A city of churches

Throughout the City of St. Louis you will see steeples from the many churches.  Most are outstanding structures.  Some are still used while others are vacant and deteriorating.

Last weekend one of my brothers, visiting from Oklahoma City, wanted to see the New Cathedral.  I hadn’t been inside in over 15 years so I was game to take him.

The mosaic tile work is stunning.  As an atheist I don’t get the religious symbolism.  What I appreciate from our old churches is the quality of construction — the permanence of the buildings.

Most are not opulent like the New Cathedral. While we’ll probably never see this level of opulence again I am dismayed by the cheapness of so many new churches.

The metal is starting to be attached to this church under construction on North Florissant Rd., just North of downtown.  The building will never inspire anyone.  If it manages to last 100 years people won’t take tours of the historic structure.

My brother and I debated the importance of new church structures.  He felt the money spent on the great buildings would be better spent serving the mission, such as helping the poor.  While I agree there is a need to serve others I have an issue with every new building being reduced to the lowest standards.  A church is no different than a warehouse. This cheapens the neighborhoods where these are built.  Churches are often the finest buildings in a community.  When you make a cheap church the housing around it will not surpass the established quality level.  A cheap church = cheap housing.

– Steve Patterson

Readers: St. Louis’ zoning needs to be changed

Ninety-five percent of the readers that voted in the poll last week agree that the City of St. Louis needs new zoning.  95%!

Q: Kansas City, Denver and other cities are replacing their old zoning codes to reflect current views/vision. Should St. Louis replace its 1947 zoning code?

• Yes, we need zoning to set an urban vision rather than piecemeal sprawl: 102 (95%)
  
• Unsure: 4 (4%)
  
• No, leave zoning matters on a case by case basis: 1 (1%)

Zoning classifications used in a municipality were never intended to be used unchanged for more than a half century.  Even St. Louis long time planner (1916-1950) Harland Bartholomew would have advocated a regular review and revision.  To city hall changing a parcel(s) from one classification to another is changing zoning.  To me, and I think to many of you, changing zoning means tossing out the old classifications and starting entirely from scratch – built around how we envision our city in the coming decades. Cities from coast to coast are realizing how use-based zoning has failed them and are embarking on the long process to revamp how their cities are developed.

Zoning sets the ground rules for development.  It regulates the building size, placement on the site and parking. Most cities have Euclidean Zoning which obsesses about the use of the property but could care less if the buildings on the street make for a quality environment.  Ensuring single family homes are separated from multi-family which is separate from retail which is separate from office is the most important goal in use based zoning.  Or the most important goal is ensuring that each use has parking because with all the separation a car is required to go from home to the office to dinner and to the store.

In short, use-based zoning creates auto-centric sprawl.  We usually think of sprawl as that mess on the edge.  While that certainly is sprawl I think the use-based zoning type of sprawl that eats away at the core is far more dangerous.    The core of regions offers something different than new edge development but if use-based zoning remains eventually the core will be completely undone – that was the intention when the use-based zoning was put into place.

Starting the ball rolling on on new zoning should be a top priority of city government for 2010.  The fact development is slow right now is a good thing.  This gives us the freedom to determine the vision for our neighborhoods and commercial corridors without debating specific projects.  Largely residential sections of the city wouldn’t see much change.  Major corridors like Kingshighway, Natural Bridge, and Jefferson would be where changes would occur.  The emphasis, in my mind, would be on form rather than use.  Shared parking rather than each business having their own lot.

In 2010 I will continue posting on this important issue.

– Steve Patterson

It takes a village, or does it?

Ballpark Village was going to be a dynamic entertainment center adjacent to the 2006 Busch Stadium.

The project stalled along with the economy.

The site was the location of the previous Busch Stadium (1966-2006).  A hundred years ago the three block area bounded by Broadway (5th), Clark, 8th and Walnut Street (map) would have contained hundreds of individual buildings under different ownership.  The village was a collection of many.  It was not built and financed as one big package.

Land used to be subdivided into individual narrow and deep parcels.  Buildings were then built one at a time.  Larger buildings were built by combining more than one parcel.  Over time the three blocks were filled in and then they would evolve as older buildings would be selectively removed and taller buildings would take their place.  As decades passed these three blocks gradually changed.

In the 1960s this changed.  The three blocks and many others were completely razed.  Evolutionary change was out and the age of the big project was in.  I think our 50 year experiment with the massive clearance project needs to come to an end.  The fact Ballpark Village was delayed presents a great opportunity to move forward to looking back to the earlier small scale model.

I’m talking about a fundamental shift in the current standards for real estate development.  As big multi-block projects gets harder to finance and build as a single package we need to break it up into smaller pieces.  Legal mechanisms exist to ensure the total vision will be realized once all the parcels have been built out.  It might take 10-15 years by the time it is fully built out but great spaces and great spaces seldom happen at once.

We are close to four years of the site being vacant and we don’t know how many more years it will remain so.  Had the site been platted as individual building sites we may have already seen a new structure or two in the area.

St. Louis has other sites where then plan it to develop a multi-block area where the option is all or nothing.

– Steve Patterson

I-64 or highway 40?

Last week the New I-64 was opened to traffic after a nearly 2-year reconstruction project. Although officially marked as I-64 to many in St. Louis this stretch of highway has long been known as highway 40 (“farty” to natives). Two names for the same stretch was confusing when I moved here and now it is just annoying hearing news reports use both names.  The poll this week asks what the highway should be called – I-64 or Highway 40.

Whatever the name, all welcomed the rebuilt highway.  The improved exit/on ramps are getting good reviews.  Completed on time and under budget, the highway is a success.  And that is the problem.  Incentives to carpool or use transit have now just disappeared.  With driving so easy more and more will drive the highway.  This will eventually lead to the highway not being able to handle the traffic volume.  This inevitable problem won’t show up a year from now or even five years from now.  Ten years from now the big easy to travel highway won’t seem so big or easy.

I may be off on the time frame, if gas prices stay steady it may happen sooner.  On the other hand, if gas prices rise to world levels it may take 50 years for the highway to get clogged, assuming the St. Louis region picks up population at a higher rate than in past decades.

I would have spent the half a billion dollars converting the old highway to a boulevard instead.  It wouldn’t serve the same volume of cars but that would have been one of my goals.  Another would have made crossing the stretch as a pedestrian easier.

– Steve Patterson

Lights out on Washington Ave

The two blocks of Washington Ave from Tucker (12th) to 14th were designed to be special – low curbs, special paving and unique lighting in the center of the street.

The paving & lights were a symbolic zipper — a nod to the areas origins in garment manufacturing.  But with numerous lights going out the zipper is disappearing.  We build the stuff but then stop maintaining it.  If we are not going to maintain it we shouldn’t build it.

– Steve Patterson