Burger King at Loughborough Commons Lacks Pedestrian Access Route

Given what a clusterfuck Loughborough Commons has been I really shouldn’t be surprised the new Burger King lacks a pedestrian access route. Burger King joins Lowe’s as two places at Loughborough Commons where pedestrians are not welcomed — pedestrians must be willing to risk injury or death and share space with cars to access these buildings located in a project that utilized generous tax incentives.

The public continues to get hosed at Loughborough Commons. I’m surprised because providing pedestrian access, as you will see, would have been quite simple.

Burger King has very generous provisions for the motorist but zip for the pedestrian. What pedestrians you might ask. Well, people do walk to Loughborough Commons. People also arrive by bus and bike. Yes, most use a car but we shouldn’t overlook those not driving private autos. Everyone spending money at Loughborough Commons is paying an extra tax to the Community Improvement district. Shouldn’t pedestrians expect some accommodation in return?

Potential pedestrians coming to the Burger King include nearby residents and workers at other businesses at Loughborough Commons. For example, a clerk at the OfficeMax may want to walk to Burger King for lunch

So how would it have been easy to provide pedestrian access to this Burger King? From the above picture you can see the width of the Fifth Third Bank lot is not terribly wide. To the right is the new Burger King. To the left is the main entrance for Loughborough Commons. Both sides of that entry include Pedestrian sidewalks.

So they have sidewalks bringing the pedestrian into the development.

At the bottom of the entrance the sidewalk ends (above) with a crosswalk to the South (below). Going off to the left is an outer drive that separates the out parcels from the main parking area. When built I though the solution was pretty good – the sidewalk could simply be continued to serve all four outlots.

Of course for all the establishments located in the out parcels to be accessible the sidewalk needs to be continuous. Burger King being located in the 2nd of four out parcels the fact they didn’t continue the sidewalk means the remaining two to the East will also not be in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. It also means that an able-bodied person who might consider walking a few hundred feet is being encouraged to drive.

How can this possible be so bad? They had the origins for a sidewalk to serve all four of the out parcels yet they still managed to screw it up. Clearly the pedestrian is given no thought. The folks at DESCO & their engineering consultant must all be amateurs because they can’t seem to figure out something so utterly simple.  If they want to do stupid development with their own money fine but when they hold out their hand asking for help from the public we need people & ordinances to ensure we’ll actually get something worthy of our investment.

This is not about excluding cars, or even creating the ideal urbanist project, but about planning for all means of site arrival as well as circulation within the site.  One of the residents in new homes a few blocks to the West might want to walk to the grocery store or to get a Whopper his way.  I’m referring to Mayor Slay, a new resident to the area.

One of the four out parcels will soon have a Fifth Third Bank.

One of the conditions needs to be that the bank extend the sidewalk along the edge of their parcel and that they actually connect to it. I’m emailing everyone I know at City Hall to try to improve this situation before it gets worse.

I’m sure Alderman Matt Villa would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on Loughborough Commons.

30th Anniversary of Milk & Moscone Murders

Today, November 27th, marks 30 years since Dan White, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, murdered openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone in the San Francisco City Hall. Milk was 48, Moscone had just turned 49. White was 32.

Here is a 5 minute YouTube clip that includes footage from the 1984 Oscar winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkN8OZQ0EK8[/youtube]

Milk was the first openly gay person elected to this high of an office in the United States.

Milk recorded some thoughts to be played in the event of his assassination:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_owSvbn00[/youtube]

The following May Dan White was found guilty on the lighter charge of Manslaughter, not murder. Rage over the leniency of the charge (sentenced to 7 years) led first to protest and finally to riots, the White Night Riots.

White served five years in prison and committed suicide two years later on October 21, 1985.

A new movie was just released looking at Harvey Milk. The tile is simply, MILK. Milk is played by Sean Penn. Here is the trailer:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW0lQrWn5VI[/youtube]

The film is playing at the Tivoli.

Harvey Milk paved the way for me and others to be openly gay. I am forever in his debt.

I Have Much To Be Thankful For This Year

Each Thanksgiving I’m able to think of a few things to be thankful for. This year it is easy — I’m alive! For those just joining in, I had a hemorrhagic stroke on the afternoon of Friday February 1, 2008. I spent the next roughly 14 hours on the cold concrete floor in my loft before my friend Marcia got worried and came looking for me. The ambulance took me to Saint Louis University Hospital. The next three weeks were spent in SLUH’s Intensive Care Unit. I was in two additional hospitals for care & therapy before returning home three months later on April 30th. Like I said, I’m just thankful to still be alive!

I’m also thankful for my friends & family, their support has been wonderful. Normally I would have the support of my parents but both are now deceased. But my friends, brothers + spouses, nieces, aunts, uncles & cousins have all been there for me. I cannot imagine going through the past 10 months without them.

I’m thankful to have moved downtown. This has allowed me to live very independently since returning home from the hospital.

I’m thankful I found the drive to continually push myself to recover the use of my left side. I’m thankful I didn’t lose my long-term memory. I’m thankful my short-term memory has improved greatly.

I’m also very thankful I lived long enough to see the U.S. elect a black man to be President! Maybe in 8 years we’ll elect a lesbian of say Latino or Asian heritage? I’m thankful I can now imagine that possibility. I’m thankful my faith in the future of our country has been restored. We face some challenges ahead but I’m thankful we elected the right person for the job.

