Richmond Heights Redevelopment Area Back To Square One

The St. Louis suburb of Richmond Heights was back in the news this week:

The Richmond Heights City Council voted unanimously Monday night to seek new redevelopment proposals for the Hadley Township area.

The developer previously selected for this area, Michelson Commercial Realty and Development, missed the January deadline to give Hadley Township homeowners notices to close, as required in its redevelopment agreement with the city.  (Source: St. Louis Business Journal)

Not good news for the residents who were expecting buyouts.  Another casualty of our current economic situation.

Was this inevitable?

With big developments come big risk.  These massive redevelopment projects are harder and harder to finance.  Good.  I never liked the selected proposal anyway.  More boring big box crap that we have too much of already.

We need to learn how to revamp aging areas without assembling ever larger parcels of land.  We need to learn how to look at major streets like Hanley and envision how, over time, the individual parcels along the street would be developed.  Land-use regulations (aka zoning) can be used to set in place the regulatory framework to see a vision realized naturally over time.

The slow process of remaking areas parcel by parcel requires great vision & patience — qualities lacking in our local elected officials in the City of St. Louis as well as suburban municipalities like Richmond Heights.

Now once again seeking redevelopment proposals this farce continues to drag on.  I attended meetings in January 2006 where proposals were last submitted.  Over three years ago!  People have moved.  The once stable area is no longer.

Richmond Heights officials do have vision.  They want the Hadley Township area to resemble the adjacent sprawl wasteland in Maplewood.  They see future tax revenues over current residents.  Very shortsighted.

The state of Missouri took over our failing city school system.  Maybe the state should take over the region and consolidate hundreds of seperate small units of government into one whole.  That might put the brakes on the destruction of areas in the sales tax chase game.

Click here for my post on Hadley Township from October 2008 — which includes links to posts dating back to January 2006 as well as other resources.

Florissant Citizens Seek Financial Audit

Florissant, MO is one of 90+ municipalities located in St. Louis County.  Yes, one of over 90.  Recently citizens of this North County suburb of St. Louis collected and submitted signatures to have Missouri State Auditor Susan Montee the city’s books.  Montee is finishing up audits of the City of St. Louis following a similar signature drive initiated by the Green Party.

… Continue Reading

Can We Please Ban Smoking in the St. Louis Region? Missouri?

I really hate cigarette smoke.  Nothing ruins a good meal like someone puffing away at the next table or even the next room.  But it is not just restaurants  I recently went to a local locksmith to have a key made.  I left smelling like an ashtray.  I can’t meet clients smelling like a smoker.

Illinois has had a smoking ban for a year.  I recently had lunch at a sports bar in Granite City, IL — I was able to breath and enjoy my salad.    Oklahoma requires completely separate closed rooms with different HVAC systems in order to have smoking areas.  Would you like that key made in the smoking or non-smoking section?  Both states as well as others with bans still have open businesses.  Despite what you hear, places do remain open.  Some even thrive.

Of course smoking is addictive.  Just like coffee is.  I don’t like either. But I can have a meal with the person next to me getting their morning coffee fix.  People with destructive addictions need help.

Short of a statewide ban we need a more local ban.  But at what level?  St. Louis City is small relative to the Missouri  side of the region.  St. Louis County has 90+ municipalities and quite a bit of area not in an incorporated municipality.  The City of St. Louis or anyone of the 90+ munis in the county could ban smoking but would that just drive business to a neighboring municipality?  I guess those people who must have a Marlboro with their wings just might change where they will eat.

You may have seen the article, “Smoking ban issue resurfaces in St. Louis County”in the Post-Dispatch on the 26th which talked about a letter from five out of the 90+ mayors in St. Louis County urging the St. Louis County Council to ban smoking county-wide. From the article:

The mayors of five adjacent cities in St. Louis County have reignited the smoking ban issue, asking the County Council to ban smoking in public places. Signing the document were Mayors Joseph L. Adams of University City, Jean Antoine of Olivette, Harold Dielmann of Creve Coeur, Linda Goldstein of Clayton and Mike Schneider of Overland.

Thanks to reader “Jason”, I have the letter for you to read for yourself.  Click here to view the 2-page PDF.

As a patron I have the right to avoid businesses that permit smoking, and I do.  However, employees don’t have that luxury.  To keep their job they are often subjected to second-hand smoke.  When they have lung cancer 20 years later we all pay the price as medical costs are boerne by all either through increased insurance premiums or taxes.

I find visiting regions & states with bans more pleasant.  No need to pop into places to ask if they prohibit smoking.  We are competing with many regions & states for jobs and for population.  Banning smoking in public places is a good way to be able to remove an objection for relocating to the Missouri side of the region.

