Habitat Helping To Build Up Housing Stock in North City

Recently I passed through MLK & Grand (map). Near there I spotted Habitat for Humanity crews busy finishing up several new homes:

These homes are being built just North of the old Blumeyer Housing projects. Blumeyer is now gone, being remade under HUD’s HOPE VI program by McCormack Barron Salazar.

This was smart site selection on the part of Habitat. By building their homes adjacent to other new housing it will strengthen both. This corner of the city is getting a good mix of housing types.

Unfortunately the commercial development is all geared toward the car. The above houses are less than a 1/4 mile from a Save-A-Lot grocery store just across Grand but getting there on foot is not an easy task.

Strong urban neighborhoods need strong urban retail to make them fully walkable. This is not about forbidding cars or forcing people to walk rather than drive. It is about making the commercial districts abutting our residential areas such that someone, on a nice day especially, would want to walk rather than drive. For those that prioritize their income such that they use public transportation rather than being a slave to their car, walkable commercial districts will help reinforce that decision.

Addendum 11/7/08 @ 8am:

I need to indicate how I think this more urban/walkable district would have been developed.  First it would have been to target an area more than the size of any single project.  Both sides of Grand as well as a few blocks of MLK & Page in each direction.  Create an urban zoning overlay for this area that would require new buildings to be built up to the property/sidewalk line.  Identify where parking could be located and then build several public lots so that those building retail in this district don’t need large quantities of land for their own private parking lots.  Build new sidewalks with street trees, benches, bike racks and such.  This leaves only the new buildings to be built or the renovation of the few that remain.  Place on-street parking in as many areas as possible.  Include “bulbs” at the ends of the on-street parking to help reduce the distance to cross Grand, MLK & Page.  Streetscape & parking are handled by the city as their contribution to the district.  The smaller parcels that exist don’t need to be assembled by the city or private developers because they don’t need massive parking lots – the zoning overlay would remove all mandates for parking.  Over time this would develop into an interesting walkable commercial district adjacent to the new walkable housing being built East of Grand.

Prop M & Gas At Two Bucks a Gallon

This past summer we had gas at $4 dollars per gallon. Today, one day after the election, gas was $2 per gallon. The current world economy has reduced demand so th price has fallen from the Summer high.

Had gas still be around $4 a gallon, Tuesday’s vote in St Louis County on Proposition M might have been a yes — approving a 1/2 cent sales tax increase that would have triggered a 1/4 cent tax in St Louis City that was approved over a decade ago. The final tally was 261,317 against the tax and 245,123 in the affirmative (52/49).

To many our transit system is a way to get to a sporting event and nothing more. But for many daily riders it is how they get to & from their jobs. Gas could be fifty cents a gallon and it wouldn’t matter if the vehicle, maintenance and insurance are too costly. These persons, the ones who use our transit system (light rail & bus), will be the most impacted by the failure of Prop M to pass. But the entire region will be impacted — some employers will find out their employees can’t get to work. Without a workforce, these employers will suffer.

Service will now be cut back to meet the budget. It will be drastic. Our huge and recent investments in new infrastructure will go underutilized. Fewer people will be attracted to the system as it will be a crippled system.

The regionalist in me says we need to cast a wider net — looking to our 16-county region on both sides of the river to find a permanent funding solution. But the urbanist in me says, “F____ the County.” Focus on serving the compact city with a few runs into the older compact inner ring suburbs. Period. Let’s starve the far suburbs of our cheap labor force. Let’s pay someone to be a street vendor downtown rather than have them going to work at Chesterfield Mall.

The newly elected Obama administration will be transit friendly. We need to make serious progress over the next 4-8 years to improve our transit system. Screw a regional system – St Charles County & St Louis County doesn’t want it fine. We need to be building as many miles of on-road streetcars as we possible can. No more of this light rail in special rights-of-way, simple streetcars with significantly simpler (read less costly) infrastructure. The system needs to be about connect people & places a few miles away rather than trying to get transit to every corner of our sprawling region. Streetcars combined with high density urban zoning along the route will create new investment. Now is the time to re-urbanize our major corridors with street-level transit. Work out a deal with communities like Maplewood that abut the city. We don’t need the entire county, just the municipalities that are our neighbors.

