St. Louis to Participate in National Park(ing) Day on Friday September 21, 2007

The City of Saint Louis is joining numerous other cities this year in promoting the National Land Trust’s “National Park(ing) Day 2007.” I received the following statement from St. Louis’ Director of Planning & Urban Design, Rollin Stanley:

National parking day is being celebrated in cities around the world including 23 in the U.S. Groups are invited to “adopt” a parking space on Chestnut Street just north of City Hall, between Tucker and 15th Street (to 17th if needed), or contact your local business association to participate along a commercial street. This event “greens” street parking spaces. Your group can simply lay tarp, sod, provide some potted trees and a park bench, or be more creative.

A sod lounger perhaps. A small water element. Be creative. Bring your “green” materials onto Chestnut Street and select a parking space. Feed the meter just as you would if you were parking your car. Then prepare your space for the day or part of the day. When you are finished, pack up your materials and leave the space as you found it.

If you have questions, please contact Rollin Stanley at the City of St. Louis Planning & Urban Design Agency at 259-3426.

Mr. Stanley indicates they’ve had a good response including, “some artists; a college group; local architects.” Stanley asks that efforts not start until after 8:30am as building inspectors are parked there before then. Unfortunately Mr. Stanley will not be present on Friday as he will be speaking at an event in New Orleans.

OK, I’ve done my civic duty to help spread the word about this potentially good event. However, the intent behind the effort is to create park space where it is needed. So St. Louis’ choice of Chestnut — bordered on both sides by park space — seems foolish at best. Furthermore, most of Chestnut at this area is angled parking which may look a bit odd and potentially hidden between two larger vehicles. You’d think they would have picked something more logical — a street surrounded by buildings on both sides — like Washington Ave for example.

For more information check out a video from the 2006 event in San Francisco as well as http://www.parkingday.org. I’d like to see more of these “parks” spring up throughout the city although it may be a challenge to get something organized this late. Maybe something along Euclid? South Grand? St. Louis Avenue next to Crown Candy? Cherokee? Washington Avenue in front of Copia?

Maybe next year. Artists and gardeners, mark your calendars for September 2008.

UPDATE 9/19/2007 @ 2:35pm:

I just checked the website of the Downtown St. Louis Partnership and I found no mention of this event at all.  Their calendar of events lists a music event on Thursday at Union Station as well as the Taste of St. Louis this weekend but nothing about this or the meeting on MetroLink Thursday afternoon.   The City’s own Calendar of Events fails to mention this as well, although it does include the meetings on MetroLink and the Taste of St. Louis as well as the concert at Union Station. The city’s press release website also doesn’t show any announcement of this event — I went back as far as May 1st looking for a call for participants or an announcement of the event but found nothing.  Ditto for Mayor Slay’s campaign site — the place where much information that should be announced through the city’s own press release system ends up.

City Needs To Follow Ordinance Regarding Posting of Signs on Trees

The ordinance regarding the respect for street trees is pretty clear:

22.48.100 Attaching items to trees.

No person shall attach or place any rope, wire, sign, poster, handbill or other thing on any tree or shrub now or hereafter growing in any street or public highway of the city, nor on any guard or protection of such tree or shrub. (Ord. 49772 § 2 (36), 1960: 1960 C. § 242.060.)

Yet I see violations all the time — from the city itself!

The above would be a public street tree with a public notice stapled to it.

Getting in closer we see it is a notice about a zoning conditional use hearing — for Larry Rice’s “Alternative Energy Center.” I’ll write more about this situation prior to Thursday so I don’t want comments to be about Rice and all that associated baggage.

No, this is about street trees and making sure they are properly cared for. It is clear from this and many others that the city doesn’t respect its own trees. I presume someone posting about a garage sale could be cited for such an offense so why shouldn’t the offending city department?

The fine for removing the sign is $500 but what is the fine for posting the sign on a tree?

