The St. Louis Region Needs a Quality Outdoor Skate Park

I can’t stand on a skate board for five seconds. My in-line skates are collecting dust somewhere because I used the knee and other pads a bit too often. Although I’m an excellent cyclists I can’t do any BMX tricks.

But I love watching youngsters doing skate and bike tricks. Their tricks are highly athletic and require great amounts of personal discipline.

Recently I was in Oklahoma City and I checked out their new skate park. Wow, impressive! An outdoor skate park on city park land. While St. Louis is building lame skate hockey rinks OKC built an awesome skate park with various ledges and bowls.

Look around and you’ll see signs that prohibit skate board riding. Property owners don’t want their railings messed up by the skates. Our city attorney probably doesn’t want the legal headache of the liability that goes along with such a facility.

But I was at OKC’s skate park on just an ordinary Wednesday afternoon and it was very busy. It is located in an existing city park along their riverfront in what is best described as a transitional neighborhood. Aside my our family doctor’s office being located in the area, it was a place as a kid my parents would never take me. It is more poor than unsafe.

But visiting this park I saw a change. There were the usual teenagers there but so were very young kids with their soccer moms. Grandparents were there watching as well. The diversity didn’t end there. All economic scales were represented from poor folks from the neighborhood to middle class to some more affluent looking people. Races were also mixed. A common interest can transcend all these unimportant differences.

St. Louis needs a public skate park. The YMCA on Arsenal just built a skate park but I’ve yet to make it over there to see it. I doubt it is anything on the level of this.

I say we build one not on a riverfront park but near a shopping district. Let’s have stores nearby where kids can buy water and snacks and return to the fun. Let’s have some cheap restaurants nearby with outdoor dining overlooking the skate park. Let’s use the skate park to bring people together and add vitality to an area.

[UPDATE 6/21/05 @ 12:15pm:
St. Charles County has had a skate park for a couple of years now! Who knew? It is not free or appear to have the deep bowls of the OKC park but it looks pretty good. I’ll have to check it out next time I’m out that way.
Click here for St. Charles County website on their Youth Activity Center. A virtual tour can be seen here. The St. Chuck County Suburban Journal has a story on the park – read it while you can as their links don’t last long. I think we’ve got enough youth in the City of St. Louis to justify such a park, ideally free like the OKC example.]

– Steve

Why Don’t We Have A Bike Parking Ordinance?

All the time say it is unfair to compare St. Louis to a bigger city such as Chicago or New York. I still think those are fair comparisons because they are simply bigger versions of what we have. But, I’ll go along with the critics that want a more balanced comparison. What if we compared the City of St. Louis to Springfield Missouri? When it comes to bicycle provisions they’ve got us beat.

Springfield has amended their “Land Development Code” to require off-street bike parking throughout their city. In fact, the one place that is exempt is their downtown. Springfield felt it is the city’s responsibility to provide such parking in the public right of way in the downtown area with a couple of exceptions. It is everywhere else that bike parking is required.

You want to build a new Wal-Mart with a huge parking lot? No problem, but you’ll have to provide bike parking as well. And not some tired old dish drainer type of rack that only holds the front wheel. Here is how they defined a bike rack:

“A bicycle parking facility that is fastened to a mounting surface, can accommodate up to two (2) bicycles, can support each bicycle by its frame in two (2) places and, allows the use of a cable lock or U shaped lock to protect bicycles from theft.”

Perfect. This definition of a bike rack eliminates all of the bike racks that are useless that people try to pass off as providing bike parking. This also leaves out the phallic bike racks on Washington Avenue East of Tucker. If only they had left them out literally. The ordinance includes a simple graphic of the types of racks meeting this definition as well as a provision for the city staff to approve a custom rack meeting the qualifications.

Let’s suppose you want to build that new big box in Springfield and the code says you need 250 auto spaces. You are also going to need six (6) bike spaces which, based on the above definition, means three separate racks holding no more than two bikes. Excellent. The ordinance’s supporting documents make reference that a 14,280sf Walgreen’s would need 3 bike spaces under the code which would mean two of the two-bike racks. The code also requires that bike parking be dispersed at various public entrances. Very good.

