a foreign person but indicating they are to be married in future as a way for the new person to get citizenship but a gay couple very much in love with each other are afforded no such equal protections.  Legislation before congress hopes to level the playing field so that others are not forced into bad situations in the hopes of remaining together.

UPDATE: 3/5/2010 – Names reduced to initials.

City Values Vacant Land Higher than Land With Buildings

As a REALTOR® I tend to have some basic assumptions about the real estate market. One of those is that a building and land is worth more than the land without a building. Even if the building is in poor condition, it still holds some value in my view. But apparently the people at the St. Louis Development Corporation — the entity that is responsible for property the city owns — thinks differently. Here is how they describe themselves:

The Real Estate Department of the St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC) documents, manages, maintains, markets and sells agency-owned vacant and abandoned buildings and property.

In some St. Louis area neighborhoods, it will cost you more to buy a vacant lot than it will to buy a lot with a building. Let’s compare a two-family building in poor condition on a 25ft x 125ft lot with a similar 25ft x 125ft lot that happens to be vacant (with the intent for new construction). Oddly enough, the vacant lot is more costly than the building and lot in some cases. For example, based on SLDCs price list, the example building and lot in Benton Park would be $3,000 while the vacant lot (of the same size) would be $4,687.50 — 56% more than the same size plot of land with a building! Their for sale list turns up one vacant building but 19 vacant lots (of various sizes) in Benton Park. In Benton Park West the prices are quiet a bit less at $2,000 for a two-family and only $1,562.50 for a 25ft frontage lot.
If we head up to the north side of the city where many lots are vacant we see a similar situation.  In the Hyde Park neighborhood the two-family would be $1,000 while the same size lot sans a building is $1,250.   Over in The Ville the two-family will cost you the same as Hyde Park but the lot is only $937.50.  In the St. Louis Place neighborhood, where Mr. Paul McKee has purchased quite a bit of private property, the two-family would be $2,000 while the vacant lot $2,343.75.  The building prices are per unit so a single family house on the same 25ft wide lot would be half as much as I indicated above.  So in St. Louis Place a single family home owned by SLDC would only be $1,000 but the land of the same size would still be $2,343.75.

Their price list was last updated in March 2006.  Maybe SLDC has a formula based on the availability of land vs buildings?  Perhaps the idea, and a good one, is to price buildings attractively to encourage their reuse more rapidly than of vacant land?  I just wasn’t expecting to see vacant land with higher selling prices than land and a building.  Given this practice, I can see why some people might favor demolition —- they get the impression from the city it increases the value of their land.

Homeless-Staffed Renewable Energy Center Seeks Approval for 38-Car Surface Parking Lot

Missouri Renewable Energy (MORE), operated by Larry Rice’s New Life Evangelistic Center, is seeking a zoning change to allow them to create a 38-car asphalt parking lot in the middle of a residential block. Yes, the group that “believes in caring for creation by learning, teaching, and implementing clean energy (solar, wind, and water power, biodiesel), environmentally friendly housing structures, going organic, and consuming less” wants to put down a big chunk of paving among a residential neighborhood (see map).

From where I stand it would seem that creating large paved parking in the midst of residential areas is not exactly “caring for creation.” Before getting into the zoning specifics of the proposed parking area, we need to look at how we got to this point.
For decades the area in question was part of Held Florist and Nursery. The commercial building was built in the 1950s and had been used continuously as a florist since that time. However, a few years ago it stopped being used commercially and sat vacant. For decades this business had been grandfathered in — what is more technically known as a “non-conforming use.” That is, the use (commercial) doesn’t fit in with the zoning for the area (residential). But you can’t just tell a business they must close up shop when you change zoning so existing places became grandfathered in. And to permit someone to sell their property as a commercial entity the city allows that such non-conforming use can continue provided the property doesn’t go vacant for a period of greater than 12 months. But once the non-conforming use lapses for a period of 12 months the grandfather provision goes away and the zoning reverts to whatever it is for the area. Someone purchasing real estate anywhere needs to understand this very basic concept and exercise due diligence before assuming they can do as they please. Perhaps Mr. Rice got bad legal advice on this purchase?

