Over Three-Fourths of Readers Have a Christmas Tree

More than three quarters of readers that responded to the poll last week have a tree this year:

Q: Does/Will your household have a Christmas Tree? If so, what type?

1. Yes, artificial, green 27 [26.21%]
2. No, no tree 24 23.3% [23.3%]
3. Yes, cut from lot 22 [21.36%]
4. Yes, artificial pre-lit, green 15 [14.56%]
5. Yes, artificial pre-lit, white/color 6 [5.83%]
6. Yes, artificial, white/color 3 [2.91%]
7. Yes, cut it ourselves 3 [2.91%]
8. Yes, living – will plant it after the 25th 2 [1.94%]
9. Yes, other type not listed 1 [0.97%]
10. Yes, aluminum w/light wheel 0 [0%]
11. Unsure 0 [0%]

For those of you with cut trees you can recycle them, if you live in the city here’s the information accessed on Monday December 23, 20213:

Overview City residents can take the bare tree to one of three city parks to be recycled. Christmas tree recycling is available at the following three city parks:

• O’Fallon
• Carondelet
• Forest Park

Preparation Remove ornaments, tinsel, lights and tree stand. Do not put the tree in a plastic bag or cover it. Wreaths and pine roping are not accepted at the sites. Instructions Trees can be dropped off at the following three park locations:

• Forest Park, Lower Muny Opera parking lot
• O’Fallon Park, West Florissant and Holly, picnic grounds #4
• Carondelet Park, Grand and Holly Hills, area between gate & recycling containers

Drop-off dates Trees are accepted at these park sites after Christmas through the third week of January. 2012 dates are from Dec. 27, 2012 through Jan. 11, 2013. Trees may be dropped off at these locations at anytime. Fees No fees apply What to Expect Trees will be recycled into mulch, which will be made available to City residents.

I assume they’ll be doing this again this year, hopefully updating the website information will get updated.   No post tomorrow, I’m going to take a day off.

Enjoy the holiday, see you again on the 26th!

— Steve Patterson

Fields Foods Has Blatant ADA Violation, Shouldn’t Get Occupancy Permit Until Corrected (UPDATED)

In early November I visited the site of a new grocery store opening on January 4th, Fields Foods.  I was disappointed with respect to pedestrian access:

I’m very glad to see the store nearing completion. It’ll provide needed jobs, though jobs may be lost elsewhere as people change where they buy groceries. Sadly, it doesn’t appear any consideration to the many who will arrive daily on foot, some pushing strollers, and even the occasional wheelchair user. <snip>

Hopefully, somehow, I’ll be proven wrong when the grocery store opens January 4th.

I visited again last Thursday, and with the site work done I can say it isn’t what I expected: it’s both better and worse!

Last Thursday I contacted several St. Louis officials to alert them to the issues I discovered. I suggested they withhold the occupancy permit until the walkway is retrofitted to be ADA-compliant with a curb ramp, crosswalk, and curb ramp on the building side. Providing pedestrian access not accessible to all is a very clear ADA violation.  I gave my card to the BSI employee I talked to last week, he said he’d give it to the owner. I’ve not heard back from anyone.

It would’ve been fairly easy to design & build this to be highly accessible/walkable from all directions, new construction shouldn’t need to be retrofitted. When the city is vacating public streets pedestrian access from that direction should be provided.

The parties involved in the project are collectively incompetent with respect to pedestrian access. The ADA is more than grab bars in the bathroom. I’ll be there on January 4th to see if the situation is improved.

— Steve Patterson

UPDATE 12/23/2013 @ 9:45am — I just talked with Fields Foods owner Chris Goodson, he said workers are correcting the situation. The sidewalk shown wasn’t part of the original design, it was added after the fact after my November post.

Poll: St. Louis’ Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

The poll this week is pretty straightforward, attempting to see if readers are more optimistic or pessimistic about the future of St. Louis.  The poll is at the top of the right sidebar, results will be presented on January 1, 2014. 

— Steve Patterson

Temporary ADA Ramp At Park Pacific, Final Wood Ramp Planned

In August I posted about An Infuriatingly Avoidable Accessibility Issue while trying to visit Art Saint Louis + Mississippi Mud, shared tenants at the Park Place building. Here are a couple of photos from that post:

I’ve been checking to see any change and finally the other day something was different: a temporary ramp. I snapped the following photo and continued.

I was told by a tenant employee the building’s owner, The Lawrence Group, is “curing wood” to be used for their final solution.  It’ll need to extend three times as far out to be ADA-compliant, the sides will also need to be sloped. This is necessary because the architects at The Lawrence Group forgot it was necessary to make this tenant space accessible as part of the $70 million dollar renovation of the building that opened in 2011.

Once I spot the next wood ramp in place I’ll check the slopes, take pics, and post again.

— Steve Patterson

Phone Apps Will Help You Schedule A Taxicab This Holiday Season

Two weeks ago we went to a lovely holiday party on Flora Place, my boyfriend could’ve driven us but he wanted to drink. We opted to take a cab to/from the party.  You can’t walk out to the street and catch a cab in St. Louis, but you now have more options than picking up the phone to call. If you have a smartphone, there are apps you can download to make the process easy.

Here are some options, listed alphabetically:

• St.Louis Taxi (County Cab/Yellow Cab)
• STLtaxi (Laclede Cab)
• Taxi Magic (national app, very nice but has a $1.50 fee each trip)

There may be more app options but these will get you there. Platforms supported vary by app, but all 3 support iOS and Android. The nice thing about Taxi Magic is you can save your credit card information so you don’t have to fiddle with your card upon arrival. Tomorrow night we’ll try the two local cab apps to/from another party.

If you drink, please do so responsibly.

— Steve Patterson