Washington Ave Suffering From Deferred Maintenance
When the rebuilt Washington Avenue (Tucker to 18th) reopened around 2003 after a $20+ million make over everyone was excited. Initial meetings were held in 1999 and the project took a long time to complete. It was a major project, reducing the street from four travel lanes to just two so that wider sidewalks could be accommodated.
The street has been done for not even a decade and it is already looking a bit ragged. The main issue is the absence of so many street trees. Nine out of 41 are missing between 14th and 18th:
None of the trees look like they’ve been freshly cut down.
The limb above is being held up by Christmas lights.
This poor tree on 13th is barely holding on.
The two blocks West of Tucker have a zipper motif to reflect the area’s past use as a garment district. I was never a fan of such motifs but hey, whatever. Above is part of the design in the center of the street.
But step just to the West and you see a spot where the stone pieces are missing and the whole filled in with asphalt.
Another car length West and again we have missing stones patched with asphalt.
The problem here is funding sources. We can find federal money for big capital improvement projects but not for ongoing maintenance. So where should the money come from? The Alderman’s allocation? Too bad we don’t have some taxing entity for improving the downtown community. Oh wait, we do — the downtown Community Improvement District (CID) that is administered by the Downtown St Louis Partnership. From the CID page:
The Community Improvement District provides new and enhanced improvements and activities, including: maintenance, security, marketing/communications, streetscape improvements, landscaping services, economic and housing development, and special events above and beyond those currently provided by the City.Â
Yes maintenance is on the list. Well Jim you’ve got some maintaining to do.
based on your first pix i’d say your over reacting. only the top half of the tree is missing.
While money is certainly an issue, the indifference exhibited by many City employees (“worker bee level”) that are suppose to fix these things is a serious problem.
May be a better title would have been, the zipper has come undone.
It’s the classic government conundrum – the politicians are much more willing to allocate the money for “new” projects (that come with photo ops and ribbon cuttings) than they are to fund ongoing maintenance needs. Combine that with the way larger trees increase in cost exponentially, and you get what we’re seeing . . . and, unfortunately, the poor maintenance just reinforces the perception that the city is struggling!
Ongoing maintenance is also going to be a problem along the “new” I-64. MoDOT has already approached the muncipalities that border the highway about maintaining the green space on MoDOT’s right of way.
Look to the medians on Tucker and 14th street just south of DT. Only a couple of years old, but already full of weeds and void of any beauty. Pathetic Mr. Slay.
sad to say, because it was redone so recently Washington is in better shape than most of the City. I’ve literally driven gravel roads with less potholes than some streets around here …
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grassroots solutions seem to work best on the small things: our family takes care of our gardening bug by weeding/planting flowers around the street trees on our property … or at least we have in less busy summers. maybe loft dwellers could “adopt” a tree & its well to beautify?
I have already “adopted” several trees near my building at 16th and Washington, trimming low-hanging branches and picking up trash around them. How would I get permission to dig up these stumps, which are on city land, and replace them with new trees? Unfortunately, I suspect that many of these stumps will require a stump grinding machine, to grind them below grade, before a new tree can be planted. You can find decent-sized trees (most of these trees/stumps are White Ash) at a nursery for $20.
Adopting trees on Wash Ave is very altruistic of you, but what can be done to actually get a response from the governing bodies responsible for downtown? This is a critical time for downtown. It’s convention season and baseball season, and Washington Ave is finally in full swing. We actually don’t have the funds to plant some new trees and buy a few pavers!? That’s ridiculous.
The paving replacement is actually quite sad. Most of the stones could easly be removed undamaged during any repair process. I doubt the few that would need to be replaced with new stones cost much more than the asphalt. Its a result of laziness of the people involved.
MOdot has done the same thing to old growth trees in “green” spaces. In one neighborhood alone, over 70 old growth trees have been cut down in these green spaces and no new trees planted….pathetic.
FYI, those are supposed to be 2′ wide granite bands. Here is the website that describes every feature of the Washington Ave. streetscape in detail:
http://stlouis.missouri.org/development/washingtonave/finaldesign/precast2.html
The paving stones are supposed to be better because you can pull them up, do your repair, and put them back without ripping up a bunch of asphalt. Sounds like the maintenance crew needs to dust off the maintenance manual from about 80 years ago… when St. Louis streets were covered everywhere with paving stones.
Those tree grates with the narrow slots are also magnets for cigarette butts. Walked along part of that stretch today and many especially near the restaurants are simply full of butts jammed into the slots… really quite nasty. Unfortunatly this is what happens sometimes when things get over designed.
The “problem” with the cigarette butts has less to do with the design of the grates and a lot more with smokers using the sidewalk for their ashtray! That, and the obvious lack of maintenance . . .
The cigarette butts are part of the investigation into the Copia fire. Please do not disturb them. Thank you.