I jumped on the blog bandwagon a bit late (November 2004) so I didn’t want to miss the podcasting boat. Below is a link to short little segment (just over 3 minutes) where I talk about the school board election and current reading material.
I wanna listen! (MP3 audio)
We will see how this goes and maybe I’ll do a weekly podcast. So, check it out and let me know what you think of the idea of audio podcasting.
– Steve
Tonight is the last of game of the Final Four in St. Louis. I could care less about basketball but I am glad St. Louis was chosen to host the Final Four. It was exciting to see all the activity downtown over the weekend. Celebrities were also in town for the event. In fact, I walked right past the SUV of Lil’ John and the East Side Boyz. Yeah!
Tomorrow the banners will come down and the City will begin counting the money made from tourists. We will return to a non-event economy. The take home message to City Hall will be that we need more conventions and sporting events. This is true but if only to pay for our investment in the convention center and convention hotels.
We have to work on getting a 24/7, 365 days a year economy. I’m talking residents, not tourists. Hopefully this weekend we put on enough of a show that some attending the Final Four might consider relocating to St. Louis after college. Five years ago we would have had little to offer downtown.
Whom do we thank for the change? The Rams? Cardinals? SBC? City Hall? Downtown Now Partnership? Sure – to a degree. But we need to thank the people that took the financial risk to get the lofts built. We need to thank the first wave of loft dwellers. These are the pioneers.
Some would argue that without major sports teams like the Rams or Cardinals we wouldn’t have the lively downtown we are seeing emerge. I disagree. I think money raised from these teams has likely been helpful in projects such as the Washington Avenue streetscape but the pieces were coming together anyway. Metropolis had spent a number of years successfully getting people downtown for The Walk with restaurant & bar owners responding.
If anything, the dome and Busch Stadium are an impediment. Yes, I said it. These venues have nothing to do with creating vibrant neighborhoods. They create vibrant hours on selected weekends. These few vibrant hours come at the expense of the remainder of the year where the surroundings are barren. By the vary nature of these venues the surrounding area will never be a vibrant neighborhood comprised of local residents, shops, restaurants and night life.
The “Ballpark Village” that is promised after the completion of the new Busch Stadium will at best be a tourist neighborhood. A tourist neighborhood will have things like a Barnes & Noble, Urban Outfitters, Gap, and plenty of chain restaurants. Larger cities all have this type of area and sometimes the locals mix into the area. If only to do some chain store shopping.
If I were trying to determine where the first St. Louis area Urban Outfitters store should be located I don’t know that I’d pick the new Ballpark Village. Looking at downtown St. Louis I’d see that residents and the street life are located North of Market and West of 8th street. The most energy is on Washington Avenue between Tucker (12th) and 14th.
Between the Ballpark Village site and the home grown excitement is the useless Gateway Mall and too many boring parking garages and generic office towers to count. This is a dead zone. A ugly and lifeless pedestrian barrier. Unless the ball players stand on the street corners around the clock sports will do nothing to help this area become lively.
Lets keep working to bring events to St. Louis. When we get them here we need to make sure we keep a few as residents. In the meantime we need to look at the dead blocks downtown and see how can add life. In some cases this will mean putting up a building where none exists, to encouraging street vendors to replacing/renovating lifeless buildings.
The future of St. Louis depends on creating vibrant neighborhoods, not on weekend events. Yeah!
– Steve
Forbes publisher, Rich Karlgaard, is promoting his new book, Life 2.0: How People Across America Are Transforming Their Lives by Finding the Where of Their Happiness. This book is not released yet but American Way magazine (you know the one you get on American Airline flights) had a review.
The book will include a list of 150 Great Places to Live but in the meantime American Way narrowed the list to a top ten. St. Louis was #7 on the list.
#7 – St. Louis, Missouri
“A ‘bohemian bargain’, which means it offers a lively downtown coupled with a reasonable cost of living.”
