SLU Research Tower Should Not Be Awarded a LEED Designation

Saint Louis University is putting a friendly spin on its new Research Tower under construction at the SE corner of Grand and Chouteau. A new story in the St. Louis Business Journal had this to say:

Many are all excited about the building. Some like the way it looks. It will have bike racks and showers for researchers that want to bike to the building. Some parking spaces will be dedicated to hybrid or low emissions vehicles.

The “green space” is my issue with the building. This is not a massive building at 206,000 square feet yet it is being placed in the center of a massive nine acre green. The site was, until recently, three and a half city blocks. The 10-story building would easily fit on a fraction of one city block. Click here to see the project website including drawings and a site plan.

Everyone from City Hall to locals is hailing the “investment” this project represents. Indeed, I’m happy to see $66 million being spent. The wasteful use of land and the destruction of the interconnected street grid is not offset by any “green” building methods. SLU and Architects Cannon Design must be fooling themselves to think this is friendly to the urban environment.

In typical SLU fashion the nine acres will most likely be surrounded by fencing that says the public is not welcome here unless you’ve got big bucks for tuition. At the corner of Grand & Chouteau a fountain will decorate the lifeless intersection.

Preliminary drawings indicated planted medians along the center of Grand which will present challenges for building future street car lines. The drawings also show no street parking along Grand nor any any street trees. Basically the sidewalk along Grand and Chouteau will be a miserable place to walk. SLU and the architects fail to understand that such a sterile sidewalk will not benefit from the adjacent green grass.

Nine acres! I can’t get over it. Keeping the street grid in place you could create a very interesting and urban area. Once again in St. Louis we are applauding a major institution for their wasteful and anti-urban “investment.”

Connecting SLU’s main campus and the medical campus should be a high priority. Rebuilding three and a half city blocks at Grand & Chouteau is an opportunity to create storefronts to enliven the sidewalk experience, provide services for students and researchers and even create some additional housing. Why is this corner so important? Couple of things. First we already have the Grand MetroLink stop between both SLU campuses. This stop is used by many students as well as residents connecting to local buses. A future Southside MetroLink line will run along Chouteau making it even more important to our future. And big plans are underway to make the bridge between the SLU campuses more pedestrian friendly. From the St. Louis Business Journal:

So we are going to spend $25 million to make the area more pedestrian friendly yet at the South end of the bridge the new Research Tower in the big green will be a big dead zone of activity. According to the Mayor’s site Republican US Senator Kitt Bond “found” $15 million to move the project forward. I love how elected officials responsible for dividing up our tax money for transportation projects suddenly find money. In congressional terms $15 million is sofa change.

Building interesting cities is not easy but common sense tells you blank sidewalks with no activity is not the way to go. The bridge project is a good idea but tragically it will be underutilized due to the new SLU research building taking up space that could be put to use encouraging more pedestrian traffic. To go for green accreditation is an insult. This new building may employ some energy saving techniques but in the big picture it is hardly friendly to the environment.

Forgive me if I don’t join others in applauding SLU.

– Steve

Thoughts on Rita

Once again I’m glued to CNN despite some of the stupid statements from both reporters and officials they interview. The following are some of my thoughts and observations.

On the issue of the clogged highways I’ve heard some suggestions about expanding the road network. Amazing! Americans already use more than our share of the world’s energy plus we create for more pollution per capita than others. Yet our solutions only compound these problems. Typical.

Having more gas along evacuation routes will be part of future plans. I guess that is all good and well for a hurricane that you can plan for in advance. However, when evacuating due to another disaster such as an earthquake, tornado or terrorist attack you can’t plan to have extra gasoline along highways.

Also on the gas front early reports indicate a couple of closed refineries had damage — one indicating “significant damage.” Well, duh. But the media is stepping over themselves to try to assure the public that energy prices will stabilize shortly. The message — go ahead and buy that new house 30 miles from work and enjoy the drive in your new Hummer.

“You can’t have a strong economy unless you have a strong highway system.” was spoken by Republican Rep Tom Delay on CNN. Well, there you go. Other countries seem to have similar or better economies along with superior high-speed passenger rail service and urban mass transit. Clinging to our highways and single occupancy vehicles will be the death of our economy.

How is it that I can watch CNN for weeks and not hear anyone suggest that perhaps we are too dependent upon gasoline and other oil products? CNN can find all kinds of experts to interview but they don’t seem capable of doing a simple Google search to find someone to say we need to think about how we use energy just not how can we maintain our high level of use.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer is a putz. Other CNN anchors can be annoying but Wolfy takes the cake. One anchor very early this morning was getting on my nerves by asking field reporters about damage and the answer each and every time is, “once we have daylight we’ll know more.” After a half hour of this I turned off the tube and went back to sleep.

