Storm water, levees and flooding

As we recently saw the Meramec river flooded a number of places along its banks.  Spared this year was Valley Park — their costly new levee keep the flood water at bay.  But at what price?  I don’t man the cash spent for construction but the impact to those up river.

One such casualty is the town of Pacific.  Some will say that Pacific floods anyway.  True enough.  However when you have a certain volume of water coming down the river it must go somewhere — if a levee keeps it from naturally spreading out then the crest gets higher until the water backs up and finds a spot where it can spread — the next point up river without a levee or one that is lower.

So while levees are part of the problem so is sprawl.  Runoff from all the streets, parking lots and such make matters worse.  We are responsible for the factors that caused our recent flooding issues — by messing with the natural flow of water and with adding acres upon acres of impervious surfaces.  I say we begin to undo the mess we’ve created — remove a bulk of the impervious surfaces like parking lots and then remove the levees.

A Changed Man

Nearly dying and now going through intensive physical therapy causes one to stop and think about what is important. In the last few years here I’ve focused often on details. On one hand these details don’t seem as important too me and on the other they seem even more important. I’m alive — I should be happy right? But life is short and it is the little details that impact our quality of life. Simply breathing everyday just isn’t enough. I am going to be far more demanding of a quality environment than before. Every year in our region we spend hundreds of millions if not billions on new infrastructure and buildings — are we getting our money’s worth? Does this money add to improved public space or simply so much square footage of new retail? I see no reason to settle for anything less than high quality public spaces. Life is too short to be spent in strip centers, boring subdivisions and stuck in traffic.

THE DEMOGRAPHIC ST. LOUIS SHOULD BE PITCHING

Guest editorial from Dan Icolari
We’re not the only people in places like Boston or New York or D.C. or maybe even Chicago who’ve stopped being wage slaves, or would like to, and need a cheaper place to live that’s still a real city, warts ‘n all.

I think St. Louis boosters need to broaden their target audience to include people like us. I don’t mean just well-heeled empty nesters who can afford lofts downtown. I’m talking about middle-class people like the ones my wife and I know–financially secure but not rich, educated, involved in the arts and in civic life and politics. People who want an urban way of life in a dynamic, diverse community. A community that’s affordable now and, in relative terms, is likely to stay that way.

With child-rearing behind them, such people have the disposable income to help preserve cultural institutions, patronize local specialty businesses, and support local artists in a variety of media. They have the time to devote to civic activism that most full-time working people don’t. They’re big on university-level continuing education. They’re exactly the kinds of people, in short, that St. Louis boosters are already pitching, only older.

And nobody except marketers of retirement communities–which are the last places the people I’m talking about would want to go–are reaching out to this particular segment of older adults. They are, after all, sophisticated people with many of the same interests and tastes as the 20- and 30-somethings that every city is working overtime to attract.

I think going after a segment of sophisticated people 50+ could be a very productive strategy for St. Louis. But it won’t be an easy sell. I can hear the naysayers already:

“Oh, great: Blue-Hair Central.”

“St. Louis’s reputation for crime will scare them off.”

“We’ll become The Nursing Home on the Mississippi.”

I’m not proposing that St. Louis boosters target older potential relocaters exclusively. Rather, I’m suggesting this over-50 segment has potential that should be recognized and developed.

The fact is, for people of any age who want an urban way of life they can afford, St. Louis has a pretty compelling story to tell. It’s not a story that will interest all or even most older people considering relocating. But I think it’s a story that will interest enough older people–the kinds of community-oriented urbanites St. Louis needs–to make telling that story to this segment worth a try.

[Dan Icolari is a native of NYC and lives with his lovely wife in a stunning home on Staten Island.   Dan is retired and writes Walking is Transportation.]

Ten Things I Love About St. Louis, and Ten Reasons Why I Left:

Editor’s Note: While Steve Patterson is recovering from his stroke, Urban Review St. Louis will present guest essays from a variety of perspectives. Discuss. Enjoy. Argue. Disagree. Stick around!

Guest Editorial by Margie Newman

I love St. Louis, even though I chose to leave it. Random reasons:

Things I Love About St. Louis …

1. The amazing architecture–at least the structures that haven’t been demolished for parking lots. Ahem.
2. The Arch. How did that happen? In St. Louis? Really!
3. People like Steve Patterson, Michael Allen, Antonio French, Marcia Behrendt and Roger Plackemeier, who’ve put themselves on the line to stand up for this place.
4. Forest Park. Man, I miss that park.
5. The North Side. I spent my earliest years in Walnut Park, and I have a deep, abiding, regret-filled love for that part of the city. The brick architecture, the density, the trees, the corner stores. The real feeling of neighborhood.
6. Washington Avenue’s renaissance. But see below for the flip side of that coin …
7. The neighborhoods, in roughly this order: Downtown, the Hill, South Grand/Tower Grove, Soulard, Lafayette Square, CWE, the U City and St. Louis sides of the Loop, midtown.
8. The water towers. Weird and wonderful.
9. Calvary and Bellefontaine cemeteries. Almost as much as Forest Park.
10. The art freaks. Even when they’re bellyaching.

