St. Louis To Consolidate Some Offices at Former Federal Office Building

Last Friday I posted that I wanted to see the city consolidate various offices into the vacated Municipal Courts building next to city hall. Monday I get a call from John Farrell, Public Information Officer for Comptroller Darlene Green, asking if I had time for a quick meeting. I met with Farrell and James Garavaglia, the Asset Manager in Green’s office.

While they all like the Municipal Courts building they say the cost of the necessary repairs are beyond the city’s budget constraints. Unlike city hall, the Municipal Courts building has not had the incremental upgrades to the electrical service and other systems. Garavaglia said in the last year the building was in operation they had fans blowing on the electrical panels to cool them down.

So when the federal courts moved to their new courthouse the shift began — the city bought the former federal courts building, leaving the old Municipal Courts building vacant. But, at that time, the talk was of a renewed Kiel Opera House with the Municipal Courts serving as a hotel and restaurant space to the east and the Abram federal building becoming a parking garage.

Above: The Abram building as seen from where 16th street used to be, now poorly maintained “open space.”

A couple of issues have come up since then. One, developer Breckenridge died a year ago and it turns out the Abram building is not well suited for a parking garage. Plan B? Consolidate offices from other buildings including the traffic/housing courts on Olive at 15th and the Health Department from North Grand.

Not as ideal as the Municipal Courts — an attractive building adjacent to City Hall. Still, having offices in the Abram is better than using is strictly for daily car storage — we have enough garages already. Sadly, it is really a tragic building from an urban perspective.

It occupies an entire city block yet has only one public entrance — which is set back from the street atop a platform accessed only from opposite ends. The building overhang is suitable space for smokers to stay out of the rain but little else.

Above we can see the little bit of 15th street before it is cut off for the Scottrade Center, with the Abram on the right and the long-closed Kiel Opera House on the left.

From the above vantage point we can see the rest of the field — in the foreground is the vacant Kiel, then the vacant Municipal Courts, the tall building is the new federal courthouse, the dark lower building with the red roof being city hall and behind it, the old federal courthouse now used for state court as well as some city offices.

So where does leave the Municipal Courts building? In July Jake Wagman of the Post-Dispatch did a story on the city’s hope to sell the building. Following that story, says Farrell and Garavaglia was interest from local and out of town developers. The developers that expressed an interest were given an RFP. Garavaglia expects responses early in January. Working with the Slay administration, Comptroller Green hopes to be able to select one of the proposals to sell the building.

At issue for any developer is figuring out ADA access. Such access is currently through a back entrance as the front steps are much to great for a reasonable ramp. Once inside I’m told the original (and historic bathrooms) have steps up into them. Other areas of the building include a number of steps as well.

The eventual purchaser will also get basically the land the building sits on. The parking to the south is a city owned lot. However, I’m told the Treasurer’s Office which manages parking for the city, is open to working with a developer on the construction of a shared new adjacent garage.

Funny how a city that has seen its rebirth based on the renovation of old buildings cannot manage to renovate one of it’s own. A civic gem goes private while we as a city get the abysmal Abram.

The Latest Green Energy-Saving Device, The Humble (and Controversial) Clothesline

One of my tasks, as a child, was to help my mom with hanging out the laundry to dry. Sure, we had a dryer and it got used often but so did our clothesline. Growing up in the 70s, in a 1960s subdivision, you didn’t see too many clotheslines. Older homes had fixed poles and lines, like many you see around neighborhoods in and around St. Louis. We had a handy little device, a clothesline that would wind itself up into a coil so it was not seen when not in use. Attached to the back of the house, I’d grab the end and stretch it out to the fence post. Ah, nothing like sleeping on sheets that had been sun dried — something no dryer sheet can compete with. When done, let the line wind itself back up.

Like so many good old fashioned ways of doing things, hanging out clothes to dry fell out of popularity and finally, in many places, outright banned. One in five Americans now live in some sort of community association, such as a co-op, a condo or a subdivision of single family detached homes (per the Community Associations Institute). Many of these ban the drying of clothes in a visible manner. Some municipalities ban outdoor drying of clothing altogether, saving individual associations from having to do so. This age old practice of hanging out clothing to dry is apparently a symbol of poverty and considered a factor in lowering property values.

Now we have groups advocating for “Right to Dry” legislation. Yes, advocates now must seek legislation to protect their right to hang clothing out to dry. Is this a case of sound planning to protect the community from the offenses of drying clothing or police power taken too far?

To me, banning clotheslines is going too far — attempting to sanitize and regulate our lives while consuming more energy.  For half a century now various entities have been attempting to strip life from cities — from over zealous sign ordinances to mandates for uniform awnings in commercial districts to bans on hanging the undies out to dry.  Despite some give and take in an urban context, I’ll take the messy city life over the sanitized version any day.  Just keep the sidewalks passable.

