The 9th/10th One-Way Couplet Needs To Return To Two-Way ASAP

More than six decades ago 9th & 10th streets were changed from two-way to one-way in the opposite directions — a one-way couplet. This still exists from Clark Ave on the south to Cass Ave on the north — a distance of 1.2 miles. The north end used to continue past Cass to connect to I-70, but it was shortened when construction on the newest bridge over the Mississippi River began approximately 15 years ago. The south end still connects to I-64 ramps.

The purpose of one-way streets decades ago was to quickly get cars into downtown in the morning, then back out after work. They did their job…a little too well. Downtown was so quick to empty out nobody stuck around for shopping, dinner, or a show. There many reasons why downtowns emptied out, but one-way streets were a major contributor. To make downtown St. Louis enjoyable as a place to live, work, and visit all the one-way streets need to return to two-way traffic eventually. When Locust Street west of 14th switched back to two-way a dozen years ago it made a huge difference.

For nearly 50 years  9th & 10th extended north of Cass Ave to connect to I-70, but that ended with the 2010 start of a new bridge over the Mississippi River, later named the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge. But downtown 9th & 10th weren’t the original couplet of paired opposite direction one-way streets.

Let’s look at the original one-way couplets in the downtown central business district (Arch to 12th/Tucker):

1. Northbound 4th & southbound Broadway (aka 5th)
2. Southbound 6th & northbound 7th
3. Southbound 8th & northbound 9th
4. Southbound 10th & northbound 11th

The first still exists today, the rest have all been changed to the point they no longer function as original intended. Three streets lots blocks to the convention center & dome: 6th, 7th, 8th. Ninth will soon be added to that list.  Sixth street lost blocks to Kiener Plaza & the hotel south of Market. Both sixth & seventh streets lost blocks to the original downtown Busch Stadium (now Ballpark Village), and the current Busch Stadium. And finally northbound 9th Street is closed for one block between Market & Chestnut because the designers of Citygarden didn’t think about a pedestrian signal at 9th & Market. D’oh!

I’ve posted about changing these opposite one-way streets back to two-way traffic numerous times, but now it’s urgent. When the convention center expansion begins a couple of blocks of 9th will be closed, but that’s not the urgent reason for restoring two-way traffic. The vacant AT&T Tower downtown at 909 Chestnut (bordered by 9th, Chestnut, 10th, and Pine) is why these streets need to revert to two-way traffic. Why?

The entrance and exit to the small underground garage was designed with the one-way streets in mind, the entrance was off northbound 9th and the exit was onto southbound 10th. The 44-story building has been vacant since 2017, but eventually someone will renovate it. When they do it would be easy to switch the entrance and exit. If the building is renovated while 9th & 10th are still one-way it’ll be impossible to make them two-way in the future.

Since built, exiting traffic has come out southbound just before Chestnut. Switching the exit from 10th to 9th wouldn’t change this potential conflict point.

The building has lost value and changed hands numerous times, eventually someone is going to renovate it. 

The 1.4 million-square-foot, 44-story office building on Chestnut Street is the largest office building by square-footage in the region, and the 1986 structure built for a single tenant has posed a vexing challenge amid a downtown market already struggling with the highest office vacancy rate in the metro area. 

AT&T vacated its lease in September 2017 and about 2,000 of the company’s employees relocated nearby in buildings at 801 Chestnut and 1010 Pine streets. (Post-Dispatch, May 2019)

For comparison here are some other large vacant buildings downtown

• Railway Exchange, almost 1.2 million square feet.
• Butler Brothers warehouse, I’d estimate at 500,000-600,000 square feet.

Since 909 Chestnut was built as a headquarters it was connected to buildings to the east & west. Another block west was a large company parking garage. The garage under 909 Chestnut is small, was built for service vehicles and company executives. A MetroLink light rail station is only a block away, but parking obsessed assumes everyone has a car.

The building footprint is too small to ramp up to use some upper floors for parking. A car elevator or automated system are the only options to get cars up higher, but they’re very costly.

Eventually someone will figure it out. When they do 9th & 10th should be two-way traffic.

— Steve Patterson

MLS Stadium: Before & During Photos From the St. Louis Wheel at Union Station

In February 2016 the St. Louis region was still accepting the fact the Rams were returning to California, our proposal to clear the north riverfront for a new National Football League (NFL) stadium had been rejected — by Kroenke or voters…can’t remember.

Also in February 2016 Major League Soccer (MLS) expressed interest in St. Louis as an expansion city. I didn’t want the historic north riverfront to continued being targeted, so I proposed a different site. A site I’d wanted to see redeveloped for years. The short remnants of the never-built 22nd Street Parkway.

See 2015/01/20 A Great Site For A Major League Soccer (MLS) Stadium In Downtown St. Louis

I haven’t been back to that hotel yet, but I have ridden the St. Louis Wheel at Union Station. Twice, in September 2019 and earlier this month.

Today’s post is a look at similar views from those two visits, nearly 18 months apart.

Now for a cropped view focusing on Market over the 22nd Parkway.