I am thankful to be back in grad school and getting close to finishing my Masters degree in Urban Planning & Real Estate Development.

I’m very thankful to you, the reader. It is great encouragement to see the daily statistics on traffic to the site and to be a part of the exchange of ideas. Agree or disagree makes no difference to me, just have a viewpoint and be willing to share it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

– Steve

Euclidean Zoning To The Extreme

A hundred years ago people didn’t go to zoning hearings, they didn’t worry about being able to operate a business on their property, and any limits to the number of units on their land was more a function of the amount of land. But also a hundred years ago the industrial city was not always a pleasant place. A factory might open in the block behind your newly built home, spewing pollutants and creating noise at all hours.

The solution to these urban ills was zoning. Cities would create “land use” maps segregating industrial, office, retail, and housing. Early efforts were often used to keep industry from spoiling more pleasant areas of town. In Ohio the Village of Euclid, a Cleveland suburb, enacted zoning in 1921 to keep Cleveland’s industry out of its jurisdiction.

A property owner viewed the restriction on the future use of their land as a “taking” by the government and filed suit. The case, Village of Euclid, Ohio v Ambler Realty, went all they way to the U.S. Supreme Court. A lower court had ruled the zoning law to be in conflict with the Ohio & U.S. Constitutions. The Supreme Court, however, disagreed and reversed the lower court’s ruling. Their November 22, 1926 ruling declared use zoning as legal. Since then it has been known as “Euclidean zoning.”

Planning firms such as the St Louis based Harland Bartholomew & Associates prepared “comprehensive” plans for hundreds of cities which included the adoption of Euclidean zoning. By the 1950s they would still encounter cities that had not adopted use-based zoning. In other cases they found cities with “incomplete” zoning because while it might segregate uses it failed to regulate the heights of buildings.

In the 82 years since the Supreme Court validated the zoning ordinance for the Village of Euclid, Ohio we’ve managed to take a simple concept — keeping out heavy industry — to a point beyond reasonable. Cities and their suburbs now over regulate uses on land. Residential areas, for example, are broken down by single-family, two-family, multi-family. Even within Single-family you have different sections requiring different minimum lot sizes.

“Exclusionary zoning” is the term used when zoning is such that it excludes that which might be perceived as undesirable. For example, if a municipality has al their residential zoning so that lots sizes must be at least 3 acres in size. Minimum house size is another way to keep out more affordable housing options. Similarly, maximum sizes for apartments means those will end up being kid-free zones.  It is one thing for a developer to set project specific standards but another for government to mandate it.

Houston is famous for its lack of Euclidean zoning. It does, however, have regulations such as 5,000 sq. ft. minimum lot size for a single family house. In Houston, according to Wikipedia, “Apartment buildings currently must have 1.33 parking spaces per bedroom, and 1.25 for each efficiency.” These sorts of rules produce the same results – sprawl and auto dependency.

I personally like streets that have single-family homes, two & four-family buildings, an apartment building at one end and a storefront on the other end with an apartment over the shop. This is just far more interesting and dynamic than a street of all the same thing.

Unfortunately, 82 years of Euclidean zoning has created a strong bias against anything but strict adherence to maintaining strict segregation of uses. With all of our industry overseas there is little threat to a polluting plants taking over idyllic residential streets yet we act as if that is still the reality.

We’ve taken Euclidean zoning to the extreme and our regions (core, inner ring, edges) all suffer as a result.  It is time for St Louis and the region to evaluate our many varied zoning regulations and revamp them to create the type of community we desire rather than what folks 50-80 years ago thought we should have.  The world is a different place.  Zoning needs to adopt and change along the way.

St Louis’ former director of Planning, Rollin Stanley, got us going in the right direction.  In 2005 the St Louis Board of Aldermen adopted a new Strategic Land Use Plan.  The missing element is the new zoning to go with it.  Without Stanley advocating new the new zoning we are no further ahead than we were before his arrival.

19th Century Frame House Survives Another Month

At the monthly Preservation Board meeting last night the owner of a property seeking a demolition permit requested more time. The Preservation Review ordinance requires the board to make a timely decision once an application for demolition is submitted. In this case the representative of the owner waived that timely decision requirement.

The property is owned by the New Life Evangelistic Center. The property in question is located at 4722 Tennessee. This is next door to a former residence of mine from 1994-2004. I sold that property in 2006 prior to NLEC buying the adjacent property.

The house, a rural farmhouse, is in great condition and predates everything around it. It is one of only a few remaining such structures in the city. The city’s Cultural Resources office has indicated the building is individually eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2007 NLEC sought to demolish the historic house and construct a parking lot. This year they said they wanted to build a community garden. My experience with community gardens is that they are not typically on privately held property.

The NLEC rep indicated they do not have the funds to restore the house. Perhaps they should not have bought the property then? Before a rare (but modest) historic 19th Century structure should be razed it should be offered on the open market. The house has sold before but only in conjunction with the commercial storefront and greenhouse to the South. The house is now legally separated from that building.

The adjacent vacant land could hold two new homes.

This will be back before the Preservation Board in December 2008 or January 2009.

Prior related posts:

• June 24, 2007
• August 30, 2007
• October 10, 2007
• October 17, 2007

Click here to view this agenda item on this property from last night’s meeting (includes recent photos).