Landscaping That Narrowed Public Sidewalk Cut Back

In the nearly 16 years I’ve been blogging I’ve written a lot about sidewalks, and items that can block them. Examples include parked cars in driveways, dumpsters, cafe tables & chairs, business signs, etc. Today’s item narrowing a sidewalk is…was…landscaping.

I use 7th Street often when heading into downtown. For the nearly two years we’ve lived in the Columbus Square neighborhood I’ve been frustrated by one spot where shrubs had been allowed to grow over the public sidewalk for years.

You might be wondering why I didn’t just use the other side of 7th, west instead of east.  The answer is simple. Pedestrians can’t cross Cole Street from the west side of 7th Street. I suppose able-bodied pedestrians can do so even though there aren’t crosswalks or pedestrian signals. I, however, using a power wheelchair, can’t. Crossing Cole Street is dangerous enough in official crosswalks with a walk signal — motorists routinely fly through red lights.

But I could get to Cole then cross 7th Street, right?

Technically, yes. The crosswalk between the east and west sides of 7th on the north side of Cole Street is one of the roughest I’ve encountered in the city.  A second runner up is the east-west crosswalk at 9th Street on the south side of Cole Street. I have to avoid these to prevent my 12 year old wheelchair from getting shaken apart.

I tried contacting the church tenant, but what about the landlord. The owner is Northside Regeneration, AKA Paul McKee.

As indicated above, I turned to the city’s CSB. A month later they came through. It’s wonderful when a problem gets resolved, but there are too many to report them all.

— Steve Patterson

Sidewalk Cleaning Is Important, Yet Not All Do It

For nearly fourteen years now I’ve posted about many topics, often minor & obscure in nature. The little things, however, can also be important. First impressions can be lasting.

Often conventioneers stay across the street in the Marriott St. Louis Grand hotel. They power wash their sidewalk along Washington Ave weekly. I know because I see them doing it on my way to the YMCA. Also, I asked the last worker I saw how often it’s done.

It always looks great, they do a wonderful job! I can’t say the same about the other side of 8th.

This is part of the entire block controlled by US Bank. Visitors to our convention center likely see this filth. While the Marriott to the West of 8th does an excellent job, US Bank fails at keeping their sidewalks presentable.

More examples.

Maybe US Bank and others rely solely on the Downtown Clean Team:

Downtown STL Inc. has established a Clean Team in an effort to contribute to the beautification of the Community Improvement District (CID), through an aggressive sidewalk and street level cleaning program.

Clean Team members, dressed in purple and khaki, walk the streets of Downtown, St. Louis, to make sure we maintain a clean and inviting appearance to all visitors.

Some of the duties the Clean Team may encounter are: debris clean up on streets and sidewalks; graffiti and handbill removal from first floor buildings; power washing sidewalks; clean up after special events (Parades, Sporting Events, Festivals, etc.); and also cleaning and maintaining the Old Post Office Plaza and Downtown Bike Station. (Downtown Clean Team)

They also do a great job, I see them frequently. Maybe building managers/owners need to request power washing if they don’t want to do it themselves like others do? I’ll contact them myself to see if they can help out where they’re so desperately needed.

— Steve Patterson

Parking Lot Change Resulted In Cars Encroaching On 11th Street Public Sidewalk

The Louderman building at 11th & Locust includes restaurants, offices, and residential. Most parking is underground, but they’ve always had a small surface lot

Change did come to this corner in June 2017, but not in the form of an urban building to establish the corner. The parking lot was reconfigured — possibly without city approval.

Either the Louderman condo association did this without the city’s blessing/permission OR the city ignored their own parking lot requirements regarding minimum space size and fencing. This lot once used the existing alley for access, now we have an exit onto Olive. It was bad enough watching for cars entering/exiting their underground garage, not pedestrians must watch for vehicles exiting this surface lot as well. The sidewalk is narrowed by the cars encroaching.

Either way it’s annoying, ugly. I’ll be sending a link to this post to numerous people to find out A) was permission granted for the curb cut change and B) if there’s anyway to require parking stops &/or continuous fencing to keep cars from encroaching on the sidewalk.