Kudos to these five mayors.  I have sent an email to several members of the Board of Aldermen and Mayor Slay’s staff asking them to pass a smoking ban in the City of St. Louis that would take affect upon approval of a similar measure in St. Louis County.  If St. Louis County did the same we might actually get somewhere in our fragmented region. I suggest you contact your elected official in the city/county where you live to try to get this done.

Town & Country Crossing A Marked Improvement Over The Typical Strip Center in Our Region

Last week, after a meeting, I took a drive out West along Clayton Road with the destination being the new Town & Country Crossing shopping center at Clayton & Woods Mill (map).

The municipality of Town & Country is home to many well to do types. Their city, however, is neither town nor country. It is a collection of big homes on streets with pretentious names yet lacking of sidewalks. The closest they get to country is having deer and that is something they’ve been trying to get rid of. A little too country I suppose?

A few years ago Lucent Technologies left a large building and site vacant at the SW corner of Woods Mill and Clayton:

While the existing uninspiring building could have been remodeled for new tenants a developer saw an opportunity for more suburban development. In particular a more upscale development anchored by a Target and Whole Foods.

In the site plan above you get the Target in the bottom left of the development while the Whole Foods is the letter “E” on the right. A large pond/lake is in the upper right near the intersection. A large section of the total site (left) is designated for residential development.

Nothing says upscale like stone and the entry marker has plenty. I actually like the way the signage for the stores is worked into this wall. The above is the Clayton Rd entrance. Note the presence of sidewalks, an unusual sight along Clayton Rd.

Many might think who needs sidewalks because nobody walks out here. The counter argument, of course, is that nobody walks because they have no sidewalks. However, they do have sidewalks in places.

Above is looking North along Woods Mill from the entrance to the residential area to the South of the new Town & Country Crossings. Clearly when this was built some 20 or so years ago they had walking in mind. However the other commercial developments at this intersection are hostile to pedestrians by their design. The center with a Schnuck’s just to the East of this new development is not easily accessible by foot. They claim to be the “friendliest stores in town” but not if you are a pedestrian. OK, enough about them let’s get back to Town & Country Crossing.

Above is the sidewalk coming from Woods Mill. The entrance from Clayton also has a proper sidewalk.

Walking around the lake is also encouraged. The above view is looking East from the Whole Foods outdoor patio. This sidewalk provides another pedestrian access point into the development off of Woods Mill.

So far they’ve done a decent job of connecting various buildings on the site via sidewalks (thus complying with the ADA Access Route requirement). Above is the sidewalk from in front of the Whole Foods turning the corner to the left and eventually connecting to a couple of buildings that will have smaller stores.

Above is looking back the other direction at the entrance to Whole Foods (the only store completed & open on the day I visited). From this vantage point the center looks pretty typical of suburban strip centers.

Out in the middle of the parking area we see another departure from typical centers — an access route dead center. At the other end of the above sidewalk is the main entry to the new target.

Turning around we see that the previous sidewalk connects to a sidewalk that takes you to the strip buildings along the North (Clayton Rd) side if the development. It remains to be seen just how connected the entire site will be once completed.

For example the above is taken from in front of the Whole Foods looking West. Way in the background is a small strip building near the Clayton Rd entrance. At this time I don’t see an obvious route to get from here to there. I’ll have to return in a few months when they are further along, when it is cooler outside, and I can walk farther.

This is not the project I would have placed on this site. I would have done a commercial street lined on both sides by shops. Like the Boulevard off Brentwood near the Galleria although not so cutsie. The lifestyle center I saw last Fall in West Palm Beach (see post) is a good example of the upscale level of urbanism that would have been ideal for this site. Such a plan would require costly structured parking but offered more lease able space in return. It would have given this section of Town & Country a bit of that missing town.

Still as a big box (Target) strip center it is probably the best in the region. I can think of no other on this scale that does such a nice job of bringing the outside pedestrian into the site and then giving then the option to walk internally.

From a March 2007 Post-Dispatch article:

The shopping-center plans drew opposition from some residents who worried that the local streets were not wide enough for the traffic, while others complained that Target seemed a bit lowbrow for the well-to-do community. Residents signed petitions to block the center in its earlier versions, and they sued TNC. The dispute was settled out of court.

Work was done on both Woods Mill and Clayton, widening and adding turn lanes.  Perhaps the resulting project is better as a result of objections from neighbors?  They probably wouldn’t have liked my quasi-urban lifestyle center either.  Hopefully they’ll start adding more sidewalks so that more people can walk to this shopping center.  Hopefully other developers will stop by to see how strip centers should be designed to meet minimum standards of connectivity.

