St. Louis Magazine’s 50 Most Powerful List

Hitting the streets this week is the December 2006 issue of St. Louis Magazine. The feature is St. Louis’ ‘50 Most Powerful in 2006‘ with a sub-title on the cover: From the King of Beer’s to the Blogosphere’s Court Jester We Rank the City’s Royalty.

The issue has your normal players such as John Danforth (#1), August Busch IV (at #4), and SLU President Rev. Biondi (#9). Mayor Slay makes the list at #12 behind his chief of staff Jeff Rainford at #11. Just behind the mayor literally is Deputy Mayor Barb Geisman at #13 with her partner Richard Callow at #14.

A number of developers are on the list such as the Roberts Brothers (#21), Joe Edwards (#22), historic Century building demolisher Steve Stogel (#33), Pyramid’s John Steffen (#35), Pete Rothschild (#37), Amrit & Amy Gill (#38) and Ted & Sam Koplar (#40).

Other than Mayor Slay the only other elected official on the list hasn’t even been sworn in yet (or has he?), newly elected State Senator Jeff Smith (#47). At #49 on the list is restauranteur and boxing promoter Steve Smith. Who rounds out the list? Well, that would be yours truly — the court jester.

Yes, I’m on the list at #50. I’ve actually had a month to get over the shock and disbelief at such an idea. But I think I do have power — not to change people’s minds about an issue so that they agree with me. No, my power comes from passionately talking about issues that I feel are important to discuss. Clearly, many of you also agree these issues need to be aired publicly. I feel honored to have been included on the list.

Following the article on the power list is an article on blogging called, Typing Truth to Power: Bloggers take on St. Louis’ fellowship of the Tweed Ring. This article mentions Urban Review as well as 15thWardSTL, the Arch City Chronicle, Blog St. Louis, The Commonspace, The Ecology of Absence, PubDef, STL Diatriber, and the STL Syndicate. Pick up a copy or read it at the library.

[UPDATE 11/20/2006 @ 6pm — One quick correction on elected officials on the list, at #48 is Illinois’ 12th District Congressional Representative Jerry Costello. ]

Should St. Louis Become a ‘Suburb’ in the Region?

You may have heard about the city’s infamous “Team Four” plan from the mid 1970’s. If not, read Antonio French’s report here. This comprehensive plan was in response to a series of research reports from the Rand Corporation on behalf of the National Science Foundation. I am in the process of reviewing these for a school project but I wanted to share part of it with you now.

From Rand Report #R-1353 St. Louis: A City and its Suburbs published August 1973:

The analysis suggests that, among the alternatives open to the city, promoting a new role for St. Louis as one of many large suburban centers of economic and residential life holds more promise than reviving the traditional central city functions.

This is not necessarily suggesting the city taken on a highly suburban form (streets & buildings) but the role of a supporting player in the region but not the core. The center, presumably, would fall to Clayton and the central corridor. In reality, our region and today’s society functions without a single core. Today many people have suburb to suburb commutes.

So what do you think of this idea of giving up on focusing on St. Louis as the core of the region and instead make it simply one of many economic and residential areas? What is the difference?

The first difference, in my mind, is transit. All the planning being done around future transit is focused on trying to reclaim St. Louis as the core from which everything else radiates. For example, the new North & South mass transit studies for the region are trying to connect via the city’s CBD to the county. It would seem to me that getting folks from the county into mass transit can be accomplished much easier by connecting to the end of the new line at Shrewsbury for south county and off the original line for those in north county. There are also several options for connecting the employment hub of Westport into the system.

People are often critical of my belief that neighborhood scale transit in the form of streetcars or guided trams (similar to a modern streetcar but with rubber tires and a single track to guide it) can help increase development and create dense and thus walkable neighborhoods. Perhaps they are right. But my belief in this idea is nothing compared to the utopian notion that by bringing light rail to a former major core we can somehow undo 50 years of change and sprawling development patterns in our region. I’m not convinced.