All over the city we do have commercial properties that are in the midst of residential areas. We can’t very well expect these all to be converted to residential or razed to build residential. This small commercial building with greenhouse does have value which should be permitted to be used. But this doesn’t mean that someone can buy the building and do as they please. A nightclub, for an extreme example, in an old greenhouse could be pretty cool but not the most ideal in the middle of a residential street. The florist shop brought virtually no traffic to the area — most business was deliveries. Any enterprise that can potentially overload a residential block, as opposed to a commercial block, with too many cars at a very specific time is something which should only be permitted in extremely rare cases. I don’t think this is one.

Let’s take a look at what is proposed. The following plan was distributed by Larry Rice at City Hall a couple of weeks ago when he was to have a hearing on his request for rezoning. That decision has been delayed until October 18th which allows for a public meeting on the issue — to be held tonight (more info at the end).

The buildings shown on the plan are all existing. The area marked “demonstration area” is a greenhouse from the many decades as a neighborhood florist and nursery. The asphalt parking lot, however, is new. In fact, the only structures ever built on this land were some makeshift greenhouses. To the left is this site is the two-family building I owned from 1994-2006. Residential properties surround this in all directions.

For a moment let’s focus on the parking lot. Given the few “energy fairs” already conducted by Rice at this site it is clear they are a big draw — the street gets packed with cars of people visiting the site. But do we really want a 90ft x 113ft section of asphalt to handle cars once a month? This is certainly not very environmentally friendly.

And what about those dimensions? Rice shows 38 spaces, certainly a lot of cars. But does this work? Well, no it does not. City ordinances and common sense require certain sizes for parking spaces (view zoning code). For 90-degree spaces they need to be eight and a half feet wide and eighteen feet deep. In terms of width the idea works so far — 10 spaces across the back only requires 85 feet. But it is the other direction where we run into issues. The plan shows four rows of cars — four times eighteen is 72ft. OK, good so far but in order to do this he needs two drive lanes to actually access the parking. The city says drive lanes must be 22ft wide — each. So you add another 44ft onto our 72ft and now you are at 116ft. This doesn’t even account for required landscaping or accessible parking spaces.

The depth of the lots in this block are 142ft-6inches. Let’s say 143ft just to make it easier to discuss. So we’ve got 143ft from the sidewalk to the alley — the depth of the lot. To get his parking in there you need 116ft — leaving only 27ft. Well, the old frame house the Preservation Board (thankfully) says cannot be torn down is set a good 10ft or so back already and is likely close to 20ft deep itself. Basically, Rice’s plan doesn’t work — he is showing a paved area set at the back of the lot far from the street but the reality is to accommodate 38 cars he’d need to pave pretty much the entire section of open land — including where the frame house is located.

To complicate matters even further, a new parking lot in a residential area requires setbacks from the property lines — you cannot just pave up to neighboring property or the alley. Rice is showing 3ft at the back but nothing on the north side (to the left). Also not show is how he plans to address water run off issues — how will the parking lot be drained. Will this cause more water runoff to the neighboring property to the left? Will this cause more water to run down the alley? What is the anticipated flow of water in a storm and can existing sewers/drains handle this increased volume? These are all normal considerations when considering such a massive parking area.

In July a developer was seeking to build three houses on the land where Rice seeks his asphalt parking lot. The Preservation Board told them the old house could not be razed. They quickly sold the property to Rice. So what was his plan for his center if the new houses had been built?

For an organization that purports to be supportive of the environment to propose an asphalt parking lot is certainly a bit questionable. Water run off, as opposed to ground absorption, is an issue as is the heat island affect. Truly environmentally friendly places have pervious parking such as paving blocks or the block grid that allows you to grow grass through the paving — both allow rainwater to be absorbed into the ground. The latter doesn’t contribute to heat island issues. Impervious surfaces like asphalt and concrete are part of our environmental problem.

Some people I’ve talked to are concerned about the homeless or formerly homeless that will staff the place. I’m not concerned so much as I am puzzled. The concept is to train these individuals for jobs in the growing energy field but that seems far fetched. From a Post-Dispatch editorial from the 2nd:

We also question the wisdom of training the homeless for these sorts of jobs. “We are an agency that places 1,000 [homeless] people a year, and I’ve never heard of a placement in renewable fuels,” says Dan Buck, chief executive at the St. Patrick Center, which operates a wide range of training programs for homeless people. They are much more likely to find work, Mr. Buck notes, in restaurants, call centers, building maintenance and the like.

