Reminder: Walk in The Ville on Thursday

Metropolis’ well-known event, The Walk, will take the show to The Ville neighborhood on 2/9/06. The Walk will start at 6:20pm. More details here.

– Steve

Sunshine Law & St. Aloysius

Today I made a formal written request to the City Counselor’s office for two documents related to St. Aloysius:

I had requested communications via fax or email because otherwise they send out letters in the snail mail. I received a reply back via fax indicating they’d get back to me by the 13th of the month.

I had requested any fees be waived as this was in the public interest. They denied my request to waive any costs. Yes, I’ll be getting an estimate of costs to produre two documents. By law they are allowed to charge up to 10¢ per page along with time to research the request. I’ll be curious to see how much time it takes them to research a current file.

I fully expect St. Aloysius to be on the agenda for the February 27, 2006 meeting of the Preservation Board, however, the items are not yet posted.

– Steve

Hearing on St. Aloysius Wednesday Morning

The Housing, Urban Design and Zoning committee of the St. Louis Board of Alderman is having a public meeting/hearing on Wednesday at 10am. St. Aloysius is among many items on the agenda. The bill before the committee is a bill for the redevelopment, not about tearing down the buildings (the bill already assumes that much).

Here is the info on the meeting:

01/25/2006

Meeting Type: Committee Meeting
Sponsor: Housing, Urban Development and Zoning
Time: 10:00am – 11:00am
Location:Kennedy Room (Room 208)
Message: B.B. #312 – Young, An ordinance to change the zoning of City Block
387.05.

B.B. #326 – Villa, An ordinance establishing a Planned Unit Development
District as the “Mississippi Bluffs Planned Unit Development District”.

B.B. #328 – Roddy, An ordinance establishing a Planned Development District
In City Block 3884 to be known as the “Park East Lofts”.

B.B. #354 – Hanrahan, An ordinance to change the zoning in City Block 4982.

B.B. #358 – Krewson, An ordinance establishing a Planned Unit for City Block
3894 to be known as “Lindell Condominiums”.

B.B. #361 – Vollmer, An ordinance establishing a Planned Unit for City Block
4054.11 to be known as “Magnolia Square Subdivision”.

B.B. #369 – Roddy, An ordinance approving a Redevelopment Plan for the
Cortex West Redevelopment Area.

Learn Plastering at Upcoming Seminar

All of us with old urban houses seem to have the need to know how to plaster (I’ve always been better at hiring than doing). If you want to learn the skill of plastering check out a new class offered by The Urban Studio in the increasingly dynamic Old North St. Louis neighborhood.

The two-day class will be held January 28th & 29th. Click here for more information.

– Steve

Conrad is Best Team to Redevelop Richmond Height’s Hadley Township

This post will cover a lot of ground including mass transit, pedestrian connections, politics, historic preservation, suburban sprawl and of course; eminent domain. But I’ve given away the conclusion in the headline. Of the proposals presented at last night’s meeting in Richmond Heights on redeveloping a part of that suburb known as Hadley Township, the Conrad team was by far the best.

THF, which I despise, actually had a much better proposal than I would have anticipated. The architecture firm of Heine-Croghan, which had a proposal as a developer, showed a lack of experience doing urban planning. Mills Properties, that had submitted a fourth proposal, was not at the meeting because apparently their approach wasn’t comprehensive enough to be compared to the others. Translated that means it didn’t take enough people’s homes to be considered by Richmond Heights.

From the literature I picked up at the meeting it seems that a fifth proposal, not on Richmond Heights’ website, was received. It was from QuikTrip, the Walgreen’s of gas stations. Maybe they wanted to do the world’s largest gas station comprising all 57 acres? Just imagine the number of pumps? People with Hummers might have to fill up again once they got to the other side of the QuikTrip.

Before I get into looking at the proposals for the area I want to talk about the area and how it got to this point. To the North is the highway that is about to get rebuilt. To the East a stable neighborhood. To the South the THF Realty monstrosity known as Maplewood Commons and to the West, across Hanley, the most f*cked up collection of strip malls, big boxes and offices that are sadly all relatively new. Among them is a new MetroLink light rail station that will be opening late this year.

The area in question was, at one time, a very stable and middle class African-American neighborhood. But because of the prime location speculators have been buying up properties for years. One was the aforementioned Mills Properties. The City of Richmond Heights has also acquired a number of properties within the area. The Richmond Heights Public Works department is located within the redevelopment area as are some other offices for the municipality. In short, the area suffers from being too well located to remain a nice middle class neighborhood.

In other similar areas, say Olivette just North of the tony suburb of Ladue, middle class houses were bought and razed for larger homes. But this didn’t happen here. I’m not sure if the speculators knew the land would be worth more if they could turn it into more strip malls or if it was because of the racial makeup of the neighborhood that they thought they couldn’t sell new in-fill houses to the white masses. Either way it has put these people’s neighborhood in the middle of a real estate game where they are simply the pawns. Yet as more and more speculators have bought property in the area it makes it harder and harder to sell your place to a new owner-occupant. The self-fulfiling downward spiral begins with the remaining home owners left realizing they will be forced to leave their family homes.


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