Potholes at Curb Ramps

Potholes are annoying, but if you’re watching the road you can often miss them. When I drive our car I do my best to avoid potholes, but in my power wheelchair I often can’t miss them — they’re at the bottom of the curb ramps.

When the city builds ramps they cut out enough asphalt to build the forms — then patch in the hole later. But patches, as you might expect, don’t stay put. The 17″ wheels on our Honda don’t like hole this size, the 5″ front wheels on my chair get lost in these. I have the email address of the city’s guy in charge of asphalt so this is likely fixed already, but I encounter more problems than I have time to report.

— Steve Patterson

Parking Garage Repairs Halted, Emergency Structural Condemnation Issued

In December I told you about a downtown parking garage closed since July 2014, see: Parking Garage Undergoing Time-Consuming Multi-Million Dollar Restoration; Businesses Closed, Jobs Lost. Since December the big crew of workers dwindled to a just a couple and then last week nobody — the work stopped and the gate was locked.

My assumption is the repairs were becoming a blank check project the owners finally halted. Now what? I’m concerned the out of state owner will just walk away.  Ideally I’d like to see a new building constructed on this corner, if the St. Louis Streetcar project gets funded a new building would be feasible. I’m sure some would like to see this garage repaired or replaced with a new garage. I suppose that would be marginally acceptable.

What wouldn’t be acceptable, however, is a surface parking lot, this intersection needs the massing.

— Steve Patterson

Cutting Corners Costs Time & Money: 1424 Washington Ave

Four months ago today I noticed work going on at 1424 Washington Ave., so I began documenting exterior changes, mistakes, fixes, etc. as I’d pass by. Check it out…

A lot of concrete & money was wasted, if only they’d done it right the very first time!  A quality development by the Three Stooges McGowan Brothers.

— Steve Patterson

Temporary Dog Park On Former Cupples 7 Site Would Be Too Costly

When an urban building is razed, replaced by grass, it’a no surprise that nearby residents will soon walk their dogs there — that’s just common sense. Now some residents, adjacent to the vacant Cupples 7 site, aren’t happy walking their dogs on grass — they want a large fenced dog park where their dog can play off-leash. They’ve cited SLU’s Ellen Clark Sculpture/Dog Park as the model to emulate — brick posts to support the fencing, sculpture inside.

Everyone seems in agreement a new building should go up on this site within 10 years — one area developer is working to make it happen. Thus, any Cupples dog/sculpture park would be temporary.

Downtown’s Lucas Park dog run, opened 5 years ago, is about 3,600 sq ft — with roughly 260 lineal feet of fencing — the project cost $125,000.  A lot of money but it’s a permanent improvement in public park space.

While not an apples-to-apples comparison, if we take the total cost of the Lucas Park dog run and divide by the lineal feet and square footage we get $480.77/ln ft and $34.72/sq ft, respectively. Multiply these by the Cupples 7’s 720.24 lineal feet and 31,233 sq ft and we get total costs of $346,269.78 and $1,084,409.70, respectively. This is just back of the napkin calculations — we’d need to have serious estimates based on a specific design. I do think the final cost would be between these amounts.

Seems too much to spend for a decade of use by maybe 20-50 people. The question is: how much, if anything, should be spend on temporary improvements?

Here’s what I would do:

• Keep the center open for kickball, frisbee, etc.
• Add 3-5 park benches around the perimeter.
• Add doggie bag dispensers and trash cans.
• Create a planter at the far corner — 11th & Spruce — to improve the appearance to those exiting I-64. Use drought-tolerant native plants/grasses to create a low-maintenance display.
• Maximum budget of $10,000 — with no more than half from public funds (community district, ward and/or Treasurer). The balance from private sources.

Put all efforts into getting a new building on this site, connecting Busch Stadium & Ballpark Village to Civic Center (transit), Scottrade Center, and Union Station along Spruce & Clark. Make the Cupples District a place. Find a spot downtown  — East of Tucker — where a permanent dog park can be built.

— Steve Patterson

Top-Down Auto-Centric Thinking Continues In Ferguson, Still Time To Change

We all know the phrase: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”  Those living in low-income areas, especially those of color, have been sent this message for decades: Mill Creek Valley, Pruitt-Igoe, etc. In other words, we know what’s best for you so just accept what we decide to give to you. In the near term the gifts seemed like a good idea, but in hindsight they were ill-conceived and corners were cut. Pruitt-Igoe:

As completed in 1955, Pruitt–Igoe consisted of 33 11-story apartment buildings on a 57-acre (23 ha) site, on St. Louis’s lower north side. The complex totaled 2,870 apartments, one of the largest in the country. The apartments were deliberately small, with undersized kitchen appliances. “Skip-stop” elevators stopped only at the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth floors, forcing residents to use stairs in an attempt to lessen congestion. The same “anchor floors” were equipped with large communal corridors, laundry rooms, communal rooms and garbage chutes.

