What to do with Police HQ?

On June 12th, the Post-Dispatch reported that Dan Isom, the new Police chief believes that the city will need to spend “tens of millions of dollars on renovating, rebuilding or relocating” the existing Metro Police Department headquarters (just south of city hall).

The three options being presented the Police Board on June 24th are:

1. A complete updating of the existing building, apparently by working around the existing occupants.
2. Moving into a temporary location while the existing building is demolished and a new one is constructed on the existing site.
3. Moving to an existing building somewhere else in town.

I’d add a fourth – moving to a new building/campus, somewhere else in town.

According the newspaper article, the last major renovation was in 1962, nearly 50 years ago. I’ve never been in this building, but I’ve been in plenty of other ones, both public and private, of the same age, and I have little reason to doubt the chief’s conclusions. So far, all I know about the options are what I’ve read in the paper. And at this point, I’m thinking the last option is probably the best one and the second one is the worst one.

There are multiple issues that should be considered, some obvious, some not. The structure was built in 1928, so it would certainly qualify as both a significant structure and an historic one. According to the Post-Dispatch, “The department hit peak deployment in the 1970s, with 2,200 officers. A year ago, it sank to 1,340, roughly a low for the last century. The number was up to 1,393 this spring.” The way people commute has changed significantly over the past 75 years – most ranking officers now have take-home vehicles, and no longer use public transit to get to work. In its unique, state-run status, the Police chief doesn’t really need to report to the Mayor on a regular basis. Our Aldermen work more closely with the District commanders (located at one of three area stations outside of downtown) than they do with the chief. The need for security of the building and its contents has evolved significantly since it was built. How the Police Department is managed and how Police work is accomplished has evolved, and continues to.

One big reason for keeping the location where it is is its proximity to the courts – one job of the Police is to testify in criminal trials. A secondary reason is that it’s close to both public transit and other city offices. But, much like how the Fire Department Headquarters are more-centrally located, outside of downtown, at Jefferson and Cass, there are arguments for starting “with a clean sheet” somewhere else. It all boils down to what everyone at HQ does, and, unfortunately, where to park the fleet of official vehicles that are an integral part of any police operation.

As we all know, St. Louis has a lot of underutilized structures, vacant land and struggling neighborhoods. For that reason alone, I see little reason for this building to be demolished. If it can be renovated and made to work for the Police for another 30 years, great, do it, and I’ll continue to ignore the on-street parking the Police claim on Clark and other streets. It’s the best way to preserve an historic structure, but I have my doubts about how real of an option that really is. In reality, it may make a lot more sense to find the Police a new location and to put other city departments here.

Which gets to moving – we have multiple options when it comes to existing buildings, including the old phone company headquarters downtown and multiple surplus city school buildings. The city owns multiple parcels of vacant land. What it really boils down is the complexity and the uniqueness of the various components of the program for an ideal home for the management of the organization. According to the Post-Dispatch, the current building houses “most of the department’s 517 civilian employees . . . along with hundreds of police officers, including the upper command staff.” If most of the officers and civilian employees who work at HQ rarely go to court, location becomes a different issue – there are reasons why a location outside of downtown might make more sense, including the ability to create a secure, low-rise campus (an anchor for McEagle perhaps?). I know, I know, it’s not the “urban” answer, but it could likely be the most cost-effective one, and one that would remove a vehicular-intensive operation from downtown.

The only option that really makes little sense is a temporary move. We don’t lack for vacant land, even in the immediate area. This is a significant building, and given our current economic constraints, I have little confidence that any replacement would measure up to the exterior appearance of the existing structure. We either need to make what’s there work for the 21st Century, or we need to find a new location that will. And, as the the mayor’s chief of staff noted in the Post-Dispatch article, “the market for office space has gone real soft, so . . . it is a . . . buyer’s market”, one where you can easily purchase a building for significantly less than its replacement cost. The only real downside of contemplating a move out of downtown will be the inevitable politics that will be a part of it – bringing ±750 stable, long-term jobs to any neighborhood would likely be viewed positively. Bringing them to one that’s “economically challenged” / “struggling” could be a godsend . . .