Would it be so bad for the city to concede that our downtown will never once again be the hub for commerce that it once was? That doesn’t mean it can’t be a great place. In fact, I’d argue that without the pressure to regain its role as the region’s major employment center and commerce hub that downtown and the city might actually be free to focus on creating great places where people want to live and work. This means enjoying out quick light rail connection to the east side, Clayton and the airport but focusing the balance of our transit attention on the neighborhood scale — not how to get more suburbanites into downtown for their day jobs. If anything is a ‘build it and they will come’ scenario it is the thinking light rail to downtown will return jobs downtown.

When the Rand reports were written in 1973 they looked at the population drops in the city, down to 600,000 in the most recent census. Today we are just under 350,000. All of our attention is focused on reclaiming the former glory of the region’s center but how has that worked for us over the last few decades? Sure, we’ve got more residents and investment in downtown but is that really shifting things? The U.S. population is trending back toward cities which may account for much of downtown’s rejuvenation of late. But what is the likelihood of reshaping our sprawling region back to a core with radial suburbs? Very slim in my eyes. I’d like to see us shift to making downtown not the core of the region but one of a number of business centers in the region — the most dynamic of them all. The city should focus on increasing population not by a thousand here and 500 there, but by tens of thousands.

With office parks spread out all over the region, a convention center in St. Charles and performance venues everywhere I just don’t know that we can successfully reverse the damage that has been done. Other regions, such as Chicago, never lost their place as the core. However, many industrial cities, like Detroit, did lose their place in the core. Does anyone know of an example where a former core city regained its place as the center of commerce in a region?

So what do you think? Should we “stay the course” with attempting to maintain St. Louis as the core or accept that in the auto-centric times a region may no longer have a true core and simply work to make St. Louis a pedestrian-friendly urban “suburb” within the region?

Downtown Still Going Strong; Neighborhoods and Inner Suburbs Need Leadership

I got a call from developer Kevin McGowan on Saturday, you may recall the last time he called me was to defend himself over the pets issue in his own building (see post). So McGowan calls me all excited and thought I’d be interested in his news — super fast loft sales. I’m not in the business of acting as a free PR service to profitable downtown developers but as we talked I saw enough in this that it is more than a press release for his firm.

OK, here is the story. McGowan | Walsh has been unsure about what the composition should be for their three buildings at Cupples Station located to the due west of the ballpark (#s 7, 8 & 9). They’ve hung banners on all three for “Ballpark Lofts” but they’ve been looking at office use instead of residential or in addition to. They began to market lofts in the center building — #8 to test the market. They’d been taking deposits to get on a list. Saturday they asked potential buyers to firm up and pick their units — wanting to really see if the buyers would stick around or seek their deposit back. Well, McGowan reports they sold 57 out of 68 units — in just over an hour. Needless to say, he was ecstatic. This represents, he said, over $12 million in loft sales.

So I began to ask more questions. The selling prices were roughly $146K to $400K for square footage ranging from 750sf to roughly 1,500sf. Just a few years ago lofts were easily ranging from 1,200sf to over 2,000sf but we are seeing a shift to smaller units. McGowan confirmed the smaller and more affordable units are where the market it going. Still compared to other lofts downtown these prices seem on the low side but there is a good reason for that. Parking.

You see, McGowan | Walsh did what is called “unbundled” parking — a parking management technique discussed in Todd Litman’s book Parking Management Best Practices whereby a parking space is not included with the unit. Some rental units downtown have unbundled parking that costs extra each month but I don’t know of any other for sale loft downtown where this is the case, save for perhaps the Marquette building by The Lawrence Group. Anyway, buyers at McGowan’s Ballpark Lofts were given the option of purchasing a parking space for the tidy sum of $18,000. Parking is expensive to provide and it is good for people to see the real cost by not hiding it in the purchase price.