So while the idea of training the homeless for a career in alternative energy is appealing, I’m just not sure how practical it really is. While there certainly are exceptions, many of the homeless are not the best educated. I wonder what the extent of the training program really is? Will these persons receive any pay? How does this fit with labor laws?

And what about the production of biodiesel at the site? Rice mentions the use of waste vegetable oil being converted to use as fuel in diesel cars like his Volkswagen Jetta TDI, shown above, on the residential block where he seeks zoning approval. So my question would be what quantities of fuel might they be making at this site? Just a few drops here and there during his fairs? Or will he have free homeless labor churning out the fuel to keep his ride going? Is there a point where the making of fuel for personal use differs from the the manufacturing of fuel for the market — involving state regulation and conditions conducive to the production of motor fuels? We already have meth labs blowing up, do we need experimental biodiesel manufacturing facilities doing the same?

Rice has intimated that if he doesn’t get his zoning he will want to use the area to house the homeless. Nice. Of course as part of the “B” two family zoning district there are numerous guidelines that, if actually followed, would make it difficult to run a shelter on the order of the one he has downtown. Even transitional housing, something the city does need, would have to conform with the zoning code.

Publicly there seems to be very little opposition to the energy center, the zoning changes and even the parking lot. The most visible opposition comes from the gas station a block away at Grand & Delor (see photo at right). The 25th Ward Alderman (whom I lost to in March 2005 by 117 votes), Dorothy Kirner, has reportedly written a letter of support for the project. This is interesting as she earlier opposed a parking lot for the exact same site when a Muslim church on Grand owned the land. Did Kirner apply a double standard?

Local neighborhood groups are taking a Swedish like position — publicly neutral. Privately many in the immediate area as well as throughout south city are more than a bit upset.
An informational meeting with a chance for public questions/comments is scheduled for this evening. Given all the issues and personalities at play this is a must see in my view. The meeting will be held at 7pm at Gretchen’s Inn — the one-story place behind the Feasting Fox on the corner of Grand & Meramec (see map).

I’m not in favor of large surface parking lots anywhere. I’m certainly not a fan of them on otherwise residential blocks. The parking lot should not be allowed regardless of any issues around the homeless, Larry Rice or the intended use of the property. This is just not a wise move to allow a parking lot in such an area.

Prior posts:

• June 24, 2007: Preservation Board to Hear Appeal to Raze 19th Century House
• August 30, 2007: Larry Rice’s New Life Evangelistic Center Opens Renewable Energy Center in 25th Ward

Note: Headline changed at 10:25am from “Homeless-Run…” to “Homeless-Staffed” to more correctly reflect the stated intent.

Some Small American Downtowns Avoided Urban Renewal Mistakes

A guest editorial by Richard Kenney, AIA

I had an unusual opportunity for extensive travel this year. I teamed up with a roofing consultant to inspect a large portfolio of properties in 22 states. My portion of that work was 125 sites in Alaska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, the Dakotas, Missouri, Kansas, Washington and Oregon. Almost all the sites are lumber/hardware stores located in small towns. So my summer was all about planes, trains and automobiles. I used all three, but by far most of my travel time was spent on the highway. I was surprised to learn that I drove over 10,000 road miles! It was exhausting, but it was a remarkable opportunity to see some unbelievably beautiful countryside and some really charming small towns that I would normally never see. UrbanReviewSTL’s Steve Patterson joined me for the Missouri, Kansas and Iowa sites when the project first started.

In some ways this trip renewed my faith in the small American downtown. Recently I had been back to Shawnee, Oklahoma, where I went to high school, and I was very saddened by the condition of its downtown. When my family lived there we owned a business on Main Street, and downtown was still a great place to be (this was the mid-1980’s, not that long ago). Sears and JC Penney were still there, as well as dozens of thriving local businesses. I still remember the “Midnight Madness Sidewalk Sales” and the summer parades. But the tragic shift was well underway as I left for college in 1986. A mall was constructed on the city outskirts, and the retail epicenter shifted dramatically. It’s my understanding that “Shawnee Mall” was proud to be the first in the United States to have Wal-Mart as an actual anchor store, which seems like a sad thing indeed. Shawnee then fell the way of many American small towns, as Downtown is now a sad collection of pawn shops, payday loan offices and thrift/junque stores. It’s clear that the city has made the usual attempts to revitalize the area, including the addition of sidewalk ‘bulbs’ at intersections, planters, and benches. These new commodities stand unused near the many vacant buildings and blank storefronts with windows covered in paper. Incidentally, Wal-Mart made its usual move a few years after opening, and abandoned the mall location to build a larger super-center down the street from it.