A ‘Rural Renewal’ Program Would Provide Habitat for Deer and other Wildlife

The tony collection of McMansion subdivisions known as Town & Country, MO is back on the issue of Deer overpopulation. It seems their 1-3 acre lots amongst the natural woods are overrun with deer. The reality is that our natural environment is overrun with low-density and often tacky housing that requires an SUV to go anywhere. From a KSDK report:

“Deer like the suburbs that we build,” said Erin Shank, a Missouri Department of Conservation urban wildlife biologist. “They like that broken forest interspersed with meadow-like lawns. That’s really ideal for them, so their populations have really grown over the last several decades.”

Wow, it seems they have managed to design an environment ideally suited to the main deer population but only a small segment of the human population. A number of years ago Town & Country engaged in a horrible plan to relocate the deer but many perished due to shock (see Grim Harvest). Some municipalities allow hunting using bows to avoid shooting some VP from shooting a lawyer friend in the face. Town & Country, however, does not yet permit hunting. Some are advocating traps where they are instantly killed via a bolt to the brain. Ick. Others say the deer are fine and simply plant other vegetation that deer don’t like, a logical solution in my view.

But I have some other ideas as well. We could start by banning vegetation all together. These people with their 4-bedroom/4-car garage houses on an acre of land like the illusion of country living but we know they really are not. So I say we prohibit them from growing any sort of plants outdoors — at least the ones known to attract deer. Hey, if they don’t like it they can always move much easier than the deer. I don’t think this is going far enough though. Those brick front houses look bad enough as it is but without vegetation it would be a horrible sight. The kids there already suffer from not being able to walk or bike anywhere so they really shouldn’t have to live without hostas and ferns.

I say we hire PGAV or Development Strategies to do a blighting study on the area. We argue that all of Town & Country and everything else in St. Louis County outside of the I-270 highway loop is Ecologically Obsolete. With places like Creve Coeur, Chesterfield and Dardenne Prairie all working on town centers to create walkable destinations we can justify that others are old fashioned and obsolete forms of development. New Urbanism represented by New Town at Charles or even old urbanism represented by original city development as well as the older ring of suburban development such as downtown Ferguson, Maplewood, Webster Groves and such is more ecologically sustainable.

So much like the maps of the 40s & 50s that justified razing entire sections of the city because a percentage of the structures lacked indoor plumbing, we can create maps of the region where the obsolete development pattern is too low to sustain a walk-to town center & transit. Everything below a certain threshold would be targeted. I call it Rural Renewal. St. Louis County would identify areas for land clearance, returning the land to nature with wildlife and vegetation taking over former manicured lawns. The deer population would once again be controlled with bobcats and other natural predators. Of course we’d need to use eminent domain to take all the homes, strip shopping centers and fast food joints. We’d need to clear thousands of acres at a time.

This could all be justified, of course, based economic development for the region. By returning an area to nature we’d force residents into existing areas, assuming we also limited fringe development. People living in an $800K house in Town and Country could do wonders with a $500 house owned by the LRA! Think of the economic benefits of such a renewal plan — one that could easily past muster after the Kelo decision on eminent domain. We’d see a surge in new construction within the I-270 highway loop giving new vitality to both the city and older areas of St. Louis County. Low density areas in the county, but within the I-270 loop, would be targeted for redevelopment to accommodate those displaced for the new rural areas. Rail transit (commuter, light rail) and quality localized service via bus and/or streetcar would be far more feasible than currently. We’d naturally eliminate some of the 91 municipalities in St. Louis County as well as excessive school districts, fire districts and so on. These new large ‘rural renewal’ areas would become wonderful natural areas again — attracting tourists to our area. This could become a model program for other regions to follow.

It would, of course, be difficult on those being displaced but they really shouldn’t stand in the way of progress and that which is beneficial to the larger region. The environment and the economy both outweigh their private land interests. We’ve been through large scale land clearance projects before and the suburbanites always seemed supportive of such efforts.

City’s First LEED-Platinum Building Hosts SLU Environmental Planning Class

Last night our Environmental Planning course, taught by Dr. Sarah Coffin, met not at our usual classroom at Saint Louis University but at the new offices of the William A. Kerr Foundation on the north Riverfront. Never heard of the Kerr Foundation? Well, you are not alone. Kerr had set up a foundation so that after he died family members would help give away his money for good causes. Two brothers, nephews of Kerr, are responsible for the foundation. One lives in California and helps distribute the money there while the other, Dr. John Sweet, lives here in St. Louis and naturally he supports causes here.