McGowan said that roughly 20-25% of the buyers decided against a parking space which, to me, is a very big deal. McGowan credits the MetroLink stop a block away for the buyers willingness to forgo parking and presumably a car. They do have a free scooter with each loft so perhaps these buyers are comfortable with transit and the occasional scoot.

While they are still undecided about the other two buildings this latest round of fast sales may push them toward residential and away from commercial office space. McGowan fully acknowledges the impact of the new Busch Stadium on the marketability of his lofts. He also gives credit to two unbuilt projects — the ballpark village and Chouteau’s Lake Greenway.

The area needs something because the most activity is the on and off ramps that intrude into the area. I’d like to see these simplified a bit so some of the land can be recovered for in-fill construction. Hopefully residents of these lofts will be open to walking, biking or scooting up to City Grocers, which will be moving to a bigger space in the Syndicate Building late next year (see Biz Journal story).

But we have a housing bubble right? Well, yes and no. The “Creative Class” have been seeking urban living options for a while now and downtown St. Louis is the only choice for such a lifestyle in the region. As such, downtown continues to see demand whereas tract homes in the hinterlands are stacking up unsold. The fact is nationally families are becoming a smaller and smaller segment. Singles and empty nesters are the norm, especially as the baby boomer generation ages. For many boomers there kids are long out of the house, they are divorced or have lost their spouse. They 4-bedroom ranch in St. Charles County just doesn’t appeal to them. But this doesn’t mean downtown developers can write their own checks. They are learning buyers have a ceiling they are willing to spend, unlike in the ‘burbs where many buyers will become house poor to own as big of place as they can get. No, urban dwellers want to enjoy life and need money for travel and other things often given up to afford the big house in the suburbs and the two (or three) cars in the garage. This is resulting in smaller living spaces — with residents getting out on the streets more often rather than go from the den to the living room to the family room to the sitting room to the media room when they feel restless.

Transit is a big factor, in my view, toward the choice to buy a loft without a parking space. This is also a factor for the conservative bankers to finance a project without a space per unit — McGowan said MetroLink was a key part of showing their bankers they did not need a space for every unit.. Sadly, we have very few places downtown where that remains a reasonable option. The development future of downtown is in the west area between 18th and Jefferson and into Midtown toward Grand. The near north side has great potential with the vacant Pruitt-Igoe and the largely vacant area between Washington Avenue and the emerging Old North St. Louis neighborhood. Getting a permanent transit option to these locations will enable developers to use vacant land not as parking lots for adjacent buildings but for new in-fill construction. We are at the key point in the development around the CBD and without good localized transit (aka streetcar or guided tram).

And of course the bulk of the city is not downtown yet it only gets passing attention. The inner-ring of suburbs in St. Louis County are as urban as much of St. Louis and deserve renewed focus as well to offset losses in population many of them are experiencing. Natural market forces are coming together downtown with the trick being keeping the “leaders” and their outdated zoning and thinking out of the way. The same simply doesn’t work outside the immediate downtown area — the neighborhoods of the city and adjacent inner-ring suburbs need strong leadership to bring good zoning to them. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions it is just not happening. Downtown will continue to strengthen while the rest of the region is going to suffer from our 1960s urban edge growth mentality. Meanwhile, other regions in the U.S. will continue to outpace our region in terms of population and job growth.

I’m More Southern Than I Thought

When it comes to food, back home comfort food, my southern roots shine through. Before I was a vegetarian I loved chicken fried steak and chicken livers. I never cared for fried okra but we always had plenty in the garden and it was used in many dishes. Greens was not something I had much of as a kid but beans of all types were a staple. Southern cooking is great for those trying to save money like those of us paying for graduate school at St. Louis University. Southern, creole and soul food are all intertwined. And the seasoning of choice on many southern tables? Hot peppers in vinegar.