In 1989 I lived and studied in Cologne, Germany, an old and large city that was literally 95% destroyed in World War II. Allied bombs focused on larger cities like Cologne, which lost most of their architectural legacy in the process. It’s amazing to think that
only 5% of the city fabric remained intact by war’s end. In many ways, American cities suffered the same fate, only ours was self-inflicted. In the name of post-war progress, most large American cities began to decimate their architectural legacy (which evidently is still in full swing in St. Louis). Priceless historic buildings and irreplaceable urban fabric were dismantled in the name of new highways, urban open space, “super-blocks”, convention centers, stadiums, and ‘fill in the blank here’. It really didn’t matter what the reason was, it was all considered to be disposable urban blight and a barrier to progress. My Mother lived in downtown Oklahoma City in the early 1950’s before the substantial demolition began, and it’s hard for me to imagine that it was ever as vibrant and interesting as she describes. Accordingly, it would be hard for a kid in today’s Shawnee to imagine that Shawnee’s downtown was as ever the way that I remember it was a mere 20 years ago.

If you want to see the real Germany, you see it in small towns which were typically spared the mass destruction of big cities. The same is true for the United States. The small American Downtown is our last great cultural and architectural vestige which was spared from the urban renewal war. Surviving a deadly viral infection like Wal-Mart is another issue and one that is on-going.

So now back to the summer road trips. I was concerned that I would be driving through many Shawnees: small downtowns that are bombed-out and boarded up. I was pleasantly surprised that in many northern states the small American downtown has survived beautifully. There is undoubtedly a demographic and population threshold at which Wal-Mart stays away and the local businesses thrive. But what’s truly great are the small downtowns that have managed to survive despite the existence of a Wal-Mart or a new shopping mall. There’s typically a contributing factor: perhaps they’re college towns, military towns, or towns that are close enough to a metro center to be a “boutique weekend destination” for nearby urbanites. Here are just a few of the pleasant surprises I encountered in three of my destination states.

Minnesota: Stillwater has a thriving downtown on the waterfront of Lake St. Croix.

Minnesota: Stillwater’s local businesses in wonderful original storefronts.

Wisconsin: Madison’s thriving State Street.

Wisconsin: well-utilized outdoor dining on the sidewalks of State Street.

Wisconsin: downtown Platteville (a small college town).

Wisconsin: charming and inviting original storefronts in downtown Platteville.

Wisconsin: unique retail housewares in Fort Atkinson, as can only be properly displayed in a 100+ year old basement with painted stone walls in an old downtown building.

Wisconsin: charming buildings and well-restored storefronts in downtown Sheboygan, on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Michigan: downtown Manistee, an unexpectedly thriving area which was a random stop on the way south.

Michigan: beautifully restored original storefronts in Manistee.

Michigan: fun & quirky coffee shop storefront in Petoskey.  This Petoskey coffee shop was well populated when I stopped for my Americano before hitting the road again.

What a great storefront!

Michigan: this wonderful old theater marquee in Marquette is a small work of art.

Michigan: delightful art deco storefront in Marquette.

Michigan: busy downtown coffee shop with a view of the gorgeous old City Hall across the street.

Michigan: Marquette’s City Hall

These are all small towns (with the exception of Madison, Wisconsin, which is a medium-sized city that has managed to keep its sanity nonetheless). They were fortunate enough to be in a shadow when urban renewal was blazing brightly and scorching everything in its path. These towns did not destroy themselves and their history in the name of progress. None of these towns did anything dramatic to “re-invent” themselves to compete with a mall. They didn’t bulldoze large blocks of urban fabric to create open space or parking garages. They didn’t do anything extreme or bizarre to redesign their old downtown for the 21st century (such as downtown Salina, Kansas, a story for another day). What they did was embrace what they already had, and to manage this valuable resource to keep it intact and allow it to prosper naturally. They left it alone, and the beauty and integrity of what had been built 100+ years prior returned again to provide us the texture and beauty that can’t be genuinely replicated in a new shopping environment. If you have a visitor from out of town, you don’t take them to the new Wal-Mart or to the Shop-O-Rama Factory Outlets, do you? If they ask to see your town, you take them downtown because that’s where the soul of the city resides.

