Interco Plaza, An Ugly Reminder of Past Mistakes

St. Louis, like many other older industrial cities, has made numerous mistakes in the past decades. One of those is a city park, known as Interco Plaza, located at Tucker and Dr. Martin Luther King. The city’s lists of parks simply indicates it is 0.71 acres and has a single fountain. However, the fountain no longer exists. From the City Journal on May 14, 2002 I see the Board of Public voted to approve “Demolition of the High Wall of Interco Plaza Fountain, Tucker Street & Dr. Martin Luther King.”

When proposed I’m sure the artist rendering showed many people conversing around the now-removed fountain. Politicos probably wax poetically about how this new investment in the city was going to do wonders for the area as nothing else had. It may have worked, for a while. Today it stands (barely) as a relic of the brutalist concrete movement.
Although I had been past it hundreds of times I had never stopped and taken a closer look. On a hot day this past August, I did stop and take in the beauty of all the broken up concrete:

So who is this Interco Incorporated? Their long standing name was the International Shoe Company and currently they are known as Furniture Brands. Furniture Brands is based in Clayton, in the Interco Tower which opened in 1985. Click here for a company history.

Interco Plaza is located at the SE corner of Tucker and Dr. Martin Luther King — between the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to the North, the St. Louis Public Schools HQ to the East and St. Patrick Center to the South. The balance of the area is parking. Hadley Street to the East was cut off to through traffic and Dr. King Drive between Hadley and 10th were also removed. Just as well, the Convention Center cuts off through access on Dr. King.

Getting in closer we see the Plaza before the removal of the fountain and the high wall near it. The green spaces (left & bottom) shown above are holes to the tunnel below. The balance of the green, basically the NE corner, are at grade. Still doing research but I guess that a building and basement were razed at this site and the plaza was the replacement.

A few images:

This park is such a horrible space, even the homeless will not use it! Well, at least not the top. Homeless do use the space underneath and the tunnel under Tucker for shelter. A Post-Dispatch article from October indicated the city estimates the cost to replace Tucker (either by filling in the tunnel or building a new tunnel) will cost $30 million, they are seeking federal assistance. Unclear to me is the future of Interco Plaza.

It really needs to go away.

Does Furniture Brands still own the land under the air rights? Can we re-open the closed streets in the area? What about building an SRO (Single Room Occupancy) on a portion of the land? What will become of those living underneath?
I just watched a documentary, about the homeless in an abandoned Amtrak tunnel, filmed in the late 1990s in NYC. The film, Dark Days, was very moving. The homeless themselves were the film crew. This documentary, the first for Marc Singer, received several awards, including a couple at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000.

Here is a brief intro:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpXHCRYXP7s[/youtube]

Like the rest of our city, we have many forgotten areas between areas being revitalized. We need to learn what we can from past mistakes such as brutal concrete plazas and resolve to reconnect and heal the entire city.

St. Louis’ Award-Winning “Vacancy to Vibrancy” Now Online (w/Invoice)

Last week I was pretty harsh on the city for “buying” a second so-called World Leadership Award (see post). Well, I did a records request (per Missouri’s Sunshine Law) and have for your weekend reading the “Vacancy to Vibrancy” entry as well as the invoice for £3,000 (a tad over $6,000) to be included on the short list.

Here are a few selections from the entry:

Housing is the key to a sustainable urban environment.

Historic preservation has proven to be the catalyst for the resurgence in the inner city housing market.

Recycling aging buildings is key to a healthy urban environment.

I believe the City of St. Louis strategy “Sustainable Housing Through Preservation” can encourage Mayor’s in the world’s industrialized cities to meet the growing demand for housing by recycling our existing built heritage.

Wow, the mayor seems like he cares about developing sustainable housing and preserving existing structures. In the report, they talk about the energy it takes to build a new building and construct a very good argument for retaining old buildings. Too bad they do things like raze the historic Century Building for a parking garage rather than more housing as proposed by other developers with less influence. Or allowed SLU to raze a historic building for a surface parking lot. The list is long, too long.