What is more amazing is their Chamber of Commerce and developers seem to have supported the ordinance. What is in their water?

Click here for a PDF copy of the ordinance
(first 7 pages) including background materials and letters of support from local Springfield cycling organizations.

So here is my challenge to the City of St. Louis and all the counties & municipalities in our region — where are our bike parking ordinances? People all the time say you’ve got to have parking. They are usually referring to plenty of free car parking. If it is true for motorists it is just as true for cyclists.

It is totally unfair to not provide bike parking and then say we are not going to provide bike parking because nobody bikes.

– Steve

I Just Don’t Feel Safe in Suburbia

I was just going to have a simple lunch with a friend on a lovely late Spring day. The drive to and from the Whole Foods on Brentwood, however, was anything but pleasant.

The exit from Westbound 40 (highway 40, I-64) onto Brentwood is always a nightmare as traffic from Hanley is merging in as traffic is exiting for I-170. At the bottom of the ramp at Brentwood was a minor three car accident.

Leaving the sprawl mess and heading back to St. Louis Eastbound 40 was nearly sitting still. Up ahead near Hanley I could see an accident in far left line. Looked minor enough. Cars are merging on the right from I-170 and on the left to avoid the accident. Finally we get through.

Then I see the real problem. A more serious accident in the Westbound center lane. A car is turned over on its side. Ambulance is there. Several cars are stopped on the shoulder. Only one lane of traffic is getting by. I see someone on a stretcher going toward the ambulance.

Earlier today a major accident on I-270 a semi and car collided and caught fire. All this on a nice sunny day. No rain, no snow.

The suburban dream of life in the country is BS. Suburbia has neither the benefits of the city or country. It is an abysmal mess. As oil prices climb people will finally wake up and realize the auto centric sprawl of the last 50+ year was a costly experiment not worth living in. It makes me upset every time I go there.

As soon as I cross the city limits back into St. Louis I immediately begin to relax. I just feel so much safer in the city.

– Steve

Big Boxes Closing Left and Right

Seems that the prime location of Brentwood & 40 (aka I-64 to non St. Louisans) didn’t help a couple of big boxes stay around. For weeks we’ve seen the “store closing” signs at the Ultimate Electronics store on Eager. Now I get word that Organized Living on Brentwood is closing. The stories are very similar.

Ultimate Electronics is in bankruptcy and is selling off stores to pay debt. The new buyers in the St. Louis area have decided to close at least the Eager location — I’m not sure about the others. Click here for more details from the St .Louis Business Journal.

Organized Living at one time had several stores in the St. Louis area including Union Station. In 2004 they hired a new CEO but she was “laid off” last month along with other employees as OL also enters Chapter 11 bankruptcy. One of the first tasks the new CEO did was to move OL’s headquarters from Kansas City to central Ohio. They were trying to go national and had 25 stores. For more background click here.

Big boxes also have big debt. Don’t think these out of town chain stores are going to help our local economies by providing sales taxes and jobs. They take what they can out of our economy until they go bust. They couldn’t care less about St. Louis.

– Steve

A Look At Downtown Springfield Missouri

For many Springfield conjures up images of religious schools, Bass Pro Shops and a place to drive through on the way to Branson. For me I had never spent any time there other than passing through on I-44. I spent one night there several years ago when a major snow and ice storm made it unsafe to keep driving when returning to St. Louis from a visit to family in Oklahoma City.

But I spent June 10-12 in Springfield becoming a League Cycling Instructor. Although most time was spent in class or on the bike (including an 8am to 10:30pm Saturday) I did manage to find a little bit of time to look around downtown Springfield and take a few photos.

Regular readers know how I love street trees and Park Central East has plenty. Before anyone comments how the pictures lack people and activity I need to say that all of these were taken around 7am on Saturday June 11th. That having been said, the street with its 80s gentle curve and lack of on-street parking is apt to look empty regardless of the hour of the day. The fact the street is one-way going into their public square didn’t help.

Not surprising to me, the storefronts were not occupied by the most interesting of businesses. A blood bank was next door to the tattoo studio (I do find tattoo places interesting).

I can imagine they will eventually have to redo this entire street to align it, add at least one row of parking and to make it two-way.

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