Treasurer Candidate Forum Tonight!

Tonight voters will get a chance to hear all the candidates for Treasurer. This includes the four Democrats (Wessels, Wahby, Jones & Boyd), Republican Tim Bachmann and Greens Don DeVivo and Anthony Stevens.

The event starts at 7pm tonight, Thursday July 26, 2012 in the AT&T Auditorium located at 801 Chestnut St.    The 8th & Pine MetroLink station is very close and the #99 Downtown Trolley stops a block south on Market at Citygarden.

Please get informed on the candidates in the primary before voting August 7th. Three of these seven candidates will be on your general election ballot on November 6th.

— Steve Patterson

Downtown Trolley Debuted Two Years Ago Today, Sunday Service Added Last Month

The #99 MetroBus is also known as the “Downtown Trolley.” It’s not an actual trolley, just a standard short-length bus wrapped to vaguely resemble a trolley. From Metro’s website:

The #99 Downtown Trolley provides regular, all-day service throughout Downtown Saint Louis moving workers to jobs, visitors to cultural and sports venues, and everyone to the restaurants, retail, and service providers. The #99 Downtown Trolley route also recently expanded to serve downtown’s thriving residential developments, retail outlets, and cultural attractions along Washington Avenue. A reliable schedule, frequent trips, and quick connections to MetroLink and numerous MetroBus routes at the Civic Center Station make this route a practical option for traveling around Downtown Saint Louis.

The Downtown Trolley was introduced two years ago today and I’ve used it often in that time. Tourists use it as well to get from their hotel to different spots like City Museum and America’s Center. Conventional buses are intimidating to many but the cartoonish wrap, colorful signs for stops and simple route map put people at ease. The #99 Downtown Circulator bus that did a similar loop before the Downtown Trolley debuted didn’t have the same level of ridership.

Since many bus lines don’t go east of 14th Street many local transit riders have to take the #99 to reach their final destination. But when it began service it didn’t operate on Sundays, which presented challenges to locals and tourists in town on Sunday. Last month Sunday service was added.

— Steve Patterson

Happy Third Birthday Citygarden!

Citygarden in downtown St. Louis has become such as important place it’s hard to think it’s only been open for three years. The dedication took place on June 30, 2009.

Citygarden is an urban park and sculpture garden in St. Louis, Missouri owned by the City of St. Louis but maintained by the Gateway Foundation. It is located between Eighth, Tenth, Market, and Chestnut streets,in the city’s “Gateway Mall” area. Before being converted to a garden and park, the site comprised two empty blocks of grass. (Wikipedia) 

These two blocks were completely passive before, and mostly overlooked.

Overall Citygarden has been a huge success, attracting residents and tourists. The only part that wasn’t a success was the restaurant, The Terrace View. From September 2011:

Jim Fiala has announced that he’ll be closing The Terrace View when the lease expires at the end of the year. The restaurant will go to lunch service only Mon. through Fri. from 11am until 2pm beginning Oct. 1, and the space will still be available for private events through the end of the year. (Feast)

 

In the above article Fiala said he couldn’t get enough evening customers. My personal experience on numerous visits was the food was good but the service was lacking. I still think about an excellent ratatouille I had once but that dinner with a friend is most remembered by the poor service. The menu was also wrong for the location, too upscale.

The space was only vacant for a few months though:

Unlike Jim Fiala’s Terrace View, which previously occupied the restaurant space in Citygarden, Joe’s Chili Bowl (808 Chestnut Street; 314-241-7070) is a complete departure from upscale dining. The surroundings remain exquisite, featuring views of Market Street and Busch Stadium, but the vibe is much more casual.

Joe’s Chili Bowl opened for lunch on April 13, and it started breakfast service this past Tuesday. General manager Roxanne Williams says that further expansion to a late-night menu will come slowly with time.

The menu at Joe’s Chili Bowl is more appropriate to families with kids wet from playing in the water features, I wish them well.

— Steve Patterson

Carr Street Now Features Hot Steam Pipes

Cambridge Heights is the neighborhood just north of America’s Center and the Edward Jones Dome. For many years it contained the Cochran Gardens high rise public housing project. Today it’s a nice mixed income neighborhood. The school where I vote is located here.

But earlier this month, after voting, I was making my way back downtown and spotted something I found rather odd, a section of the road closed off. I decided to get a closer look.

Hot steam was coming from two pipes, with very little protection. Could this be related to the incident blocks away on April 5, 2012?

A broken pipe sent up a giant white plume of steam in downtown St. Louis this morning.

The 20-inch steam line under North 11th Street just south of Convention Plaza ruptured sometime before 7 a.m. (stltoday.com)

Maybe it’s an unrelated problem?

Hopefully the local media will look into this and how it may be affecting local residents. I passed by the area on a MetroBus recently and the “hot” yellow pipes remained at that time.

— Steve Patterson

Police Block Law-Abiding Pedestrians On Washington Ave With Parked Tow Truck

Watching the changing police strategy on Washington Ave has become something of a hobby for me. It’s free entertainment, the only drawback is I have to be up late to participate.  My prior post on the police crackdown: St. Louis Metropolitan Police Overkill On Washington Avenue.

The focus of everyone is primarily the two blocks between Tucker (12th) and 14th, although efforts some nights have been extended as far east as 9th Street. Few saw the display of force in front of the convention center between 8th-9th.

A flashing sign read “LOUD MUSIC EQUALS TOWED CAR.” To prove the point the police parked a tow truck on the sidewalk so it’d be visible to motorists…oh never mind those pedestrians downtown visiting our city and spending money.  See for yourself in this 1+ minute video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G85ncWpC3AE

The humorous part is the police closed Washington Ave just a 100 feet or so further west, forcing all traffic to turn right onto 9th Street. Meanwhile down at 6th Street cruisers are standing out of sunroofs (Cruising Is Stupid). The officer I talked to said the tow truck was the idea of Chief Dan Isom and Mayor Francis Slay.

Hopefully we can manage to value pedestrians someday.

— Steve Patterson