The region experienced a 25% increase in the urbanized area, yet population growth was only 6 %. The region ranks 18th in population in the country, but second in land consumption. Land consumption occurred four times faster than our population growth.

Again, quite true. In fact, the report is excellent. Now if only they actually talked publicly about sustainability and acted upon these beliefs rather than on what those with money and influence seek. It should not take me doing an open records request to obtain this information. The full submission is a large PDF file (4.5mb), Vacancy to Vibrancy: Sustainable Housing Through Preservation.

The letter from the World Leadership Awards indicated the city was on the shortlist is dated September 4, 2007. It acknowledge being shortlisted in the “Law & Order” category but our entry was clearly marked for the housing category — I assume this to be a clerical error in the letter.

The letter references some details as well as payment for the “presentation fee”:

Because of difficulties which occurred with several cities last year we have, with great regret, been forced to adopt a stricter policy regarding late payment. If we have not received payment by 14th September, then we may not be able to include your city in the shortlist, which will be published on 20th September 2007.

So unlike competitions where everyone pays an equal registration fee, here they make sure you pay up if you want to be on the shortlist. No money, no shortlist. With 38 entries on this year’s shortlist that is over $228,000. Cities still have to make flight, hotel and transportation arrangements to get their team there to present in person. I’m not sure where in the budget this is funded. Do we have a PR budget? Click here to see the letter and invoice.

Speaking of PR, we had less incorrect BS being spread this year but there was still some misleading facts out there. For example, the Mayor’s announcement about the win included this item:

In his presentation, Slay focused on rebuilding the City through the creation of new housing units and renovating historic buildings. Since 2000, more than 20,000 units have been rehabbed and 4,221 new units have been built in historic buildings, resulting in almost 14,000 new residents of the City.

Really? “Almost 14,000 new residents of the City?” I covered these types of lies back in April when they were twisting original & challenged census numbers around.

Here are the official Census figures:

• 2000: 348,189
• 2006: 353,837 (after city challenged the census estimate)

By my math the difference is 5,648. Most likely Slay’s PR folks are playing with numbers again hoping the media will pick it up and not question the source. As in the past, they use the pre-challenge census numbers from years past to compare with a newly revised post-challenge census figure to artificially inflate population.

I personally am quite happy that we’ve stopped losing people, it does not benefit anyone to twist the facts around to make it look like we’ve gained nearly three times as many people as we actually have.

I’ve been to Hell and back Today

This morning when I got up I knew what I had to do today, scoot out to the suburbs. Rock Hill, specifically. Normally I don’t really mind a nice long ride but it was a tad cold this morning. Bundled up, I made my way out Chouteau/Manchester to my destination.

Back on the road I cruised through the new development at Manchester and Rock Hill (McKnight). Wow, and I thought we had some vacant storefronts downtown. I didn’t even stop for pictures. They’ve actually got some good pedestrian connections but they also got some real dumb mistakes. They have a long way to go to get those spaces leased. A little advice to Rock Hill, make sure they get a few more tenants before starting to raze buildings to the North. Look for a review in January ’08.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I decided to head straight for the center of hell — Brentwood and 40. Since I was out this direction I had to stop at Whole Foods and Trader Joes to get a few things I can’t really get elsewhere. Whole Foods is great because of their commitment to the environment. However, I think they may have gone a bit too far:

The urinal in the men’s room has a nice new lever handle designed to conserve water (so does the toilet). Up for liquid and down for solid waste. How nice, but this is a urinal!!!! My dad never pulled me aside to share that solids don’t belong in urinals, this is something we guys just seem to know. I’m all for saving water but people need to think more critically. This might certainly encourage some unintended consequences.

Heading from one strip mall to another I made my way to Trader Joes. Ah, so many items and so little carrying capacity. Good thing about a day like today, my frozen items stay frozen. Looking to the North as I left I saw the I-170/40 interchange and realized that, for all its flaws, I’m so glad I live and work in the city. I walk to destinations now and scooter to those places outside my local environment. I could not imagine living life in that environment amongst highway ramps, huge parking lots and so on. I thought about stuff they had at Trader Joes that I wanted to get — briefly considering a return trip soon or even a venture there on MetroLink but I’m not sure it is worth it.