— Steve Patterson

Sidewalk Obstruction Removed After Annoying Pedestrians For 7+ Years

Last month I began going to the Downtown YMCA at the MX to workout (thanks AARP Medicare Plan). Locust would be direct, but crossing 13th in a wheelchair is awkward and construction has the sidewalk on the North closed at 10th. So I take Washington Ave East to 6th. It was there, next to the Eastbound Convention Center MetroLink station entrance, I encountered an obstacle. A wooden box with a yellow stick on top. At times I’d be meeting someone walking the other direction, one of us had to wait (usually me because of direction) while the other went by.

By my 10th visit on July 11th I’d had enough, posting the following on Twitter:

When I got home I pulled up the link on my computer — Google Street View allows you to see current views, but you can also go back to see older views. I also looked through my photos to see why I had. Below is a mix of Google Street View screenshots & my photos. First, background history. The Convention Center Metrolink Station opened on July 31, 1993 as part of our original light rail line. The Eastbound entry/exit is located on the SW corner of 6th & Washington.

Eight years earlier St. Louis Centre indoor mall opened. So opening a  transit station adjacent to a mall is a good thing. After helping to kill downtown’s sidewalks, the mall closed.

So when I posted about this on July 19th it had been an issue for over seven years. Seven years!

Either Metro or the MX developer planned something that was never going to be installed. Rather than cut the bolts off they built a wood box, then later added a yellow pole to said box to prevent people from tripping.  I know this is just one little sidewalk on a side street, but it illustrates how little concern there is for the pedestrian experience downtown — right next to a transit station.

The box & pole were still there on the morning of July 25th, but July 28th I came around the corner and saw they had been removed and the bolts cut off.

It wold’ve been cheaper if the bolts had been cut off years ago, or realize the sidewalk was too narrow in the first place and the bolts not put in there in the first place!

In the big scheme of things St. Louis still has major problems, in that context this is insignificant. To me and others who use this sidewal, it is important,  There are still hundreds of other issues I deal with just downtown. I can’t solve St. Louis’ big problems, but I’ll take on small issues one by one.

Cities in which residents & tourists have challenges as a pedestrian are not going to have bustling sidewalks. Downtown retail/restaurants can’t survive without foot traffic. St. Louis would be wise to make life easier for pedestrians all over the city — but especially around major transit.

— Steve Patterson

Dead Sidewalks Won’t Come Back To Life With Overhead Walkways Gone

Enclosed walkways over public sidewalks are generally a bad idea — removing pedestrians from the public realm. However, with these elevated walkways often comes the real culprits to killing sidewalk life: blank walls, inward focus, etc.

A prime example of what not to do in a downtown was downtown St. Louis’ St. Louis Centre indoor mall.

It was 8 years ago today that a big event was held to begin the removal of the very oppressive walkway from over Washington Ave — the first step in transforming the inward-focused mall into outward-facing MX retail with the interior becoming a parking garage.

See:

• 2010: Undoing a huge mistake from the 1980s
• 2012: MX Rises From Former St. Louis Centre, Pi Now Open

Two other walkways have been removed in the last year, one on each side of the former Southwestern Bell headquarters, later an AT&T building on Chestnut between 9th & 10th. The walkways connected the now vacant tower, now longer owned by AT&T with an older Bell building to the West and a 90s data center to the East.

These walkways were very different than those at the former St. Louis Centre — up high, small, transparent, These allowed employees to walk to/from all 3 buildings without having to keep going through security. With AT&T’s significant reduction in the number of downtown employees the center towner became unnecessary. The tower’s new owners needed to reconfigure the tower from a single-occupany headquarters into a multi-tenant building. For them and AT&T that meant disconnecting the three buildings.

The exteriors are all repaired now, though all three buildings are lifeless at the sidewalk level. This us by design. The removal of these two walkways won’t have the dramatic results we’ve seen at MX.

St. Louis has systematically killed street life block by block, neighborhoods by neighborhood. Attempting to bring back vibrant sidewalks for more than a few blocks here or there is likely a waste of time at this point.

— Steve Patterson