Despite federal cost-cutting regulations, Pruitt–Igoe initially cost $36 million, 60% above national average for public housing. Conservatives attributed cost overruns to inflated unionized labor wages and the steamfitters union influence that led to installation of an expensive heating system; overruns on the heating system caused a chain of arbitrary cost cuts in other vital parts of the building.

Nevertheless, Pruitt–Igoe was initially seen as a breakthrough in urban renewal. Residents considered it to be “an oasis in the desert” compared to the extremely poor quality of housing they had occupied previously, and considered it to be safe. Some referred to the apartments as “poor man’s penthouses”.

Despite poor build quality, material suppliers cited Pruitt–Igoe in their advertisements, capitalizing on the national exposure of the project.

The people were expected to adapt to the solution, rather than the solution adapt to the people. Locally and nationally little has changed since the 1950s.

Early residents were thankful, those displaced not so much. Within a decade what had seemed like a great solution turned out to be an expensive nightmare. Most of the site remains vacant four decades after being cleared.

The players today are different — non-profits and the private sector in place of the federal government. The attitude, however, is the same: ‘we want to do something to help you — why should we ask for your input?’ The unintended consequences of the well-intentioned were huge. Eventually the federally government realized the folly of this way of thinking — changing to rules & regulations to require environmental impact studies, public input, etc. This is not to suggest these will avert all unintended consequences — they won’t — but the results are better than those designed in isolation. Which brings me to Ferguson.

As I wrote about a week ago two community plans intersect at former ferguson QuikTrip site. Rather than QuikTrip officials quietly talking with the St. Louis Urban League for six months I think they should’ve empowered the local residents by getting them involved in the process of determining what to do with the site. The Urban League’s slogan is “Empowering Communities. Changing Lives.”

This was an opportunity for Ferguson’s residents to have a say in their future — to have a seat at the table. Empowerment through engagement.

The speakers for their presentation was exclusively top-down players:

• Michael P. McMillan President and CEO, Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis
• Michael Johnson Board of Directors, QuikTrip Corporation
• Warner Baxter Chairman, President & CEO, Ameren
• Patrick J. Sly Executive Vice President, Emerson
• Thomas J. Irwin Executive Director, Civic Progress
• Kathleen T. Osborn Executive Director, Regional Business Council
• Susan Trautman Executive Director, Great Rivers Greenway
• Steven Sullivan President and Executive Director, Provident

The proposed new building would be built in the same spot as the old QuikTrip — not up to the sidewalk to make the area more pedestrian-friendly as suggested by the Great Streets Initiative. Great Rivers Greenway said they’d hire some who complete the 4-week jobs 101 course to be Gateway Rangers to bike the North Riverfront Trail — the planned trail next to the site wasn’t mentioned.

Today’s buildings are more disposable than those build 100 year or more years ago, this QuikTrip opened in 1989 — it lasted 25 years until burned following the shooting of Michael Brown. As I said in the comments on Monday, the building had been fully depreciated. Yes, the St. Louis County Assessor still said it had value, but the business view is different — for tax purposes you want deductions: a facility you can depreciate or lease payments.

QuikTrip just razed their 2851 Gravois location built in 1991 — to be rebuilt. QuikTrip sold this property two years ago in a 15-year sale leaseback.   The two-year older Ferguson location wasn’t sold to an investor, so no deductions. The 1.14 acre site was too small to build a new QuikTrip.  So they opened a new location a mile and a half north at 10768 W. Florissant Ave. on 3+ acres.

It was either the night of the shooting, August 9th, or the next night when the older QuikTrip was burned that QuikTrip Board Member Michael Johnson called the Urban League’s Michael McMillan to offer to donate the property. I can’t blame them — they probably had wanted to close the location anyway. So began the six month process involving corporate CEOs and heavy hitters collectives like Civic Progress.

A few misunderstood my point a week ago — involving the public or at least respecting the plans the public helped draft  — isn’t an “either or” situation. They could’ve done exactly as they did but announced this building will represent the new W. Florissant Ave with a up to the sidewalk design to respond to the needs of the high pedestrian population. Instead they just decided to put the new building where the old building was.

Locating the building at the street corner would make access from the sidewalk easy. Keeping the building at the back will require a circuitous route(s) — not pedestrian-friendly. Bare minimum — not empowering!

Additionally, if the Urban League builds at the back of the lot behind parking it’ll be difficult to convince others along W. Florissant Ave  to rebuild in an urban manner — effectively killing an important part of the plan. The St. Louis region is known for developing plans that sit on the shelf and collect dust — now we’re killing plans through willful ignorance.

When I asked during the press conference about why the building wasn’t up to the sidewalk Mike McMillian, said “remediation.” I guess that means QuikTrip isn’t remediating the contamination enough to build over the old tank location, but even that doesn’t make sense.   To remediate the site enough for residential use would be onerous — but a commercial building should be able to be constructed after the tanks are removed and basic remediation has been completed. I think they simply failed to consider the pedestrian population of Ferguson.

Nothing is built yet — the site isn’t ready yet. I hope they’ll do the right thing and work to set a good example for future buildings this stretch of W. Florissant.

— Steve Patterson