Traffic was moving slowly on Hwy 40 heading back to the city but not slow enough for my scooter. I took the back ways through some of Maplewood’s lovely residential areas (those that have not been converted into horrible anti-pedestrian big box centers). Returning to the city limits was a relief for me. I was still in an ugly part of town (St. Louis Marketplace) but crossing back over the line was comforting to me.

Approaching Kingshighway on Manchester, however, and we had a preview of what we may see in a few weeks – backed up traffic on a major East-West route. The Water Dept had the two Westbound lanes of Manchester closed so traffic was condensing to one lane. Eastbound traffic was backed up for a considerable distance before noon.

Upon crossing Kingshighway I was back in my element. Ah yes, urban buildings near the street. On-street parking. Mixed uses. Not perfect, by any means. But, home. Got the grub put away and headed out the door on foot to a couple of ribbon cuttings.

First up today was Good Works, a second location for this local store that is a fixture in the Loop. A former bank lobby, the Good Works space at 9th and Washington Ave is impressive. Above is Barb Geisman (Dept Mayor), Ald Phyllis Young, the store manager (sorry, didn’t catch her name), and Jim Cloar from the Downtown Partnership. I wish Good Works the best of luck and hope they do get all the support they need from the city — and some on-street parking out front.

After a brief stop at the AIA Bookstore, next door, I headed to the ribbon cutting at Flamingo Bowl.

Mayor Slay arrived sporting a personalized bowling shirt. Slay got to throw out the first ball, leaving a couple of pins. OK, he admitted he wasn’t a bowler.

The space? In a word, stunning! It is divided into two parts, each with a bar, restrooms, kitchen and lanes (4 on one side, 8 on another). This means groups can reserve a section while the balance is open to the public. Their hours are noon to 3am daily. The noon thing might put a crimp in the early lunch crowd.

They allow smoking so we’ll have to see how well the systems work to remove the smoke and smell. Of course, the toxic pollutants are still in the air. This might keep some of us from going for food, I can handle a drink and bowling around smoking but I just can’t consume food around people smoking.

The Downtown Residents holiday party is this evening so I will be back there later tonight. Unlike so many other great venues downtown, I think we just turned a corner today. Up until now everything seemed like it might slip away any moment. Today this place will do a lot of selling for downtown.

The Muddy Path to City Hall

No, I’m not talking about a muddy political path. Instead, I am talking about a real path in the bare dirt.

The above is now many make their way to city hall. When city hall officials closed the North entrance facing Market St to city hall this forced pedestrians, many city employees, to head through the grass to the East entrance facing. The third entrance, facing South, is open onto a public parking lot.

The path is well worn and it looks as though someone had perhaps even put down wood chips, possibly from this tree that had been cut down. The now closed entrance is to the left.

The well worn path, or “desire lines” per the lingo, leads to this tiny area to squeeze through. Welcome to City Hall. The least the could do is pave a sidewalk here to recognize the clear need.
Coming from the North and West as a pedestrian, as I now do, I can certainly say I take this path rather than go the long way around on the sidewalks. The city wants to make the Gateway Mall vibrant but has the adjacent pedestrian entrance closed! Uh, duh. The city needs to give serious consideration to the costs to re-open the Market side entrance — after all the building address is 1200 Market.

Washington Ave; New ADA Ramp Creates Trip Hazard

Pedestrians walking down Washington Ave heading to Joe Edwards’ new blowing bowling alley, Flamingo Bowl, should be mindful of a trip hazard created by a neighboring property.

Heading East on Washington toward the new bowling alley we see the wonderfully remodeled former Days Inn, now residential apartments. It has been great seeing the transformation of this structure. They even filled in the former automobile drive to the courtyard space — now that is real progress for pedestrians. But the ramp you see ahead presents an issue.

The landing juts out from the narrower ramp. Yes, it is a minor thing but generally big things are not trip hazards. Small things, in particular those that blend with the sidewalk, cause people to fall. In general, the ramp and landing are created the same width so you don’t have this little protrusion at th bottom.
Presumably the city would share in any injury claims as they approved the design and installation of this ramp in the public right of way.