There is, however, a size threshold. I had great expectations for towns like Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Unfortunately they were just large enough to have big-city ideas of re-inventing downtown, to no avail. But this is a story for another day too.

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Richard Kenney is an Architect in Seattle Washington and the principal of Cool Green Cabin, LLC.

Scooter-Focused Economics Plan to Reduce Use of Foreign Oil, Traffic Congestion, Etc…

The Piaggio Group, maker of the well-known Vespa scooter, is promoting a new economic platform — Vespanomics:

In order to meet the President’s goal of reducing America’s addiction to oil, consumers will need to change their attitudes and behaviors regarding personal transportation in ways that offer the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption and environmental impact. There is no single approach that can solve the problem; rather, a broad set of initiatives may be able to provide a meaningful solution.

Piaggio Group Americas, manufacturer of the Vespa scooter, is at the forefront of this issue. Along with other scooter and motorcycle manufacturers, Piaggio believes that motor scooters and other street-legal two-wheel vehicles offer an important and viable means of transportation in many situations, and could bring a lasting, positive impact on domestic energy stability and America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Piaggio Group Americas advocates making U.S. cities more scooter friendly so that scooters will become a vital component toward stemming the U.S.’s “oil addiction”.

While this is clever marketing, it is also quite logical. Fuel cells, biodiesel, ethanol, hybrids and even electric cars are not the only answer to issues concerning use of oil and pollution. As is indicated, the two wheel vehicle (scooter, motorcycle and bicycle) can play a key role in our transportation systems. Here is some selected items from their materials:

Currently, the United States consumes more than 25% of the world’s total supply of oil3. As a result, the U.S. produces a significant amount of the world’s carbon emissions. Oil consumption in the U.S. is increasing at a rate of approximately 2% annually.

According to a May 2006 survey conducted by ICR on behalf of Piaggio Group Americas, 30% of U.S. consumers indicated they would be extremely or somewhat likely to consider using a scooter for 35% of the mileage currently traveled by car, truck or SUV – yielding a 10% reduction in daily fuel usage. If Americans switch 10% of their mileage to scooters, they will consume 14 million gallons less per day, thereby keeping demand under control.

Clearly the impact could be significant. I know I have found that I ride my scooter far less total miles than I drove my prior cars — I think more locally about shopping and that errand 8 miles away for one little thing may get combined with other errands in the same direction. So really, the impact is even greater in my estimation. Just like bicycling, the key is having a place to park at your destination(s):

Government agencies should consider removing the two-wheeler from the four-wheeler parking space and placing it in its own, scaled down zone. This is a simple concept that can be embraced by city councils, urban planners, local merchants, contractors, shopping center management and private businesses whenever parking for motor vehicles is provided.

Toronto, Canada – The City Council recently amended the parking by-laws to allow motorcycles and scooters to park for free on city streets with on-street parking meters. In addition, Toronto is pursuing allocating certain spaces in city lots for two-wheel vehicle parking as well as examining if two-wheel vehicles can park on city sidewalks.

San Francisco, CA – The city designated 1,696 parking spaces specifically for motorcycles and scooters, both metered and un-metered. In addition the city has begun replacing single-spaced meters with multi-space meters to better accommodate motorcycles. Metered parking is prorated for motorcycles ranging from $.10 – $.25 per hour depending on location. (San Francisco Dept. of Parking & Traffic)

Indeed, the idea is not necessarily to have free parking but to have appropriately priced parking. Why should I pay the same rate as a Hummer to park in a garage? We have so much unused space on our streets that accommodating two wheel vehicles is more about mindset than money. Given the cost of unsightly parking garages (tens of millions of dollars) and the buzz killing surface parking lots we need more attention paid to such simple measures to make more room for people, not cars.

And their conclusion:

Local and national government leaders are charged with establishing transportation policies that address both short-term and long-term problems, are environmentally responsible and truly benefit the American consumer. With the support of federal, state and local governments, new options like scootering can bring immediate and substantial economic and environmental benefits to Americans and the communities in which they live.

To facilitate the adoption of scootering, U.S. Mayors and other elected officials should consider providing dedicated parking for scooters and motorcycles.

Now is the time to broaden the dialogue about America’s addiction to oil and its dependency on foreign imports in a way that includes technological as well as behavioral solutions.

You can read much more at vespanomics.com.