– Jim Zavist

The return of the Kiel Opera House

Being somewhat of a rarity, not being from around here, I have no warm spot in my heart for the old Kiel Opera House. I have been to the Fox, so I know that that’s a pretty nice facility. The Board of Aldermen has approved a financing package to help reopen the old Kiel. The folks at the Fox aren’t happy, and obviously don’t want any new competition, city-subsidized or not.

I have mixed feelings on the whole issue. My libertarian side questions why the city should be involved in subsidizing one business more than another (as if they should be subsidizing any of them). My architectural side likes seeing the effort being made to save and reuse an older, notable building. And my consumer side likes having more choices, especially in the city. I’d be really interested in seeing what others are thinking, especially those who remember “the old days”!

– Jim Zavist

Sheraton Convention Hotel Was Too Close to Convention Center

When St. Louis opened the Cervantes Convention Center in 1977 it had an adjacent convention hotel, a Sheraton, at 7th & Cole.  Almost immediately talk of expanding the convention center was underway.  The city had two options — go east of 7th Street or South of Delmar (renamed Convention Plaza).  The convention center is now called America’s Center.

One problem with expanding the convention center to the East was the nearly new, 600+ room, Sheraton hotel that also opened in 1977.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from Thursday, March 10, 1988:

If St. Louis follows through on its offer to buy and demolish the Sheraton St. Louis Hotel just east of the Cervantes Convention Center, the convention center could be left with a marketing nightmare, hotel industry insiders say.  Razing the 614-room Sheraton to expand the convention center would leave the convention center, at least  temporarily, without a hotel on the site that is large enough to handle visitors.

The city offered Monday to buy the Sheraton and other land east and south of the convention center to make way for a 120,000-square-foot expansion. Officials declined to disclose the amount of the offers. Hotel and real estate sources estimate that the Sheraton could be worth anywhere from $25 million to $40 million, but city officials said those estimates were high.

By May 1988 the city looked toward the South rather than the East:

There are several good reasons for the city to have changed directions on the Convention Center expansion and go southward to Washington Avenue instead of eastward across Seventh Street. A Convention Center fronting on Washington would remove an eyesore and contribute significantly to the revitalization of the street. It  will thrust the center into downtown, whereas the eastward expansion would have left it on the periphery.  Finally, it solves the problem of the Sheraton Hotel, east of the center. Under one scheme, the center was to be  built around the hotel. Under another, the hotel was to be demolished. Neither approach was satisfactory.

The Convention Center is on Convention Plaza, better known as Delmar Boulevard, and is bounded by Seventh and Ninth streets. Under the latest expansion plan, Dillard’s parking garage and the Lennox Apartments would be spared but the other structures between Seventh and Ninth would go. The southward expansion would add 120,000 square feet, as would have the original plan. The cost, $72 million, will be about the same. The tourism industry is important to the economy of the region and the state. The expansion of the Convention Center will assure that the area will be able to attract large meetings that otherwise would go elsewhere  [Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch – Saturday, May 21, 1988]

The Sheraton hotel, just over a decade old, was spared demolition – for now at least.

Earlier in 1988 the football Cardinals announced plans to leave St. Louis for Arizona because St. Louis wouldn’t build them a stadium.  The Cardinals had played football in Busch Stadium since it was built in 1966.  I’m not sure where they played 1960-66.  The team wanted a football stadium, not a shared baseball stadium.   The new stadium debate had already gone on for a couple of years before the Cardinals left.  As soon as they announced they were packing their bags for Arizona the efforts to built a stadium and attract a new team gained speed.  Soon the idea of expanding the convention center to the South with the stadium going East emerged.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Friday, December 14, 1990:

The Sheraton St. Louis hotel downtown is scheduled to close the first week of January [1991], idling about 300 workers and leaving the city without a major convention headquarters.  Officials of the two unions that represent the employees were formally notified Thursday morning.  The hotel lies in the path of the eastern expansion of the Cervantes Convention Center, a $250 million project that includes a domed stadium. The hotel will be torn down, but no date has been set for the demolition. Management of the Sheraton had expected to operate the hotel until construction of the stadium began. Until the last few days, the hotel was accepting reservations through 1991.

Late in 1987, city officials first publicly discussed an eastern expansion of the convention center. From that moment on, hotel industry sources say, the Sheraton has seen an erosion of bookings. It has always depended on group business, which is usually arranged two to four years in advance.