I don’t have the exact mission of the foundation but local community support and education are key components. Dr. Sweet brings a strong environmental ethic to this job — a position that brought him out of retirement. Sweet is an avid bicyclist which is how we first met, I am fortunate to be able to call him a personal friend. Sweet, through this foundation, has given money to many groups throughout the region. Now keep in mind that they don’t have the tens of millions (or even hundreds of millions) that many foundations do. Still, to some organizations doing good work, even a few thousand dollars here and there can have a huge impact.

So a few years ago Sweet decided the foundation would buy an old building on the north riverfront area, near the entrance to the bike trail. I toured the building with Sweet prior to the start of any construction and I can tell you it was pretty well deteriorated. A former 19th century bath house turned food processing facility, it had had a rough life. Today the building has undergone a $2 million dollar renovation and has been approved as the first LEED-Platinum building in the City of St. Louis.

OK, from this view it doesn’t look like much. The more interesting section is up the hill to the left, which I failed to get a good picture of! As part of the LEED process you try to minimize waste & improve efficiency so I would image that is why we still see former windows blocked up. While the foundation does not need this much space for their office, they are allowing non-profit groups to use the facility for educational purposes, including meetings.

Inside it looks pretty conventional. But items such as a dimmable florescent lighting, non-VOC paint, recycled newspaper insulation, carpet made from recycled materials, kitchen cabinets from Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore and so on are certainly non-conventional. Getting natural light into the building to reduce lighting loads, which increase air conditioning loads, was important.

A glass floor in the main area helps get natural light to a lower level, shown here looking back up.

Six reasonably conventional solar tubes on the roof help take natural light down to another lower level that was formerly completely dark without artificial lighting. Here a framework is used to protect the tops of the tubes — glass tops help these serve as outdoor tables for rooftop events. The decking is the well-known TREX material which is easily available.

Except for the deck areas, the roof is a green roof — covered in drought tolerant materials. These were recently set in place so they’ve yet to fill in but they are expected to expand and disguise their containers. To the left is an exterior elevator for full access to the roof. Not visible are solar panels facing the south, mounted on a pitched section of roof.  The north riverfront trail is just beyond the flood wall seen in the background.  That body of water, for those of you that don’t see it often enough, would be the Mississippi River.  

Set on a deep base in the tiny sliver of ground to the north of the building is the first wind turbine in the City of St. Louis. On the tour we checked out the controllers that help invert the power from this and the solar panels so that it can be sold back and added to the grid. The wall of devices, meters and switches looked like something out of Frankenstein’s laboratory. Sweet says he still buys electricity but feels that it is reduced through the use of solar and wind energy. Obviously a wind turbine is not something Joe homeowner can run out and purchase. Nor can developers likely recover such costs either although as such technology becomes more commonplace we will certainly see prices drop.

Above and left is the Laclede Power Building, owned by Trailnet, may soon be renovated.  At first glance you might think it is derelict and abandoned and a candidate for demolition.  However, Trailnet has worked hard to keep the building intact by doing major stabilization work such as exterior tuckpointing and a new roof.  While it is currently rough around the edges, the Laclede Power Building will be reborn in the future and will serve many generations of St. Louisans.   Spending money on stabilization is often a far better investment than simply razing a building to create ever more vacant land.  And yes, John Sweet’s foundation helped fund the stabilization and environmental remediation that took place.

Another building in the area I am hugely fascinated with is this old warehouse. A group of investors owns this building and quite a bit of land around it.  I can picture a whole new neighborhood of mixed-use buildings built around those that remain.  A short walk to the south, through the Laclede’s Landing casino district, and you are at the MetroLink light rail station.  I would love to live in this building!  Note to self, call the one investor you know and see where they are with this project.

