Sunday Poll: Approve or disapprove of financing plan for a new stadium up for final vote by the Board of Aldermen on Tuesday?

Last week a Board of Aldermen committee moved forward a plan for the financing of $150 million of a $1 billion dollar new stadium. Though our Edward Jones Dome is only 20 years old, St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke wants to move the team back to Los Angeles.

On Thursday, an aldermanic committee voted 7-2 to push the bill forward to a vote of the full Board of Aldermen.

The board could debate the matter as early as Friday, but procedural rules will require the board to come back next week for at least one special session to take a final vote. In order to debate the matter at Friday’s planned second reading, the aldermen will need to suspend the rules, requiring support from two-thirds of those present, and fast-track the bill. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

On Friday the bill wasn’t fast tracked so a special session will be held on Tuesday to meet the NFL’s end of the year financing deadline.

The poll closes at 8pm tonight, the answers are randomized.

— Steve Patterson

1701 Locust Street To Become Apartments

In April I posted a list of buildings I’d like to see rehabbed. Then in July Ald Hubbard introduced a Redevelopment plan for 1701 Locust, one of the buildings on my list.

The building, in the block West of my loft, will be divided into apartments. Looking forward to seeing this long-vacant building come back to life!

— Steve Patterson

Readers: Let Small Bar Exemptions From Smoking Ban Law Expire In January 2016

Nearly three-quarters of readers think the 5-year exemptions from St. Louis’ smoking ban should expire, as scheduled, after January 1, 2016. Nobody selected the option to repeal the ban altogether.

Here are the results from the Sunday Poll:

Q: Small bars were exempted from St Louis’ smoking ban for 5 years, it expires in January. What should happen:

1. Let the exemptions expire as scheduled 37 [74%]
2. Extend the exemptions permanently 10 [20%]
3. Other: 2 [4%]
   1. Extend the extension for smoke shops only
   2. ban smoking in casinos
4. Extend the exemptions for 1-5 years 1 [2%]
5. TIE  0 [0%]
   1. Repeal the smoking ban
   2. Unsure/no answer

I agreed with the one “other” answer that casinos should also be smoke-free.  I’m going to email this to all the aldermen, but I ask you to contact your alderman as well.  Please contact them to let them know the exemptions shouldn’t be extended.

Click here to find your alderman.

— Steve Patterson

See Demolition Requests At Demolition Docket

Face it, building demolition in the City of St. Louis is a fact of life. Much of the city is in “preservation review” where we know city staff will review applications for demolition permits, denials are heard in public before the Preservation Board. But because we value fiefdoms, some wards are excluded from this review process. With so many vacant buildings, how is the average citizen to know when an owner wants to raze their building just down  the street?

Enter the Demolition Docket:

The St. Louis Demolition Docket is a private news service that reports the demolitions of buildings granted by the City of St. Louis. The Preservation Research Office publishes and compiles the report from public records maintained by the Building Division of the City of St. Louis.

Big thanks to Michael Allen and everyone involved for putting this together. This new site can be followed on RSS, Twitter, & Facebook. I’ve added it to the links in the sidebar — under both blogroll & research sources.

— Steve Patterson

Significantly Reducing Access Points To Public Transit Isn’t Fair, Just, or Equitable

In a guest piece in the St. Louis American 20th Ward Ald. Cara Spencer makes a passionate plea for expanding MetroLink light rail:

The St. Louis region needs a high-quality light rail system to connect Florissant/Ferguson and our densely populated South Side to Downtown and the Central Corridor. Now is the time to push for economic investment to help stabilize some of the city and county’s most vulnerable communities. We should be demanding that our local leaders prioritize North Side/South Side MetroLink expansion as imperative to making St. Louis a progressive and economically just metropolitan area.

Public transportation speaks volumes about a society. Lack of transportation is an indicator of economic injustice and is the number one deterrent to employment and community involvement across the country. (St. Louis American)

Would light rail be more “just”?  Those who don’t actually use public transit on a daily basis may think so, but the reality is the opposite.

The above map is from the North South MetroLink Expansion Facebook page.