The best way to ruin a business is to threaten to take it away.  Talk of razing a building a decade later.  Smart. Taking out your convention hotel to expand your convention center, even smarter.

P-D on Tuesday, July 14, 1992:

As politicians smiled and sweated in Monday morning’s 89-degree heat, ground was broken for the $260 million stadium expansion of Cervantes Convention Center.  The building, scheduled for completion by October 1995, will seat 70,000 for professional football. With 177,000  square feet of exhibit space on one level, it will accommodate events as large as national political conventions.  During the hour-long ceremonial groundbreaking at Seventh Street and Convention Plaza, demolition crews began swinging a giant ”headache ball” at the old Sheraton Hotel, one block north. Each swipe at the 13-year-old hotel, which sits near the 50-yard-line of the stadium expansion, brought cheers.  But the sturdily built hotel was slow to succumb to the headache ball.

It took a while to raze the nearly new structure.  I recently found a couple of photos I had taken:

The expansion & dome were completed. St. Louis was not awarded an expansion team.  Instead the Rams relocated from Los Angeles, California.  It was not until 2003, over a dozen years later, that the Renaissance Grand & Suites opened to replace the loss of the Sheraton. Conventions expected by the expansion didn’t come due to the lack of a convention hotel.  Brilliant!

Of course the Renaissance Grand convention hotel has had it’s own issues, from earlier this year:

Each decade the numbers get bigger and bigger.  We had a convention hotel, then we didn’t and then we did again.  The most jobs created through all this were for demolition companies and consultants.

Poll, Do You Care if the St. Louis Rams Leave St. Louis?

Chip Rosenbloom &  Lucia Rodrigue will be selling their 60% stake in the St. Louis Rams NFL team.  They inherited the controlling interest when their mom, Georgia Frontiere, passed away in January 2008.  The remaining 40% share is owned by Stan Kroenke, a Columbia Missouri native.

If a local/Missouri buyer is found the Rams are probably staying put for a while.  But if an out of town buyer takes a majority share it is likely they will seek to move the team when their lease in St. Louis expires.

My poll this week asks simply if you care.  You have only 3 choices:

• I don’t want them to leave.
• I do want them to leave.
• I don’t care if they stay or go.

Many factors may play into your decision.  You may enjoy the games or you may not like football but think our civic pride depends on having an NFL team.  Or you may think a football team is too costly to the community.  Or you may just not care.  The poll is located in the upper right of the main page.

I personally don’t care if they stay or go.  Although if they leave I’ll probably find the views of loss as highly irritating.  If the Rams stay, no doubt I’ll find the probably dome replacement equally irritating.  Either way I think in 5 years we will face questions as a community: can we live without an NFL team or will we be willing to fund a new stadium?  There is no place downtown for a new stadium so location would be debated.

Stay or leave I see the existing Edward Jones Dome as empty and hopefully razed.  The four city blocks occupied by the current dome are needed to reconnect downtown to the near-North neighborhood.

I see the area shaded above as being rebuilt and filled in with active streets.  If we can get rid of I-70. after the new Mississippi River bridge opens, we have a chance to reconnect an even bigger portion of our city.  See Reconnecting St Louis to the Mississippi; Don’t Cover the Highway, 86 It. Maybe in five years we can get rid of the convention center as well — that would be six more blocks to be reclaimed and rebuilt. 

Old Post Office Plaza Still Young

Open for just under two months, the Old Post Office Plaza is starting to have some activities as well as users even when there are no scheduled events.

The above is from a recent after work musical performance as part of a series from the St. Louis Public Library, which has a branch in the Old Post Office across Locust Street.  I was actually surprised by the size of the total crowd.  I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in a while and met a co-worker of his.  They had both walked over after work to hear the music.

My new friend Sam Davis from Hot City Franks was there selling hot dogs. brats and my favorite, veggie dogs.  Since this plaza is privately owned he is able to vend there with the permission of the owner.

As this plaza and as other spaces, such as the soon to open City Garden, I hope that our level of downtown pedestrians & bicyclits will continue to grow.  I hope for the time when this plaza is full of people without any sort of “programming” being required to get them there.  Have you been?  What are your thoughts?  Here was my take the morning of the day it opened, Downtown Gets Yet Another Plaza.