I checked my condo bylaws — they don’t specifically ban the hanging of clothing off the balcony or out the window.  Not that I plan to do so, I just wanted to check.  I’ve actually been hanging my clothing to dry in the laundry room.  A minute in the dryer on a no heat fluff setting once dry gives them a nice bounce.  Still, I long for clotheslines strung across the way to the next building from balcony to balcony.

From a recent Wall Street Journal article in September:

Ten states, including Nevada and Wisconsin, limit homeowners associations’ ability to restrict the installation of solar-energy systems, or assign that power to local authorities, says Erik J.A. Swenson, a Washington, D.C.-based partner at law firm King & Spalding LLP, who has written about the policies. He says it’s unclear in most of these states whether clotheslines qualify as “solar” devices. Only the laws in Florida and Utah expressly include clotheslines. 

I still don’t know where Missouri falls, most likely associations and municipalities are free to ban clotheslines. Anyone know?
From an August 07 article in the Christian Science Monitor:

At last count, in 2005, there were 88 million dryers in the US, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. Annually, these dryers consume 1,079 kilowatt hours of energy per household, creating 2,224 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions.

Wow, that is a lot of energy and emissions.  Hanging laundry is one of the simpler ways the public can make a difference with respect to global climate change.  We need to maintain rights to hang out laundry to dry.  For more information see Project Laundry List.

Phone Books Heading Right for Recycling/Landfill? (UPDATED)

It is nearly 2008, does anyone still use the phone book?

Last month I received two bags of new phone books at my old address. And so our big phone book doesn’t get lonely in the plastic bag it now has a little companion.

Then the other day a ton of new phone books were delivered to our loft building. They delivered, you guessed it, more phone books than we have units in the building. Many residents don’t even have a land line — most of us just use our cell.

This past weekend I was with a friend dropping off recycling in Soulard and a woman asked us if we knew where a phone book recycling place was — she had the new books in bag ready for recycling.

What a waste.

In my old place I have a stack of books from the last several years awaiting recycling. The phone book recycling spots, when you can find one, usually states they don’t take the current year. I see a lot of resources being expenses for something most of us don’t want. Like junk mail and the free newspaper, this is litter in my estimation. Litter that I’m now responsible to deal with. Next year this thing needs to be something people can request, not something forced upon us. Recycling locations here.

UPDATE 12/4/2007 @ 8:30am:

I admit it, I fell for it. The recycling link above is for Yellowbook — not AT&T’s Yellow Pages. How many companies get to use that same symbol of fingers thumbing through a book? The phone books being passed out now are from AT&T.

This past April you may recall the excitement about not losing the Yellow Pages HQ to another city, such as Atlanta. Yes, AT&T’s Yellow Pages division is based right here in St. Louis with 655 downtown jobs.

So, wanting to be correct about it, I decided to use yellowpages.com to find a recycling center to get rid of these just delivered books. You will love this, the city in which the division is based doesn’t have a recycling partner!!!

Amazing, you can’t recycle the phone book in the town where the phone book company is based!  I can think of one good place to dump all these phone books — the big open (and mostly wasted) plaza in front of AT&T’s main building downtown.  They dump these things in our yards all the time.  My condo association now has a big stack of these things that we will have to collectively pay to remove.

People will just pitch them, adding to our municipal disposal costs and filling up shrinking landfill space.  AT&T needs to understand that we don’t really care how much advertising they sold and what sort of promises they made to these advertisers.  Make deals with grocery stores to leave stacks in their lobby’s or some place where those who want a new phone book can pick one up.

Sooners Beat the Tigers, Why Do I Care?

Last night the Oklahoma Sooners defeated the #1 Missouri Tigers to win the Big 12 championship. Tied at 14 at halftime, the Sooners finished the game 38-17. Why do I care?

I didn’t care enough to get myself in front of a TV but despite having lived in Missouri for over 17 years now I still rooted for the Oklahoma Sooners. Is it that I am from Oklahoma City? Or that I am an OU alumni? That Mizzou is located in Columbia, not in St. Louis? Probably a combination of all these.

There is something about that place where we are from, no matter what the place. We might trash talk it ourselves but we don’t like it when an outsider does. We might move but still feel a connection.

When I am back in Oklahoma I drive around my old hang outs and recall fond memories. Then I note the complete lack of sidewalks on major roads and think that despite my bitching about St. Louis we are certainly better off than other places. My older brother (17 years older) and I are very much alike — we know we’ll never live in Oklahoma again. Our middle brother, however, after stints in the LA and Houston areas couldn’t wait to return to Oklahoma City. With nieces and a great-niece and great-nephew there I will forever have a connection.

But St. Louis is my home. Sure, I’ll root for Oklahoma over any other football team but in the end sports really don’t matter. At least not to me.

I like to think that St. Louis has had a bad first half and it is time for a new game plan. I want St. Louis to have the kind of second half that Oklahoma had last night.