Republicans and Democrats are putz’s as well. The Republican’s are all saying how great Bush’s leadership and Democrats saying how bad it is. I don’t like Bush but I’m not sure of the benefit of this back and forth attack and praise game.

I’m not really a believer in “God” but if I were I’d have to conclude that he/she is trying to send a message to poor people: Red states are no place for you! Or is this just Mother Nature at work reminding us that we are fallible?

– Steve

Rita Is Personal

I have an Aunt & Uncle that live in League City Texas, about halfway between Galveston and Houston. So Rita is personal to me.They wisely left on Tuesday and are safe in Dallas with my cousin.

Their home and possessions may not be so lucky. Their neighborhood has had flooding in the streets just from heavy rains. Hopefully damage will be minimal but at least we know they are safe.

A funny aside. This Aunt and one of her three sisters are married to two brothers. One Aunt married one of the brothers I think in the early 60s and the other Aunt married the other brother about 10 years ago.

The Folly of Highways as Evacuation Routes

Sitting here watching CNN this morning as people from Galveston & Houston are attempting to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Rita. Soledad O’Brien just did a phone interview with a guy that has traveled 48 miles in 13 hours. Evacuees are running out of gas on the interstate. Others are overwhelming gas stations along the evacuation route.

Interstate highways were sold to the public back in the days of the Cold War as means of evacuating cities in the event of nuclear war. Maybe in the 1950s they had few enough cars to actually evacuate a city in a reasonable time frame. Today we can’t even get people home to the suburbs without congestion.

When I can bicycle faster than people in cars it is a clear sign we are too dependent on cars. Some Republicans in Congress are suggesting we take a look at Amtrak. But, they aren’t thinking we bolster our passenger rail service to help our transportation needs! No, they are suggesting we cut or eliminate Amtrak to help pay for Katrina cleanup. Such a move would place us even more dependent upon private cars and fossil fuels.

– Steve

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

Watching CNN this afternoon I saw a piece on Wal-Mart. Union and political leaders are finally waking up and realizing just how destructive Wal-Mart is to our society.

For many years my complaint was the big ugly store they built on the edges of small towns — closing main street. Then my issue was how they’d close several small town stores to open a super center — forcing many to drive even further from their old main street. Then we get the stories of employees being forced to work more than 40 hours a week without overtime compensation. The hiring of illegal aliens to clean stores was next. Now are all the reports of Wal-Mart price squeezing manufacturers to the point they either go bankrupt for move jobs to China.

Lower prices are usually a good thing. But at what point do we stop and realize that it is these low prices that is cutting into our way of life. What good will low prices be when all local jobs are exported to China? This is what is happening.

I’m certainly not a major fan of unions. Sometimes I think union leaders fight for wages and benefits that can make it hard to compete. An autoworker attaching a bumper on a car doesn’t need to earn twice as much as a school teacher. When they do it shows how messed up our priorities are. But what happens when the company is forced to outsource to China? The union, workers and community all lose out.

If you buy a Chinese-made low price item from Wal-Mart, or other big national chains, you are not saving money. Oh you may think you are saving money but really you are taking away work from a fellow American. You are also putting a business owner out of business. In the end that $3.99 item will cost each of us much more as we deal with an increasing number of poor and many more middle-class folks finding themselves out of work.

Wal-Mart says their average worker makes almost $10/hr – far greater than the minimum wage. I don’t doubt this at all. Still, a community cannot survive on a workforce making $20,000 per year. Who will buy houses? Who will support restaurants?

But people want to work for Wal-Mart claims the company. They cited a recent case of 12,000 applicants for 400 jobs in California. Does this represent high demand or high desperation? I think it shows how messed up our economy is. People should not be driving an hour to work at a $10/hr job. These 12,000 people applying for work at Wal-Mart stores should be manufacturing products to sell in stores owned by their neighbors.

This weekend I shopped at Soulard Market, Globe Drug on Cherokee and City Grocers. At Soulard Market I bought locally made soap from the Brende family as well as farmer-grown fruit and veggies. I also got a brownie from local employee owned baker, Black Bear Bakery. Admittedly, I bought a few magazines from Border’s in Brentwood on Tuesday.

Money talks and we must accept the consequences of how and where we shop. Places you will not see me are Wal-Mart, Sam’s, QuikTrip and local grocery chain and historic building demolisher Schnuck’s. I’m looking at local pharmacies so I can move my prescription from Shop-N-Save.

For more information check out WalmartWatch and a new film, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

– Steve