But I Left St. Louis Because …

1. I’m 45, and while the city is getting better, St. Louis isn’t going to become enough city for me in my lifetime–at least not during the part of my lifetime in which I’m continent and ambulatory.
2. My industry isn’t happening or growing in St. Louis on the scale it is elsewhere, and pay rates for my work are less than half of what they are in Chicago (where I live now). Sad, but a fact.
3. I spent too much time in St. Louis convincing people, especially “leaders,” that the earth is round. If they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, they couldn’t imagine it might work here. It’d help if they left town now and then, or listened to experts who came here to share lessons from the outside world (cf. Rollin Stanley).
4. There was work to do downtown, and not enough of us to do it. I admit: I burned out.
5. The people who run/ran Downtown St. Louis, the Partnership, and other “civic progress” groups are largely invested in NOT changing things. The old regime is fully entrenched, protecting its piece of the ever-shrinking pie.
6. Alright, you all knew this was coming, but … the Century Building fiasco. It proves (and taught me) the intractability of reason #5. I still find it unbelievable that it all went down like it did.
7. Washington Avenue. Yep, it’s cool. But what the hell? Why so much investment focused on and limited to ONE street? Turn north or south at 14^th Street, and it feels like you’ve suddenly left Disney’s Main St.
8. Empty promises. Drive around downtown and ask yourself: weren’t they supposed to re-time these lights? Wasn’t there an article about wi-fi being installed all over downtown … like four YEARS ago?
9. Violations of the street grid, such as amputating St. Charles Street block by block. Drive down 4^th Street and weep.
10. The unsettling feeling that no one’s minding the store. So many basic things untended. Examples; crumbling infrastructure, inadequate police patrols/traffic control, the sheer number of people running stop signs (and I mean RUNNING them) in mid-town. But hey, check out Ballpark Village! Oh, wait …

I love St. Louis. I miss St. Louis. But I can’t say that I will ever come back other than to visit. Not soon, for sure. But I applaud all y’all for hanging in there and fighting for what we all know St. Louis can be. In a younger person’s lifetime, at least.

Beware of the Sweetheart Dell?

In 2004 my hometown of Oklahoma City was all excited about being selected for a new Dell “customer contact center” to be located on 60 acres near downtown. Around the same time, Dell announced plans for a similar center in Edmonton, Canada. Everyone in Edmonton seemed excited, from a Business Edge article from January 2005:

“With 475 of the initial 500 positions now filled, Dell said it will hire another 250 people and hopes to have a total staff of 750 working in its Edmonton customer-contact centre by July.

Dell’s entry into Edmonton was first projected to create economic benefits pegged at $600 million over a 20-year period. That figure now rises to $900 million.

“The new jobs could mean another $300 million over the 20-year period,” said Edmonton Economic Development Corp. (EEDC) president and CEO Allan Scott, who added that these numbers may have to be revised upward once more.

The EEDC inducements included lease incentives valued at $1.1 million – equal to five years of property taxes during the first five years of the 20-year agreement – and assistance in helping Dell to locate a permanent site for its customer-contact centre. Further, land for Dell’s permanent Edmonton home will be leased to Dell for 20 years at the rate of $1 per year. Dell will pay all school and business taxes from the beginning of its operations in Edmonton. Over the first five years, those taxes are valued at about $750,000.

In return, Dell agreed to provide and maintain at least 500 full-time positions within its first six months and to begin construction of a permanent facility on the leased land within 18 months.

According to Scott, the incentives were necessary to level the playing field with highly competitive prospects in the U.S. Dell was considering a total of 153 locations, and that also included Calgary.”

Time for Edmonton’s EEDC to recalculate — Dell today announced the closing of the facility. In Oklahoma City another 200-300 employees got pink slips, 1,200 in total between the two locations. Did the deals with Edmonton and Oklahoma City include any type of clawback in case Dell backed out before the end of the deal? Given the competition among cities, probably not.

So what happened? Many things beyond the control of the respective governments of Edmonton and Oklahoma City. HP passed Dell to be the #1 supplier of computers in the world (or was that US?, doesn’t really matter), Dell’s quest to offer the public a $400 computer didn’t really leave room for a profit. While computer sales have been growing, Apple’s sales have far outpaced the growth of the overall market. Microsoft released Vista upon the world and many ordered new computers with XP instead — the sales boom that makers like Dell expected never happened. Finally, Dell’s delivery method — a very efficient system —- has saved every penny it can. I should disclose that I am a major Mac fan — logo tattoo and all.

Interestingly, as I’ve gleaned from my professors, companies often do not select a city based on the incentives offered. Other factors such as a workforce skilled for the proposed work, availability of a suitable site (which could play into incentives) and such are the bigger forces. Of course, if offered, the companies are not going to turn them down.

So what does all this have to do with urban life in St. Louis? Plenty.

St. Louis’ RCGA (Regional Commerce and Growth Association) does business much like all the other cities out there. Local governments do the same. Centene’s decision to locate in downtown St. Louis at the delayed Ballpark Village comes to mind. We’ve all seen the reports — x-number of jobs to be created, generation of so many hundreds of millions of dollars — yadda yadda yadda. In all the excitement we lose track that markets can change quickly.

One day Enron is a wonderful corporate citizen and the next it is bankrupt because of mismanagement by owners. The St. Louis region has some great long-term companies — those that haven’t cashed out yet. Small to large, longevity is more important than flash and show for the short term. If they want incentives here is one — on the 20th anniversary of a facility with an average of x-number of employees over the years then the company will get a refund of Y. Break it up in five year increments or whatever. We need to know more about these sweetheart deals that companies like Centene are getting and what happens if they are bought out, go under or just decide to move?

Edmonton’s Dell center was only open just over 3 years. It probably took the city a year to put the deal together. Certainly not a good return on their investment.