St. Louis’ THF Realty Creating Anti-Pedestrian Sprawl in Colorado

Billionaire & Wal-Mart heir Stan Kroenke’s development company, THF Realty, is continuing to create more sprawl across the land. This time they are taking 2,000 acres of Colorado farm land and converting it to a generic wasteland of big boxes, massive streets and boring office parks.

To appease critics the project includes an 80 acre wildlife area for eagles. The remaining project will be a devotion to the automobile. The most glaring example is the last sentence from the following from contractor RG Brinkman:

“The Buckley Road Street Improvement consists of constructing 2 miles of major arterial roadway to connect the north end of the Prairie Center site to the south end. Buckley Road is an essential connection of the new residential construction occurring south of the Prairie Center project. This new construction includes all necessary utilities and paving required to serve the retail portion of this site. A pedestrian underpass with a skylight also is being constructed to allow for access to the future school.“

A pedestrian underpass for the kiddies!?! Wow, that sounds really appealing — a street so challenging to cross we must put pedestrians underground. I can’t imagine spending $500 million destroying 2,000 acres and at not at least making it so people can walk from place to place without having to duck under roadways.

I found this quite telling as well:

The mass grading for the Prairie Center project consists of the mass overlot grading for a 250 acre commercial section of property. Approximately 1.5 million cubic yards of material had to be moved in order to provide the required elevations for the building pads and parking lots for the Prairie Center project.

That is some serious earth moving. But when you are plopping down 100,000sf big boxes with parking you just can’t keep natural grades like so many small town main streets.

If such a development was created fifty years ago or even thirty years ago I might understand, most planners just didn’t know any better back then. But in the last 20 years we’ve seen the rise of alternatives to this commonplace sprawl in the form of New Urbanism. THF Realty must know of New Urbanism and the concepts of making developments accommodate both pedestrians and cars. It just seems they ignore good planning in favor of continuing the old ways.

Additional Information on Prairie Center:

Additional Information on alternatives to THF’s typical sprawl:

Remember, “this land is our land.” We are the ones that should determine the fate of our built environment. Will it be sprawl as usual or will we return to places for people?

– Steve

Peak Tax Will Hit Before Peak Oil

Regular reader “Brian” posted the following comment to a recent post:

Before peak oil, however, there will be the phenomenon of “peak tax.” Oil demand will certainly outpace oil supply, but even sooner, fuel taxes will not be able to keep up with road building demand.

Folks love new and maintained highways, but they don’t want higher taxes to pay for them. Even if gas prices stay around $2 per gallon in the near future, fuel tax receipts can’t keep up with the American appetite for more lane miles per person.

I hadn’t really given much thought to the issue of transportation funding being tied to fuel taxes but he makes a very good point. Each year we keep building more new roads and bridges, meanwhile our aging roads and bridges need maintenance. Labor and material costs continue to rise. Yet funding for all this is dependent upon using more gasoline.

As we encourage more people to walk, bike, scoot, take the bus or light rail, carpool or to drive more efficient vehicles the less money we are going to have for road building projects. Unless, of course, people start driving more miles. But the pattern is clear, fuel taxes are not keeping pace with road maintenance/building expenses. Something must change.

Either the fuel tax rate must go up or expenses must go down, or some combination of both. Raising the tax rate seems difficult politically. So does lowering costs.

Like today, the City of St. Louis will remain the most compact jurisdiction in the region in the year 2030. St. Louis County trails with the remaining counties at low densities. At one time these low density counties had the bulk of their population concentrated in cities such as East St. Louis IL, Belleville IL or Hillsboro MO. Along with the rest of the country these counties have spent the last 50+ years spreading themselves out in sprawling cul-de-sac subdivisions and strip centers anchored by big box developments.

But let’s look at density from another perspective. I created the chart shown to the left from population and miles of roadway figures supplied by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments.

More density means you have more people to pay for the infrastructure that is in place, roads in this case. As fuel use flattens out or decreases we’ll need to find other ways to tax ourselves to pay for our roads and bridges. The more people sharing the costs the better. The City of St. Louis, St. Louis County and parts of St. Clair County (East St. Louis) can increase population without the need to create new miles of roads. The other areas are adding population but also adding more and more miles of roads.