Northside:

Currently to get from downtown (14th & Spruce) to Ferguson and the Florissant Valley Community College there are two options:

1. #74 (Florissant) MetroBus is the most direct option. This takes 1 hour and 1 minute with up to 68 potential stops along the way.  That’s a long time, I’ve done it many times in the last year.
2. MetroLink (Red) to Hanley Station plus #36 (Spanish Lake) MetroBus.  This option takes a total of 1 hour and 2 minutes. This route is 23 minutes on light rail with 10 stops, 10 minutes between modes, and 29 minutes on bus with up to 40 stops.  I’vc also done this a few times.

The proposed light rail line would certainly cut this down to 30-45 minutes. That’s a good thing, right? Not necessarily.

Very few ride the #74 MetroBus end to end. It’s a busy bus route but people get on/off where they need to. With 68 points of access it serves the corridor well. More frequent headways would be better though.  The proposed light rail route would most certainly mean the #74 would end at a new Jennings Station MetroLink Station at Goodfellow & W. Florissant, rather than duplicate service from that point North. From Goodfellow & W. Florissant it currently takes 24 minutes to reach the community college at the end of the #74.  The light rail map floating around would instead have just 4 stops including the start & end stops! How is that just?

Sure a light rail train may be faster and be more frequent, but that’s little consolation if you’re walking a mile further in the rain to get to a limited access point. For many current riders they’d now just end up having to walk their entire trip. Unless we ran a bus on the same route as the light rail train, which kinda defeats the point of spending tens/hundreds of millions on light rail.

Southside:

A similar situation occurs along the proposed Southside route. Currently a person downtown (14th & Spruce) seeking to get to Cherokee & Jefferson using public transit has two choices, both via MetroBus: #11 & #73

How long does it take to get from 14th & Spruce to Cherokee & Jefferson on these two MetroBus routes?

1. #73: 17 minutes, running every 30 minutes weekdays, with up to 18 points of access in that distance.
2. #11: 16 minutes, running every 20 minutes weekdays, with up to 19 access points.

Both are pretty quick. The Southside light rail being pushed follows the #11 route exactly between these points so let’s take a closer look.  Google Maps includes the start & end stops in their 19 stop count. Here are the 17 access points in between:

1. 14th St @ Papin SB
2. Chouteau Ave @ 14th Street WB
3. Chouteau Ave @ 18th Street WB
4. Chouteau Ave @ Mississippi WB
5. Chouteau Ave @ 22ND Street WB
6. Jefferson Ave @ Chouteau SB
7. Jefferson Ave @ Hickory SB
8. Jefferson Ave @ Park SB
9. Jefferson Ave @ 1605 S Jefferson SB
10. Jefferson Ave @ Layfayette SB
11. Jefferson Ave @ Russell SB
12. Jefferson Ave @ Shenandoah SB
13. Jefferson Ave @ Gravois SB
14. Jefferson Ave @ Pestalozzi SB
15. Jefferson Ave @ Arsenal SB
16. Jefferson Ave @ Wyoming SB
17. Jefferson Ave @ Utah SB

So how many stops would this “just” light rail make to serve the “densely populated South Side”? Five!

1. Chouteau & Truman Parkway
2. Jefferson & Park
3. Jefferson & Russell
4. Jefferson & Gravois
5. Jefferson & Arsenal

The density isn’t concentrated at just 5 points! Only a person who doesn’t understand transit can ague that spending millions while reducing 17 access points to 5 is “fair, just and equitable.” For example, everyone who works & shops at Jefferson Commons would now have to walk further. Sorry folks, remember this is “just” as your grocery trips are longer.

Back to Ald. Spencer’s op-ed:

On the one hand, it is exciting to see renewed interest in light rail in St. Louis County. Yet on the other hand, it is alarming that the expansions mentioned did not include a north/south route, but instead focused on the Clayton-Westport, Lambert-Florissant and Shrewsbury-Butler Hill lines. These three lines fail to provide service to the region’s most densely populated areas and many communities that have the highest need. 

Northside/Southside light rail also fails to address actual needs — it would provide service for whites who are uncomfortable riding the bus with non-whites, see Race, Class, and the Stigma of Riding the Bus in America. You can have a free train running every 5 minutes 24/7 but if a person must walk a mile to reach a point of access they’re not going to use it. Stop pretending it benefits them.

Related prior post: Northside-Southside Light Rail Wouldn’t Be Good For St. Louis Neighborhoods

— Steve Patterson