The remainder of top ten is:
1 – Bismarck, North Dakota
2 – Bisbee, Arizona
3 – Austin, Texas
4 – Sioux Falls, South Dakota
5 – Albany, New York
6 – Birmingham, Alabama
8 – Albuquerque, New Mexico
9 – State College, Pennsylvania
10-Milwaukee, Wisconsin
I don’t want St. Louis to become Chicago, Seattle or New York. I do want St. Louis to come into its own and hopefully that will include density, mass transit and a thriving local economy. If so we may begin receiving new residents finding the “where of their happiness” in our great city.
– Steve
I’m giving up big box stores. Like dairy products, this will take time to completely give up.
As it is I don’t go to the malls. The only time I go to a mall is to visit the Apple store in West County Mall. I hate the Galleria so much I haven’t been to see the Apple mini store there yet. I may never.
I despise Wal-Mart & Sam’s. I’ve never liked Lowe’s either. I thought Lowe’s was related to Wal-Mart but it seems they just have Wal-Mart like practices and equally ugly stores. During the battle to save the Century Building I gave up Schnuck’s since it was their development company, Desco, that was involved in advocating a parking garage over a marble building on the National Register of Historic Places (aka The Century). Desco is also behind the proposed Schnuck’s & Lowe’s at Loughborough and I-55 that includes taking of 18 homes.
Not a penny of my money will get spent in the new development. Same with the new development at the site of the old Southtown Famous at Kingshighway & Chippewa. Not a cent. I don’t want to reward the retailers and developers that build this crap in our city. The suburbs are full of horrid sprawl shopping centers. The city does not need to become like the suburbs. Are you listening City Hall?
Target has been one of my favorite stores since I was a child. No more. They are too Republican for me. The website BuyBlue.org gives Target a 17 out of 100 rating – not good. I emailed Target and got the following response from their “guest relations” department:
Target Corporation is bipartisan and works with both major political parties. We contribute to political candidates based upon our corporate business agenda. The recipients of any contributions from Target would be perceivedor known to be supportive of our business objectives.
That sounds good enough until you look a bit further. In the last couple of years Target CEO Robert J. Ulrich gave $4,000 to Minnesota Congressman Mark Kennedy. The following is from Kennedy’s website on Family Values:
It is alarming that a small minority has been successful at using the courts to advance a radical political agenda that undermines these values, including the sanctity of marriage. That’s why I am a proud cosponsor of a Constitutional amendment that upholds the traditional definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Furthermore, to prevent the courts from being corrupted by radical activists, we must have judges on the bench who will interpret the Constitution, not rewrite it.
Is this part of Target’s business objectives? Target is touting lines by openly gay designers such as Isaac Mizrahi at the same time funding anti-gay congressmen like Mark Kennedy. Target executives also made contributions to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Like I said, I am done with Target.
I do stop in to buy a few things at the Shop ‘n Save at Gravois Plaza a couple of times per week. I’ve discovered they are a bit too red-state for me so I will be making some adjustments and finding a new pharmacy.
My plan at this point is to focus my grocery shopping on Soulard Farmer’s Market, City Grocers, and German-owned Trader Joe’s (same owner as Aldi). The bulk of my dining out is limited to local restaurants so that won’t require any change. I buy music online through iTunes. I get my TV through Dish Network which had a good blue rating through a different site. Charter Communications, my high speed internet provider, also had a good blue rating (unlike SBC).
Home Depot will be hard to give up but I really don’t buy much there. As Spring planting season approaches I will look to local nurseries for starter plants. It will take time, thought and some good planning but I can change my shopping habits. We cannot afford to continue supporting big boxes and right wing stores. Our purchasing power speaks volumes.
I’m going to ask my firm, Schaller Realty, to join Build St. Louis – a local independent business association. I am going to use the site as a guide to find businesses and services. If you’ve got a local business and you don’t support right-wing candidates send me an email.