This process of continuing to build more and more roads and expensive bridges at such low densities is not sustainable forever. The burden of maintaining this sprawl will be disastrous to our region. We should be investing today in repopulating the City of St. Louis, St. Louis County’s inner-ring suburbs and the close-in municipalities in metro East Illinois. Before everyone jumps to the comment section to tell me people want suburbia and an SUV, I just don’t believe it.

Yes, on the surface that is certainly true. But the American public has been brainwashed over the last 50 years to the point most of our population lives in suburbia and they don’t know anything else. The success of New Urbanist developments, like New Town at St. Charles, across the country as well as renewed interest in cities says to me people are seeking alternatives. The process of vacating cities for sprawl was gradual and took a couple of generations.

Government policy around housing, lending, and roads had much to do with the rise of suburbia. The question is will we as a region be wise enough to see the writing on the wall and change our policies around housing, lending and roads to return to a more sustainable development model? I certainly hope so.

– Steve

Oklahoma City About to Abandon Chance for Excellent Mass Transit System

No, this is not Urban Review Oklahoma City. But I do return to my hometown a few times a year and keep tabs on what is happening there. Besides, we can learn from looking at other city’s successes or, in this case, mistakes.

At right is the remains of a once great rail system serving central Oklahoma. Like most cities of any size, Oklahoma City had streetcars to serve urban transportation needs. Back in the day a number of municipalities dotted the countryside around OKC and these were served by the “Interurban” rail service.

Behind OKC’s Union Station are these twelve tracks. Yes, twelve. Three long platforms, like the one shown in the foreground, served six of the twelve lines. Passengers entered the Union Station and took underground tunnels beneath the tracks and then came up through stairways to get to their platform.

The platforms had long canopies protecting passengers from the sun and bad weather. It appears to have been a great system, capable of serving many passengers. These platforms and tracks will soon be gone.

… Continue Reading

World’s Second Largest Oil Field Peaks!

If any of you have doubted the upcoming reality of peak oil perhaps this will change your mind:

Kuwait was attempting to push production to 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd) but the field peaked at 1.7 million bpd. More detail in the full story.

Are we as a region, state and country going to be proactive or reactive? We should be rushing to expand our mass transit options for the region and abandoning all expansions of the roadway system such as the proposed Mississippi River Bridge.

– Steve

Hearing To Reopen Praxair Today at 1pm

Lafayette Square has been a “hot” neighborhood since I moved to St. Louis in 1990. And why not; beautiful homes, convenient location and a magnificent urban park.

But in June of this year it got a little hotter than the residents could stand. Rather than exploding home sales you got exploding storage tanks at Praxair on Chouteau.

During the crisis, which lasted for weeks, Praxair company officials talked of relocating and the city made strong statements about making sure they moved away from such a heavy residential area. It all seemed like it would resolve itself.

Now one side is backing away from their original words and thankfully it is not the City. Praxair has requested a permit to renovate and reopen their facility but the city refused. Praxair has appealed. Today is a hearing on Praxair’s appeal. Not surprising, residents are actively opposing Praxair complete with signs, a letter writing campaign and a new website called, appropriately enough, PraxairWatch.com

From the site you can link to local sources for pictures and video of the explosion, fire and aftermath. Sensational images!

I’ve gone back and forth on this issue to a degree. At various times I’ve wondered if the residents were just pampered NIMBY types (not in my back yard). After all, industry has been around the edge of Lafayette Square longer than any of them have lived there.

But, in the end, I’ve separated in my mind “regular” industry from hazardous and explosive materials. That is where I, and clearly the residents, have drawn the line. Lafayette Square has a number of other businesses at the edge such as an overhead door distributor, a truck repair center and small manufacturers and distributors. These types of businesses have co-existed with the residences for decades and it is a nice mix. St. Louis’ is still very much an industrial city. But explosive gasses?

No resident, regardless of affluence or influence, should be subjected to the risk of such explosions. The mere fact the fire department had to keep water on the scene to cool the contents for what seemed like weeks is proof enough this doesn’t belong anywhere but a highly industrial area where the risk to home and life is minimized. Praxair needs to move to another location.

Today’s meeting is at 1pm in room 208 of City Hall.

– Steve