How Prepared is St. Louis for an Emergency?

For a class project at SLU I was going through the list of city departments/agencies and noticed one that I had never really looked at before, the St. Louis City Emergency Management Agency. After 9/11 and Katrina we’ve all seen how municipal response teams can be overwhelmed. We as tax paying citizens have expectations about services we expect from our local government but all too often we wait until a situation arises before concerns are addressed.

Having now viewed the website for the city’s Emergency Management Agency (http://www.stlouiscityema.com) I can say I’m not feeling as safe as I did beforehand. The agency’s mission is:

To coordinate, cooperate, and communicate with all agencies that have a responsibility in the area of Emergency Management and Homeland Security for the City of St. Louis. This includes but is not limited to the Mitigation, Prevention, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery from any manmade / national disaster that takes place in the City of St. Louis.
To work as a region to protect the citizens of St. Louis and the surrounding communities from all hazards.

From the outward appearances of the agency, they couldn’t do much for themselves let along protect “protect the citizens of St. Louis and the surrounding communities from all hazards.” What is my basis for such a harsh statement?
For starters, the website would have been considered amateurish a decade ago. For example, the page for upcoming events:

Each page is a different color and clearly the designer had a CD (or maybe a 5-1/4″ floppy disk) of clipart. More substantially, the information is half a decade out of date!

Perhaps you want to volunteer to help out?

Well, that page is under construction at this time. Note how the background image covers the navigation buttons at the top of the page.

On another page at least they give us links to other sites where perhaps we can find some good information:

You can’t tell from the above screen shot but the lights on the ambulances blink on the actual page. Not at all comforting.

The site has been updated enough to send folks elsewhere for training this year:

Maybe this is the norm? What about St. Louis County, I thought.

For St. Louis County they have the Office of Emergency Management through the St. Louis County Police. From their site I was able to download a PDF of their 100+ page Basic Emergency Operations Plan, see the list of members on their Local Emergency Planning Committee and so on. I know that:

The unit operates from the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), a uniquely designed self-contained underground structure. In the event of disaster, the facility is able to function independent of all common utilities. The OEM is tasked with preparing members of local government, law enforcement, and the public and private sectors, with how to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.

The city’s Emergency folks operate out of the lower level of the Solders Memorial. Is it, like the county’s, able to function separately from normal utilities? While I’ve not read the full county plan it does appear they have a clear plan for communications — whom to call and when and so on.

The person responsible at City Hall, up the chain, is the recently named new Director of Public Safety, Charles Bryson. Of course, this lack of information predates his time on the job — going back to Sam Simon who was in the position from 2002 to 2007. He recently left the job to take a new position at SLU, the Director of Emergency Preparedness. From SLU’s announcement:

Simon has directed city emergency responses, including Hurricane Katrina relief operations at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and helped develop emergency preparedness planning for the recent World Series.

Simon came to SLU with extensive credentials in the area of emergency preparedness. He was the metropolitan area’s coordinator for Homeland Security and currently is completing the Homeland Security Executive Leadership Program at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, Calif. He also has served as an adjunct professor in SLU’s School of Public Health.

Of course, FEMA never actually used the relief operations at the airport so we don’t really know how well that was planned. Still, Simon appears to have the right credentials. So maybe the city is better prepared than the website lets on?

Those of us that live/work downtown are probably a little better off than the rest of the city — we have the Downtown St. Louis Emergency Preparedness Operation (or DSTEP). This information is only a couple of years out of date (references to SBC, now AT&T, for example). The “testimonials” section includes a quote from Fire Chief Sherman George — more recently out of date. Many of the website sections such as Evacuations Plans, Emergency Supplies, Credentialing, News & Media and Downtown Residents all simply state “coming soon.” The copyright on the pages is 2005. Interesting, they talk about two initiatives for the operation — the first:

1) The creation of a website that provides pertinent information about emergency preparedness. It offers a wealth of specific information to downtown St. Louis, provides contact information and offers more information about DSTEP as well. Please visit the website at (www.DSTEP.org).

Well, they’ve failed to accomplish their first item! With so many of our “leader” and “good corporate citizens” involved how can they simply drop the ball and not finish what they started?

Emergencies are, by their nature, never planned. They strike when you least expect them to and we have an expectation that our governments are prepared to coordinate efforts when the worst does happen. From what I have seen thus far I have little confidence the City of St. Louis is prepared to handle a large emergency. Let’s all hope it is not tested, but if it is, that I am very wrong.