Our city grew & prospered with streetcars. It can be done again. We in the city approved a tax in 1997 for transit that has never been collected because the county never agreed to go in with us. Screw that. If we are going to build a regional system of over-engineered light rail then we do need them. In the meantime we need to build a transit system in the part of the region that was built around transit in the first place.

We have decent density. We have the too wide rights-of-way. We have the population that is more willing to use and thus fund such a system. It is time we start acting like the independent city that we are. Add a toll both along I-64 at Skinker — charge people to enter the city to work, go to games or the zoo. I don’t need to leave the city — everything I need is here. They need us too but they act like they don’t. Let them have their environment dominated by cars, that is too spread out to efficiently move people by other means like by bus or rail. If we stopped driving out to the burbs to shop they’d notice.

Perhaps voters in 1876 were right in removing the city from the county?

President-elect Obama

Going to bed very happy tonight. We’ll have to see of other races & ballot measures on Wednesday.

Let’s Turn Missouri From Red to Blue (updated 2X)

I’m tired of living in a red state, having my blue state friends tease me about Missouri helping elect “Dubya” into office – twice! Baby Blunt doesn’t help either. “But I live in a blue city across a river from a blue state,” I proclaim. Not good enough.

All these years voting in Missouri I have never once used the “straight party” option and finally now that I’m planning to vote a straight Democratic ballot, the one check option is gone. Figures. That is OK though, I’m perfectly willing to go to the polls and make a deliberate selection for each individual candidate.

I’m planning to give myself plenty of time to vote in the morning before a 10am doctor appointment. Oddly enough my polling place is the Heritage House senior center on Olive West of Jefferson. You’d think it would be more in the downtown west area.

I’ll add onto this post after I’ve voted to share my experience. Feel free to add your comments below.
Update 11/4/2008 @ 9:05am:

I was back home from voting 45 minutes after I left. The lines were long, being disabled finally paid off for me as I was able to cut in line. I felt sorta bad for everyone that had been in line for a couple of hours. My limit on standing is about 15 minutes.

My polling place has two precincts, one of which includes many downtown residents. The other precinct had nobody voting but the line for mine was quite long. Get inside and you see the problem . They had three lines, A-I, J-R, & S-Z. The A-I line was seriously backed up while the other two had only a handful of voters.

I ran saw a few people that I know. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits despite the long line. It was a nice morning and as you can see the leaves on the trees were stunning. It is really encouraging to see people willing to take so much time to go vote.

On the other hand if we had early voting like many states do, lines on Election Day might be eliminated, or at least significantly reduced. It is important for people to vote. It is not important we all do it on a single day and in person.

I ended up not voting entirely straight Democrat. On some of the local & State legislative seats I voted Libertarian or Independent to show support for candidates willing to challenge incumbents.

Update #2, 11/4/2008 @ 1pm

On the way back home from the Doctor I passed by my polling place. The considerable outside line from this morning was gone. For those of you that have not yet voted, please get yourself to your respective polling place and do so. Most likely the lines, if any, will be minor.

Special Events Can Create Access Issues Before, During & After

Living downtown is great, most necessary goods & services are within a short walk (or wheelchair ride) away. One of the few downsides can be large special events which present issues of accessibility not only during the event but before and after.

Crews set out barricades often a day or two prior to an event. As you can see from the above image it is almost like they are doing their best to block the sidewalk. I encountered these twice — first when I walked down Washington Ave to 14th from 16th to meet friends for a Friday lunch – the day prior to them being used for a weekend event.Then on Saturday I encountered them in the morning heading to Lucas Park for a cleanup project.

Later in the day I encountered issues with the actual street closing. Having two blocks of the street closed sounds like a pedestrians dream but with stages, seating and other stuff getting through is often a challenge. In the image above I was trying to get back home from the grocery store. I was able to cut South across Washington Ave and then cross 14th heading West. I had to come very close to the front of the fire truck to get through.

Neighbors that live in this immediate area that they been stopped before just trying to get home — event workers trying to charge them a cover to pass through the event to get home.

Like valet parking it often comes down to the quality of the individual company and how caring the organizer happens to be.  I don’t want to end the events — they have their place and they often bring new people to the area — I just want more thought on the part of the organizers and event management companies. I’d also like to see more oversight by the city to ensure a major street like Washington Ave remains accessible.