Now looking west:

It’s even more exciting closer to street level.

It is very exciting to see this area beginning to recover from the damaging 22nd Street Parkway project. It’ll take years to fill in, but it’s better to naturally fill in over time than to be an all at once infill project.

Will do this again in 12-18 months.

— Steve Patterson

Downtown St. Louis Grocery Store ‘Culinaria’ Will Soon Become A ‘Schnucks’

In August 2009 Schnucks Markets opened a small format grocery store in downtown St. Louis. It has been called “Culinaria, A Schnucks Market.” They had little choice, the Schnucks’ development company Desco had razed the historic marble-clad Century Building to construct a parking garage for their Old Post Office project across 9th Street — but the ground floor retail space wasn’t getting leased. To save face, Schnucks opened a grocery store in the space.

They didn’t have much confidence it would be successful, so they called it Culinaria rather than Schnucks. To their surprise it has been a success, though the average transaction amount is likely less than the big stores.

Very soon they’ll drop the ‘Culinaria’ brand name to become a ‘Schnucks’, like the bigger stores.

Over the last 11 years they’ve made physical changes, such as a minor reconfiguration of shelves in 2013. They also stopped doing wine tastings in the upstairs mezzanine long ago. The Kaldi’s Coffee station closed before the pandemic. The pharmacy became a CVS pharmacy this year, as Schnucks sold their pharmacy business entirely.

Currently the store is undergoing the biggest changes since opening. Here’s a list of just some of the ongoing changes I’ve observed:

• New shopping carts
• New flooring is being installed throughout
• The coffee station is gone
• The wine & spirits will be moving from the mezzanine to maim floor
• The dark shelving is being changed to white shelving
• New aisle guides
• Self-check stations have been added for the first time, replacing most cashier stations
• The wall over the deli, meat, seafood areas is now red with new signage.
• Only very longtime employees still have Culinaria name tags.

You could say they’re just revising the store, but everything new now has the Schnucks name on it. The Culinaria name and the design elements that distinguished it from regular Schnucks stores are all being removed.

Schnucks hasn’t yet announced the name change, and a spokesperson didn’t confirm it upon my inquiry. But clearly it’s happening. The very last change will likely be new exterior signage.

— Steve Patterson

Still Not Used To Seeing Citygarden Empty, Fountains Off

When Citygarden opened on June 30, 2009 there wasn’t the usual ribbon cutting. Instead then-mayor Francis Slay called the maintenance building and asked them to turn on the fountains. With the exception of winters and one period they had a maintenance issue the fountains have been on. During warm months someone was always getting wet.

It has been nearly six months since this pandemic began and I’m still not used to seeing Citygarden devoid of human activity.

To counter the desolation here’s a photo I took almost six years ago.

There will be a time when the fountains and lights will be back on, but that’s likely more than a year from now. Looking forward, trying to be patient.

— Steve Patterson

Broadway and 4th Street Need To Become Two-Way Again

Last week, in response to a death as a result of late night racing downtown, St. Louis put up temporary barriers in various places, including blocking all traffic across the Eads Bridge.

In addition to the bridge, the city also closed a section of Washington Avenue from Tucker Boulevard to 14th Street with barricades this week. Barriers also narrow traffic in stretches of 4th Street, Broadway and Market Street.
 
“These are temporary changes,” Krewson said Friday. “This isn’t something that we expect to be there forever.”

Krewson said downtown streets are built to hold a much larger volume of traffic than the city sees in an average day, and with fewer people working downtown because of COVID-19, the streets are even less crowded. (Post-Dispatch)

The last paragraph, quoted above, is an admission our streets are too wide. Previously when anyone argued the 4th Street/Broadway couplet (one-way in opposite directions) should be returned to two-way traffic the claim was always they needed to remain one-way due to traffic volume.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic the volume on 4th/Broadway couldn’t justify the one-way couplet. It’s past time for the decades-long experiment on our streets to end. The sole purpose of originally converting these streets to one-way decades ago was to quickly move cars into downtown offices in the morning, and then vacate them in the afternoon — just before the sidewalks were rolled up each night. Part of the engineer’s disastrous effort also included banning on-street parking — that slows down the flow of vehicles. This is exactly the opposite of how you build a user-friendly downtown.

Walk Broadway from Cole Street to I-64 and see how it feels being next to one-way traffic for over a mile. You’ll see in places the street has 5 very wide lanes that encourage high speeds. Even with the barricades at points, drivers coming off I-44 onto southbound Broadway at Cole street they reach high speeds to get into single file formation at Convention Plaza (aka Delmar).

Changing 4th/Broadway back to two-way traffic is only part of the needed solution. Traffic signals must be timed so that a person taking off from a red light doesn’t encounter another red light just a block or two down the street. Our signal timing often encourages people to speed to make it through the next two or three lights. Lane width also matters — the wider the lanes the faster the traffic.

This isn’t the St. Louis of 1950, we need to reverse decisions made by people born in the late 19th century.

— Steve Patterson