Oh yeah, I am writing this at locally owned Hartford Coffee. Good place, free wi-fi, check it out if you haven’t already.
– Steve
Philadelphia’s eclectic South Street offers lessons – good and bad – that could be applied to St. Louis’ Cherokee Street. Actually, the lessons could be applied to nearly every street in St. Louis. But for now I am focusing on our own Cherokee Street – specifically the blocks West of Jefferson. You’ll note in the picture to the right that South Street has a similar scale to our own Cherokee Street.
The things I don’t care for are the one-way streets and lack of street trees. Philadelphia seems really fond of one-way streets but they seem to have enough pedestrians and auto congestion to overcome the negatives. One-way streets are typically designed to move traffic faster, not ideal when creating a friendly pedestrian environment. Same is true with the street trees, they have enough going on that their benefits (other than blocking the sun) are not needed.
Lesson #1 – South Street makes no pretense of being a suburban strip center. No uniform canvas awnings lining the street here. No consistent signage. Individuality is the name of the game here and it works well. The Starbucks (not pictured), a bastion of uniform design, actually makes good company among all the louder store fronts.
Lesson #2 – make bike racks available and spread them out. All along the street were bike racks so that no matter which block or side of street you were headed a bike rack was near. Smaller and more frequent is better than large but seldom. Visibility is key to making sure the bike is there when you return. Here they have so many bike riders some must use sign posts to secure their bikes. We will hopefully be so lucky as to have thousands of bike racks throughout the city and still be short.
Lesson #3 – let the storefronts take on unique looks. Storefront material, design and color should be as varied as the stores themselves. I yawn in most historic districts because the places are often so staid. I’m not advocating closed up storefronts – I think they need lots of glass and wide doors but they don’t need to all be the same cutsie historic look with the same detailing and proportions. Shopping streets are meant to be fun and interesting. The fronts should scream, “Come in here and max out that Visa!”
Lesson #4 – Capitalism can be great at the pedestrian level. In response to all the pedestrians on South Street many restaurants serve food from service windows. The first thing people in St. Louis will say against walk-up service windows is that it will contribute to more trash in the neighborhood. But, if an area is doing well and you’ve got tons of people around you are not likely to throw your wrapper on the sidewalk. Not only do you get safety in numbers but you also get a sense of pride in numbers. Sure, it is not free of trash but I’d say they have no more than many of our streets which is awesome considering the much greater number of daily users.
Lesson #5 – Allow for changing weather. Not that the fabric over the service window is part of an awning that can be opened if the weather requires it. This lets the place be responsive to changing weather while also providing a different look. Flexibility and variety.
Lesson #6 – Make sure the sidewalk is wide enough. South Street sidewalks were a perfect width, wide enough to allow folks to stand and talk (or eat) but not so wide that you felt alone. Determining the best width is a tough job.
Lesson #7 – light the way. Note how lighting is included to help light the sidewalk. This scale of lighting is so much more pleasant than relying simply on street lights. The down lights in this front are effective in that they produce little glare in the face of the pedestrian. I’ve seen some new down lighting on Cherokee Street but they are a bit on the chunky side (kind of the Kirstie Alley of light fixtures if you will).
Lesson #8 – mix old with the new but keep it urban. This Fresh Fields/Whole Foods store serves the neighborhood as both an employment center and as a grocer. The size of the building contrasts sharply with the width of the fronts on most of South Street. However, numerous entrances along the street keep up the rhythm. Cars are accommodated in the garage above.
I think many St. Louis natives see South Street as chaotic and inappropriate. I see it as vibrant and exciting. I also see it as a driving force behind increased commerce (read: sales tax revenue); increased property value (read: more property tax revenue) and greater demand for the area (read: more people paying more taxes).
The above pictures were taken on an overcast Saturday afternoon on 10/27/2001 – just over six weeks after September 11th. The whole East Coast was worrying about anthrax poisoning and other terrorist threats and still the street was busy. We need that kind of draw!
– Steve