Following the tour our class met in the main space of the foundation’s building for actual lecture and discussion.  One person we learned about was Garrett Hardin who, in 1968, wrote a still controversial paper, The Tragedy of the Commons.  The basic premise being that selfish individual interests can end up destroying the common good — fishermen that over fish an area can ruin the fishing not only for themselves but others as well.  We didn’t get into his views on human overpopulation as well as he and his wife’s belief in choosing when to die — they committed suicide together in 2003 — both were in their 80s. 

We also looked at the writings from the late Rachel Carson.  Carson was a marine biologist and her writings on the impact of DDT on bird populations helped ban the use of the pesticide in the US.  Monsanto apparently still makes DDT for use on crops in countries like Mexico.  Some consider Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, a significant part of the birth of the environmental movement that led to the first earth day in 1970 as well as major environmental laws enacted during the Nixon administration. 

We reviewed/discussed many more topics in class, too numerous to outline all here.   Post class I scootered around a bit and got a few more photos. 

The  Kerr foundation is in the foreground at right.  This is technically still an alley although it is not really paved.  The building I am madly in love with stands proud in the background. 

The sunset, like the weather, was quite nice yesterday.  This electric substation brings home the point about what it takes to power our lives, including the Mac I type this on now.  I want to thank Dr. John Sweet for creating a wonderful demonstration project to help educate and prompt us to think about our decisions about building materials and energy use.

Environmental Planning Class Debates Gas Taxes and Other Issues

Tuesday evening was my first class of my second year of grad school. For those just tuning in, I am working on a masters degree in Urban Planning & Real Estate Development (UPRED for short) at Saint Louis University. The class, officially known as Environmental Planning and Risk Analysis, is going to be interesting. The instructor, Dr. Sarah Coffin, indicated we will all be nudged out of our comfort zones during the class. And yes, she is skilled at pushing me out of my comfort zone (in a good way).

Initial conversations got into issues throughout the world such as pollution in China, foresting in the NW, water quality in the great lakes, invasive plants in Georgia and so on. It was also brought closer to home as a couple of our assignments will focus on local environmental planning issues. Our first assignments will be readings from Aldo Leopold. Our first paper will require looking at a local environmental issue from either the perspective of Leopold, or from an opposing view.

I should clarify for readers, my fellow classmates and Dr. Coffin that, in any posts I do related to class, I will not identify personalities or classmates in these posts. In-class discussions should remain free dialog. Still, I think the subject matter and the diverse viewpoints are good for debate here. And of course, anything I’m posting here will certainly be a simplification of what was reviewed in two and a half hours in class. If you want more detail you’ll simply have to enroll! OK, with that cleared up we can move on.

Our discussion of local issues turned to air pollution and causes. This led to the car and one solution of raising gas taxes to curb use. Talk was then about what price would we actually see a shift in habits due to price. Another point was that higher fuel prices will impact those driving longer distances to reach their jobs — people living in places like Chesterfield and St. Charles County don’t have the alternate transit choices as those closer to the core. This brought us to public choice theory — that people chose to live there. However, that is where much of our jobs are located so perhaps that is the best place to live. Furthermore, not everyone wants to live in a downtown loft (or they can’t all afford said loft). Then it was suggested that not everyone can live downtown or in the city — we have a region of over 2 million people so some will live outside the urban core in suburban-ish areas. The point was made that suburban areas like Chesterfield, Creve Coeur and Dardenne Prairie are all working on town centers as evidence that even those that enjoy suburban living, and schools, do want a more urban environment than what they have but want it in their context, not in the older core. We quickly moved to road projects such as the Page Ave Extension and the rebuilding of highway forty were to accommodate those from the west trying to get downtown. It was countered that this was not the only reason 40 was being rebuilt. Bringing it home was the point that higher gas taxes would most impact the working poor that, due to lack of public transit to many places, are forced to drive to newer suburban areas for employment. Suffice to say, in under 10 minutes, we didn’t resolve the debate about gas taxes but we covered a lot of ground.

Toward the end of the semester our topics will evolve into more complex papers and eventually into each of us teaching a portion of the class on our topic.