This is not the hot sauce you are all probably used to. No, this is vinegar that takes on the flavor of the hot peppers. Beans just aren’t the same without it and a couple of dashes on some collard greens is a nice touch. I had a bottle for a long time (most people just continued to add more white vinegar) but I threw it out back when we had the power outage and I cleaned out my fridge. With New Year’s coming up I could not bring myself to have black-eyed peas without pepper vinegar. Back in Oklahoma, not exactly the center of the south, I could find this condiment in any grocery store. In the true south you’ll find this on the table next to the salt & pepper. But my efforts to find it here in St. Louis were unsuccessful. I resorted to ordering online with the shipping costing more than the actual item. To justify the shipping, I ordered a couple of bottles of both the hot pepper version and the hotter tabasco pepper version.

Since I am on the subject of southern food, whenever I get a craving for some good cooking I head over to Eternity Deli on Euclid between Forest Park and Laclede. The menu changes but trust me this is some of the best food in town, especially if you are from the south. Nothing better than vegetarian soul food.

In trying to find this 6oz bottle of hot vinegar I learned quite a bit. Turns out the term “soul food” dates only to the 1960s. From wiki:

Poor whites and blacks in the South ate many of the same dishes, but styles of preparation sometimes varied. African American soul food generally tends to be spicier than Anglo-American cuisine. The recipes and cooking techniques tended to be handed down orally

While I occasionally enjoy a fancy meal now and then I have a strong liking for the basics of my southern upbringing. My father’s side of the family was largely Southern Baptist while my mom’s side was Mennonite. Although meals at each had some distinct differences, it was largely southern (with roots in southern black cooking) and depression/dust bowl survival practices. It is funny that so many my parents childhood food was influenced by blacks — my mom said she was in high school before she ever saw a black person — and that was only because she went on a field trip out of the rural mostly Mennonite town where she was raised (the 2000 census shows 591 residents with only 0.34% being African American).

So what is the point of this on an St. Louis-focused urban blog? First, I just dropped $15 on an order of vinegar so I want to get some mileage out of it. Second, to me it demonstrates that so many of us come from very diverse backgrounds yet our histories are so connected — very important to remember in an urban context. The food I love has as much to do with the slaves from Africa as my Mennonite (and Amish & Quaker) relatives from 19th Century Prussia (and Netherlands before that). We need to look for that which can bring us together. Sometimes it is our unique cultures but others it is the overlap and blending of our cultures. Meanwhile, in 7-10 days I am looking forward to a well seasoned mess of beans, rice, cornbread and greens!

Streets and Accessibility in St. Louis

A couple of things:

First, MayorSlay.com has announced the retirement of Director of Streets Jim Suelmann effective the end of this month after 28 years. So, I must now direct my emails on valet parking issues to the Acting Director, Todd Waelterman.

The Mayor and the St. Louis Board of Public Service are hosting a seminar on “New Accessibility Guidelines for Public Rights-Of-Way;”

Compliance is no longer a guessing game. There is a right way, a wrong way and a best way. Architects, engineers, other designers, developers, builders, contractors, and city inspectors and officials now have a chance to make our community a model. This seminar will provide an opportunity to learn about the new guidelines — from experts in the accessibility field who helped develop the guidelines, and by experiencing what happens when accessibility is not addressed.

Co-Sponsors are The Pyramid Companies and The Starkloff Disability Institute. The seminar will be held December 14-15, 2006 from 8:30am to 5pm at the Hilton at the Ballpark. The registration fee is $100. The registration deadline is December 6, 2006. For more information call 314-588-7090.

Expert panelists include Janet Barlow of Accessible Design for the Blind, Asheville, NC; Bill Hecker, AIA, of Hecker Design, Birmingham, AL and St. Louis Architect Gina Hilberry, AIA of Cohen Hilberry Architects. Hilberry is also an adjunct professor at the Washington University School of Architecture.

At right is an intersection that would have had the involvement of St. Louis’ Board of Public Service — note how those at the intersection of the crosswalks are in the line of fire of right turning autos. Similar situations are being created all over the city, including the new intersection outside Loughborough Commons. Hopefully BPS can learn a thing or two from their own event.